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The Conversation
The Conversation
Wanning Sun, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Technology Sydney

China’s ‘nightmare’ youth revolution was lit by its neurotic authoritarian leader, Mao Zedong. What can we learn from it?

In the 1960s and 70s, the youth of the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia rebelled by protesting against the Vietnam War, trying psychedelic drugs, embracing free love and discovering the Beatles. Meanwhile, what their contemporaries in China were getting up to was just as transformative.

The key difference, as Linda Jaivin’s book shows, is that the young Chinese rebels’ actions had profoundly destructive consequences – and their senseless behaviour was masterminded by their “great leader”, Mao Zedong.


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