ABSTRACT
The Chinese leadership, to counter what it perceives as pernicious side effects of reform, has demanded that people cultivate culture, morals, ideals, and discipline. The Maoists had argued that although China had put the means of production under public ownership, the basic culture of the country had not become socialist or proletarian and the country was, therefore, in danger of capitalist restoration. The use of political power, in China or anywhere else, as a means of personal wealth is not new with the reforms—there is precedent for this even in the Cultural Revolution, although then it took different forms, if only because then there was not as much cash loose in society. Hair and clothing styles, in China as in the United States, may be just that, styles; but they may also be ways of making a statement, of identifying for or against a particular mentality.
