Maoist Socialism In China

Under Maoist socialism the traditional Chinese family was entirely reconsidered. The Communist Party, eager to rid China of its old feudal culture, promoted new policies that destroyed the patriarchal kinship model the people of China had been following whereby the male individual was of most value within the family and expected to continue the family lineage. The idea of filial piety was replaced by filial nationalism and the people of China were ordered to prioritize the state over one's family. Mao pushed all people to act for themselves in favour of a united nation. He emphasized on the importance of people's own rights. Although Mao desired a united, equal and collective society, He insisted on the need for people to focus on themselves …show more content…
Therefore, during the Maoist period, a focus on one's self was strongly encouraged by the Communist party. Women and the youth, were all called upon to participate in public life, independently of their family, leaving aside feudal obligations. Yan Yun Xiang through her anthropological work on the individualization of Chinese society explains how the Maoist period pushed oppressed gender and classes to rise to equal standards with all other entities within society. ''For generations of youth and women, this was particularly liberating as they had been on the margin in traditional society where the individual lived under the shadow of her ancestors throughout her entire life course''2. Mao, pushed the individual to reinvent herself/himself as a worshipper of the state instead of a worshipper of her/his ancestors. The author consequently, doesn't claim that the individual was entirely free and in a place to make her/his own decisions but was led to reinvent herself/himself in a new era and step away from Chinese traditional expectations of the people. The individual was encouraged to recreate his identity through a collective way of individualization. ''I summarize the changes in the individual-society state relationship under Maoist socialism as a partial and collective type of individualization, which in essence has been part of China's quest for modernity.''3The author demonstrates …show more content…
In Desiring China, Lisa Rofel argues that: ''But, consumption, one of their measures of freedom, is not just about pleasure. It is a post-socialist technology of the self by which Chinese young women, and by metonymic association, the Chinese nation, enable themselves to transcend the specificities of place and identity and be part of the ''world.''12 China's growing consuming society provokes a dominant desire for individuality amongst these women: Youna Kim goes to argue that, ''Tradition has to some extent been replaced by the rising culture of consumerism.''13 These women, through consumption, want to embody a new self. They move into a universal place. Lisa Rofel explains that idea behind women's desires to live a global life. ''For them, one of the keys ways to embody the global self is to travel across space, not as they frame it, for the purposes of desperately seeking work or trying to move up in social status but for the purposes of pleasure.'' she demonstrates women's desire to embody a new self, in order to feel pleasure. They feel that through consumerism, they can exemplify, the new women of China, rid of traditional customs. Rofel's emphasis on pleasure is an idea that Xiaoying Wang highlights in ''The Post-Communist Personality: The Spectre of China's Capitalist Market Reform''. To describe the new personality emerging within the