Springtime and Morning Suns: "Youth" as a Political Category in Twentieth-century China

Abstract

This paper looks at the complex history of youth movements in twentieth-century China in order to investigate the connection (one I find problematic) between, on the one hand, the indisputable and massive presence of young people in political events and, on the other, the inscription and justification of the political significance of these events under the category of "youth." I analyze three cases in the long history of Chinese student activism—May Fourth 1919, the initial phase of the Cultural Revolution in 1966-67, and the Beijing spring of 1989—to pursue precisely the question of whether in these movements of young people, "youth" was a category of politics, or, to put it differently, whether the political significance of these events was at least in part expressed and realized through the signifier "youth." By doing so, I disarticulate the seemingly "natural" connection between political activism of young people and the framing of that activism in terms of "youth."

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