China and China Revolution Response

When I think of China, I think about how many people live there and how they have population control restrictions.  They have about 1.3 billion people, which is about 4 times as much as the US.  I know that most of the population is focused in the big cities while there is still a lot in the rural part of China.  The population control is interesting because I want to know how it has helped or hindered China.  I have read that populations level themselves out once they cannot support more.  I forget what the term is called, but populations eventually find their own sweet spot.  Did China already find its own sweet spot and go way past it?  I don’t think they did, I think that they are just taking this precaution so that they do not have to deal with overpopulation when it becomes a real issue and everyone is starving to death.  Another interesting fact is that China has been militarized for about 4000 years, starting with the Han Dynasty. 

The Chinese Revolution started in 1946, which I found odd because it was at the end of WW2.  I know China was not as involved as others in WW2, but they certainly had their fair share of fighting.  I also remember that they did not far too well against the Japanese when they began to invade.  It must have been very hard on their country and peoples to be involved in a World War and once that ends jump into a civil war.  It also didn’t help that during WW2, the communists were located up in the north while the nationalists were in the south east, where Japan invaded, helping to thin them out and unintentionally make way for the communists to take over.  I can imagine that with Russia already communist, that China becoming communist was the start of the fear that swept the world and eventually led to The US-Vietnam scuffle.  Communism was a pretty popular idea back then.  Even just reading what communism is, it sounds like an awesome idea, but it is something that doesn’t seem to work the way that it is intended to in the long run. 

Now to write about what I was supposed to write about; the Cultural Revolution, not the communist revolution.  This revolution was set up by Zedong, who started the communist revolution.  Revolution always sounds like a good thing, but not in this case.  Mao’s Cultural Revolution caused a lot of problems for China and set them back in terms of party, state, and the people.  A revolution that wasn’t in the people’s best interest.  If anything it caused a rebellion against what needed to be changed.  It seems that China had its own version of communist paranoia with this revolution also.  They were so fearful of Red Guard infiltrating, that they began accusing everyone it seems and it went all the way up into leadership.  Zedong wanted to purge everyone and everything that he thought wasn’t in his best interest.  I can understand how he wanted to unify, but that is a tall order and when you try to change a lot, people will revolt.