What are some of the perspectives that western scholars have employed Research Paper

What are some of the perspectives that western scholars have employed to understand the Cultural Revolution in China in 1965 - Research Paper Example and in regard to the Cultural Revolution itself, the content is expected to better explain how Western scholars arrived at their judgments and allow the readers to better pinpoint biases, inadequacies and their opposite in the humungous body of literature on the subject. The study of Communist China is a field in itself and that the corpus of literature written about the subject in the West could probably equal the rest of Chinese history combined. In the study of the Cultural Revolution, Western scholars analyze and understand the phenomenon using the studied society’s criteria or some use their own society’s criteria. Few scholars go so far as to claim that internal criteria are in principle inaccessible to cross-cultural scholars or that using either internal or external criteria is inherently inappropriate. According to Xiuwu Liu: this dichotomous classification of evaluation criteria as internal versus external, like the similar dichotomous classification of points of view, has serious limitations. Indeed, as with points of view, it is impossible to classify many criteria according to this dichotomy. More important, the subjects and purposes of evaluation are diverse.1 Indeed, one single set of assessment criteria for the Cultural Revolution among Western scholars, whether it be internal or external to the extent that it can be identified, cannot appropriately or adequately cover all possible assessment situations. And so, it is understandable that there are many ways, perspectives and approaches to analyze the Cultural Revolution and scholars contend on the methods most appropriate for the country and for the period. Nonetheless, there are sufficient evidences from which valid and credible interpretations could be made as the subject - the Cultural Revolution – is widely documented. For this paper, two important perspectives are explored that – the Mao-in-command model and the factionalism models. Radicalism in China began in 1956 with Mao’s