Overview
This book analyzes how the Communist Party of China (CPC) learned from the Soviet experience and made use of different forms of media such as novels, textbooks, songs, and films, as well as model workers and the representative female tractor driver, to shape and mold the so-called socialist "New Man". In doing so, the CPC tried to propagate and educate the public on the concept and qualities of the "New Man": someone who adopts a firm proletarian stand, who values the party and the state above everything else, who is willing to sacrifice personal interests for the collective, who embodies the concept of labor as glorious, who subscribes to the idea of gender equality, etc. Through comparing the social cultures, customs, and practices, national development trends, and the conceptual and value preferences of political leaders of both China and the Soviet Union, the book examines the underlying reasons behind the change in the function of the Soviet experience in China and the transition in the main characteristics and features of the "New Man". It also enables readers to gain a deeper understanding of the essential nature of Mao's regime, and also the kind of doctrinal and dogmatic education that China's Red Guards generation had been exposed to over the seventeen years from the founding of New China to the Cultural Revolution.
