In this excellent book, Yiching Wu examines the mass political activism of the Cultural Revolution conflict of 1966-68 by way of three important episodes. He devotes a chapter to each, as he believes each exemplified an interesting political and ideological current. The first, examined in chapter three, was the debate over the "bloodline theory" that erupted among young people early in the Cultural Revolution. The bloodline premise was that only those of pure "good class" origin -the children of Party cadres and of the working class - could be entrusted to push forward Mao's revolution. Opposition came, not surprisingly, from young people who were not from the favoured categories. The most cogent repudiation of the bloodline theory was an influential essay penned by Yu Luoke, a young man of bad-class background who was subsequently executed by the government for his views. The chapter includes a focus on Yu, as "Critics elsewhere in China would later expand this incipient current [Yu Luoke's essay] into more systematic critiques of social and political inequalities in Chinese society" (p. 93).
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