All these factors added to the supremacy of idealism, opportunism, and radicalism among Chinese intellectuals, shaping a culture which in turn fashioned intellectual discourses throughout the 1980s and aided the rise of the 1989 Movement (Zhao, 2004).
In the end duty to country or society became equivalent with duty to the party. Opposition to China's enemies was associated with support for the party. Patriotism was linked with loyalty to China's current political system. The young people became frustrated with all of the rules and regulations that were being placed upon them. They felt as if they have been told what to do and what to think ever since they were born. And when the intellectual leaders started in on them about their social responsibilities, it was more than they could deal with. They felt as if the older generations were stuck in their own ideas of responsibility and that was not...
They felt that the younger generation was taking a completely opposite view from their own. They felt that young people only cared about themselves and did not care about what happened to the country or their society as a whole. The young people appeared to be lost. They were going through life with no real sense of where they were going or how they were going to get there. In fact that really just running from the past and not necessarily moving toward the future.
Works Cited
Zhao, D. 2004. "The Power of Tiananmen: Intellectual Activity and the Student Movement"
Web. 10 May 2010. Available at: http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777190232/
