China has always been proud of its history. Being one of the most advanced civilizations long before America was even discovered, many Chinese today still cling to their glory days even though they are one of the world's superpowers. A huge country with patriotic citizens and a great economy is what people know about China today. However, what most people don't know and what others want to forget is that China has suffered its share of atrocities against its own people. One of them, of course, would be the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, during which, during Mao Zedong's great struggle to return to power, he transformed thousands of young people into his infamous personal army under the name "Red Guards", and used them. persecuting intellectuals as well as vandalizing the tombs of great Chinese philosophers, notably Confucius (Raymond Wylie 195-196). Even though Mao Zedong had great intentions and some ideas for improving China, most of the actions carried out under his name and ideology were completely unjustified. After the failure of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, where he proposed the idea that China should move from an agrarian to an industrialized country, he sought to be pro-people again. The Great Leap Forward caused people to abandon their agricultural lifestyle and start working in factories. With a massive decline in agricultural activities, this led to a huge famine in which millions of Chinese citizens perished. In his attempt to regain control of China, he proposed another idea which led to the persecution of intellectuals by the youth. Mao Zedong called on young people to realize his idea of ​​a “new” China. Even though Mao Zedong wanted China to progress, he wanted to do it by completely destroying the past... middle of paper... he is doing the exact opposite. The education of young people was taken for granted and was then lost. Mao Zedong's call for cultural revolution had all the right intentions and all the effective procedures, but unfortunately everything was going in the wrong direction. Works Cited Barcata, Louis. China in the grip of the cultural revolution; an eyewitness statement. New York: Hart Pub. Co., 1968. Print. Barnett, A. Doak. China after Mao: with selected documents. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967. Print. Evans, Harriet and Stephanie Donald. Imagining Power in the People's Republic of China: Posters from the Cultural Revolution. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. Print. Wylie, Raymond Finlay. The emergence of Maoism: Mao Tse-tung, Ch'en Po-ta and the search for Chinese theory, 1935-1945. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1980. Print.