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Part II: History
The People’s Republic in the fifties and sixties

Meanwhile...

1955

1963

1969

1956

1961

Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock”

Elvis Presley “Heartbreak Hotel”; Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven”

The Beatles play their first gig at Liverpool’s Cavern Club

1959

The Day the Music Died: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper killed in plane crash.

Debut album from the Beatles; debut single from the Rolling Stones

Woodstock Music and Art Fair, Woodstock, New York

1967

Jimi Hendrix Experience debut album; Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; the Who debut in America

Song Xiaohui

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PREVIOUS: Part I: Prehistory

NEXT: Part III: PRC 2.0

China slowly meets the world

Mao lets a “hundred flowers bloom” in culture and “a hundred schools of thought” in science contend. Criticism went further than expected; hundreds of thousands of intellectuals branded ‘rightists’.

The Great Leap Forward: massive forced collectivized farming; ‘backyard’ furnaces to add to national steel production. Estimates of starvation deaths over next four years (via natural disasters and mismanagement): 20 to 40 million.

Aug 2: Rocker-to-be Cui Jian is born

To revitalise the revolution and reassert Mao’s status, The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution begins. Youth deputized Red Guards oversee the shutdown of universities, massive numbers of intellectuals ‘sent down’ to the countryside, destruction of historical relics, extreme political persecution across all levels of society.

Lin Biao chosen as Mao’s successor...

1956

1958

1961

1966

1969

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...while his son, Lin Liguo, cruises to the sounds of the Beatles.

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