Tian Zhuangzhuang’s film The Blue Kite captured the tragic results of the Chinese Communist’s Party attempt to change China into a truly socialist state by means of ‘The Great Leap Forward’ and the ‘Cultural Revolution.’ From the early 1950’s to 1976, at the end of the Cultural Revolution, the people of China were forced to endure starvation, over-exhaustion, and the break-up of traditional family structure and livelihood. All of this was an attempt by Mao and other communist leaders to prove to the world that socialism would surpass capitalism and China would rise above the West. However, as was portrayed in the film The Blue Kite, communism was not working. Instead the people of China were only being manipulated, deceived, and murdered by their government ‘for the people.’
 The first scene of the film is the wedding of Shujuan and Shaolong, portrayed as an occasion of hope with this new union between two people and the singing of a communist song showing the hope of a better life under the new government. Even shortly after the wedding, a greater sense of hope and innocence is added by the arrival of their newborn son, Teitou. The marriage and birth seems to echo the overall atmosphere at the beginning of a Communist China. Shortly after the revolution, China experienced a “honeymoon” period where for the first time since the fall of Imperial China, rural peasants were able to farm for themselves and stomachs were fed. This was a result of the Communist Party fulfilling its promise to redistribute land from the rich landlords. However, just as this honeymoon period is quickly destroyed by actions of the communist party, so is the marriage of Shujuan and Shaolong. Tian’s hopeful introduction of the film helps to convey that part of the tragedy of communist rule is that it started with such hope but would turn to disaster for the people as he portrays through the childhood of Teitou and the family he will lose to the party.
 Tian portrays the first devastating deception of the Communist Party with the “100 Flowers Movement.” Here Mao drew upon traditional Chinese philosophy and opened up the Communist party to constructive criticism from the people. However, shortly after Mao claimed the counter-revolutionaries were taking advantage of this opportunity and thus the “100 Flowers Movement” soon became an “Anti-Rightest Movement.” As a result many Chinese were sent to labor reform camps or even executed. Tian shows how an innocent people were deceived and torn apart by this movement with Shaolong. Shaolong’s best friend Uncle Li slips and tells of some criticisms that Shaolong expressed about the party. And Shaolong foolishly leaves a meeting at his work to use the bathroom right before they are going to take a vote on who around them are ‘rightest’ to fulfill a quota of persons to be sent to labor camps. Thus, two minor events condemn Shaolong to his eventual death. Just as the party was crashing down on the people, so would a tree crash down upon him and kill him. Here the Communist Party committed several crimes against their people. First, they asked for their criticism and then turned it against them and second they were undermining traditional Chinese family structure. Not only were families being forced into small communes at this time, but innocent people were being taken away to their deaths.
 Tian goes on to demonstrate the continual destruction of the family by the Communist Party through two future marriages of Shujuan. Out of guilt, Uncle Li takes care of Shujuan and Teitou during the “Great Leap Forward’ era. Overtime Uncle Li becomes a second father figure to Teitou and companion to Shujuan. Thus, looking out for her son, Shujuan tries to complete her family again and remarries. But shortly after, Uncle Li also becomes another victim of the Communist Party. Due to over-exhaustion and mal-nutrition that was common during the Great Leap Forward, Uncle Li becomes ill and dies. This era also stripped people of their dignity. Tian portrayed a frustrated Shujuan when she is forced to punish Teitou for attempting to steal food, but she knows that he is hungry. Because of a failing economic system, people were forced to behave in manners that they would normally look down upon, but unfortunately, they had no choice.
 Shujuan married again, to a Communist Party member and leader in hopes of protecting herself and Teitou, but Tian even shows that under the Communist Government, not even their own were safe from accusation and attack. Her third husband, Lao Wu, becomes a victim of another Mao movement, the Cultural Revolution. Mao implemented this movement as a response to growing criticism from with in the party. Everyone knew that the Great Leap Forward was a tremendous failure, just resulting in millions of deaths of Chinese people. Thus, they began to question whether party ideology was more important or feeding the mouths of China. One leader in this criticism against Mao was Deng Xioaping. Thus Mao called upon the youth of China to rebel against the old revolutionaries who lost sight of the goal of China. Tian portrays this movement when Teitou comes home to tell his mother that the children at school denounced their teacher as counter-revolutionary and when Lao Wu is hunted down in his home by a young faceless mob of revolutionaries. As a result of these events, Teitou loses his mother to a labor camp and he himself is left alone and beaten on the ground. Thus, Tian doesn’t spare the Communist Government form this era of any criticism. Through the deaths of Teitou’s three father figures, the loss of his mother, and he a child beaten by the mob, Tian denounces the Party for beginning with such hope to only turn around and strip people of their dignity and livelihood.
 The film The Blue Kite vividly demonstrates the failure of the Communist Party from almost its beginning up until the late 1970’s. Tian told the story in three stages and through the eyes of a boy. In the article, “The Three Father Figures in Tian Zhuangzhuang’s film The Blue Kite,” by Hanna Boje Nielson, Nielson illustrates the impact that Tian created in telling this story in this manner. Teitou is young and represents innocence. Hence just as an innocent boy was stripped of his family and hope, so was a nation of innocent people stripped of the promise for a better life under a government that claimed to know what was best for their survival. The three stages show how the party progressively took more and more from its people. Thus, as each death occurred from each stage of the Communist Party, the viewer witnesses how invasive the Communist government was in every aspect of a Chinese citizen’s life. Hence as is apparent in the last scene of The Blue Kite, Tian portrays the Communist Government as evolving into a faceless, evil entity that beat its people down and stripped them of their deserved human rights.