Breaking with Old Ideas is a product of Chinese Community Party chairman Mao Zedong's concept of a new world in which all social relationships are transformed. Li Wen-Hua made the film during the last years of the Cultural Revolution in the PRC, People's Republic of China. The film dramatizes the struggle for proletarian control of education at an agricultural college during the Great Leap Forward and makes it clear that the leading party members can …showed first 75 words of 843 total…

…showed last 75 words of 843 total…capitalists" who were hiding in government posts and within the CCP itself. In reality, the targets for Mao's wrath were those he saw as his political enemies. Eventually, the campaign spread to include targeting members of the scientists and influential professors of universities who were accused of putting technical expertise ahead of correct political thinking. Unlike the film, the Cultural Revolution had a disastrous effect on the educational system and the scientific community within China.