120 years after birth, Mao's presence lingers

[pmaitra]

Mao. Stalin, Pol Pot, and Hitler are 4 of the world's greatest mass murderers.

You forgot Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why am I not surprised?

 

[Ray]

The prosperity of China now is owed to Deng more than Mao. The unification of China was accomplished by 1950, what was needed then was wise policies along centralised system to advance on the economic level. But Mao's flirtation with uthopia ensured that China's progress is set back decades until rational Deng rescued it.

Deng indeed chalked the path to China's current prosperity.

However, there is no gainsaying that Mao laid the foundation. It is true that Mao's ways and the Communist lording the peasants and workers was violent, harsh, brutal and even inhuman but then that was the only way to make an indolent, even lazy, agrarian,opium addicted people wallowing under the feudal yoke a more responsive people to build a nation.

Under Mao, China developed its first system of universal public education (increasing the literacy rate from 20% to 70%), a national healthcare system and established the legal equality amongst the gender against the backdrop of enormous gender inequality that prevailed earlier.

 

[asianobserve]

No.

Take away Mao and bring in 10 Deng Xiaopings, and PRC would still be a sick nation, and a tinier one than what it is today. AAMOF, there would be no PRC today.

I beg to disagree. Deng although an economic pragmatists was no a political push-over. He proved his mettle in the 1989 Tianamen Square crisis. I have no doubt in my mind that had Deng been at the helm of China in the 50s and 60s then China's economic progress would have came sooner while keeping China together.

 

[pmaitra]

I beg to disagree. Deng although an economic pragmatists was no a political push-over. He proved his mettle in the 1989 Tianamen Square crisis. I have no doubt in my mind that had Deng been at the helm of China in the 50s and 60s then China's economic progress would have came sooner while keeping China together.

Ok, you may disagree, and we can certainly agree on that.

 

[asianobserve]

Deng indeed chalked the path to China's current prosperity.

However, there is no gainsaying that Mao laid the foundation. It is true that Mao's ways and the Communist lording the peasants and workers was violent, harsh, brutal and even inhuman but then that was the only way to make an indolent, even lazy, agrarian,opium addicted people wallowing under the feudal yoke a more responsive people to build a nation.

Under Mao, China developed its first system of universal public education (increasing the literacy rate from 20% to 70%), a national healthcare system and established the legal equality amongst the gender against the backdrop of enormous gender inequality that prevailed earlier.

The only thing lacking with Deng that Mao had in abundance was charisma. But in every other respect I find Deng in a more favorable light. I believe that there's nothing that Mao did that Deng could not have done post 1949 (he could do them better). A lot of the adoration I see for Mao especially among non-Chinese are nothing more than romanticism of doing revolution. It's the same adulation being given to Che Guevara.

 

[mattster]

You forgot Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why am I not surprised?

Hiroshima and nagasaki were the result of a war started by the Japanese.
You forget that the whole parts of China and most of South East Asia all the down to Malaysia and Singapore were occupied by Japanese.
The number of Asians who died under the hands of the Japanese army would have increased drastically if the Brits and Americans had to fight for every inch of ground taken by the Japanese all across South East Asia.

The surrender of the Imperial Army was worth it.

 

[Ray]

You forgot Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why am I not surprised?

And we must not forget Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act.

n 1830 Congress, urged on by President Andrew Jackson, passed the Indian Removal Act which gave the federal government the power to relocate any Native Americans in the east to territory that was west of the Mississippi River. Though the Native Americans were to be compensated, this was not always done fairly and in some cases led to the further destruction of many of the already diminishing numbers of many of the eastern tribes.

The Cherokee Nation was allocated land in Georgia as a result of the 1791 treaty with the U.S. Government. In 1828, not only did whites for settlement purposes desire their land, but gold was discovered. Georgia tried to reclaim this land in 1830, but the Cherokee protested and took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court decided in favour of the Cherokee, however, the President and Congress forced the Native Americans to give up their land. 1838 called in federal troops in to "escort" approximately 15,000 Cherokee people to their new home in Indian Territory. On the way, approx. 1/3 of the Cherokee people died. This event, known to the Cherokee as "The Trail Where They Cried", is better known as the Trail of Tears in U.S. History textbooks.

And the audacity of the President: 832 In Worcester v. State of Georgia, the Supreme Court rules that the federal government, not the states, has jurisdiction over Indian territories. The case concerns a missionary living among the Cherokees, Samuel A. Worcester, who was jailed for refusing to comply with a Georgia law requiring all whites residing on Indian land to swear an oath of allegiance to the state. In ruling against Georgia's actions, Chief Justice John Marshall writes that Indian tribes must be treated "as nations" by the national government and that state laws "can have no force" on their territories. Defying the court, Georgia keeps Worcester in jail, and President Andrew Jackson, when asked to correct the situation, says, "The Chief Justice has made his ruling; now let him enforce it."

And what about Indian massacre of 1622?
Indian massacre of 1622 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If one wants to comment on 'evil', then what could be more evil that perpetuating slavery and stealing the country from the native American Indians and making them some exotic species by keeping them in reservations?

I do not hold a brief for Mao, but then one must be careful in the use of words. One just cannot bandy words like 'evil' as if it is one is morally above board to condemn another with strong and despising words, when they themselves are guilty to the hilt in perpetrating evil in a most unChristain like manner, more so, in the Bible thumping South!

 

[pmaitra]

Hiroshima and nagasaki were the result of a war started by the Japanese.
You forget that the whole parts of China and most of South East Asia all the down to Malaysia and Singapore were occupied by Japanese.
The number of Asians who died under the hands of the Japanese army would have increased drastically if the Brits and Americans had to fight for every inch of ground taken by the Japanese all across South East Asia.

The surrender of the Imperial Army was worth it.

No, but whatever. I won't argue with your ignorance.

Keep justifying a genocide of civilians.

 

[Ray]

Hiroshima and nagasaki were the result of a war started by the Japanese.
You forget that the whole parts of China and most of South East Asia all the down to Malaysia and Singapore were occupied by Japanese.
The number of Asians who died under the hands of the Japanese army would have increased drastically if the Brits and Americans had to fight for every inch of ground taken by the Japanese all across South East Asia.

The surrender of the Imperial Army was worth it.

Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbour?

The reason lies in the fact that Japan was at war with China. Despite being a military superpower, their war with China was using up their resources. During that time, most of their resources especially oil were coming from the US. The US did not approve of Japanese aggression in China and they declared an embargo on Japan. This means they would stop supplying Japan with raw materials.

So where would Japan get their resources to continue the war now?

The Japanese High Command carefully discussed this and came up with the conclusion that the Dutch East Indies would be the best place to gain resources. But they knew that an attack on the Dutch East Indies would probably bring the US into the war. So they had to find a way to prevent the US from fighting with them until they conquered the Dutch East Indies. That's when they planned Pearl Harbour. The goal of Pearl Harbour was to disable the American fleet for a few months to give them enough time to conquer the Dutch East Indies and to absorb its resources to finance their war in China and the US once the US' navy was rebuilt.

 

[Ray]

Here is some more on why Japan attacked Pearl Harnour.


Pearl Harbor History: Why Did Japan Attack? Eyewitness Accounts, Casualty List, Background
What Happened?
What led up to that Day in Infamy?
War itself generally makes little sense, but the attack on Pearl Harbor has always sparked the imagination.
3,500 Americans were killed or wounded in the attack on December 7, 1941.

Before The Attack
September 1940. The U.S. placed an embargo on Japan by prohibiting exports of steel, scrap iron, and aviation fuel to Japan, due to Japan's takeover of northern French Indochina.

April 1941. The Japanese signed a neutrality treaty with the Soviet Union to help prevent an attack from that direction if they were to go to war with Britain or the U.S. while taking a bigger bite out of Southeast Asia.

June 1941 through the end of July 1941. Japan occupied southern Indochina. Two days later, the U.S., Britain, and the Netherlands froze Japanese assets. This prevented Japan from buying oil, which would, in time, cripple its army and make its navy and air force completely useless.

Toward the end of 1941. With the Soviets seemingly on the verge of defeat by the Axis powers, Japan seized the opportunity to try to take the oil resources of Southeast Asia. The U.S. wanted to stop Japanese expansion but the American people were not willing to go to war to stop it. The U.S. demanded that Japan withdraw from China and Indochina, but would have settled for a token withdrawal and a promise not to take more territory.

Prior to December 1941, Japan pursued two simultaneous courses: try to get the oil embargo lifted on terms that would still let them take the territory they wanted, and ... to prepare for war.

After becoming Japan's premier in mid-October, General Tojo Hideki See Books about Tojo secretly set November 29 as the last day on which Japan would accept a settlement without war.

The Japanese military was asked to devise a war plan. They proposed to sweep into Burma, Malaya, the East Indies, and the Philippines, in addition to establishing a defensive perimeter in the central and southwest Pacific. They expected the U.S. to declare war but not to be willing to fight long or hard enough to win. Their greatest concern was that the U.S. Pacific Fleet, based in Pearl Harbor could foil their plans. As insurance, the Japanese navy undertook to cripple the Pacific Fleet by a surprise air attack. See Books about Japanese Plans

The Warnings
The U.S. had broken the Japanese diplomatic code and knew an attack was imminent. A warning had been sent from Washington, but it arrived too late.

Early warning radar was new technology. Japanese planes were spotted by radar before the attack, but they were assumed to be a flight of American B-17s due in from the West Coast. Read the eyewitness account

The Attack
On December 7th 1941, on an otherwise peaceful Sunday morning on a beautiful Hawaiian island, the first wave of Japanese airplanes left 6 aircraft carriers and struck Pearl Harbor a few minutes before 8 AM local time. See Map of Pearl Harbor

In two waves of terror lasting two long hours, they killed or wounded over 3,500 Americans and sank or badly damaged 18 ships - including all 8 battleships of the Pacific Fleet - and over 350 destroyed or damaged aircraft. At least 1,177 lives were lost when the Battleship U.S.S. Arizona More about the Arizona exploded and subsequently sank.

Eyewitness Accounts Read books by Survivors
Read accounts from the people who were there.

However, they did not sink any of our Pacific aircraft carriers and they left most of the fuel that was needed to win the war in the Pacific.

In one stroke, the Japanese navy scored a brilliant success—and assured their ultimate defeat.

The Japanese attack brought the U.S. into the war on December 8—and brought it in the war determined to fight to the finish.

Pearl Harbor History: Why Did Japan Attack? Eyewitness Accounts, Casualty List, Background

 

[asianobserve]

And we must not forget Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act.

n 1830 Congress, urged on by President Andrew Jackson, passed the Indian Removal Act which gave the federal government the power to relocate any Native Americans in the east to territory that was west of the Mississippi River. Though the Native Americans were to be compensated, this was not always done fairly and in some cases led to the further destruction of many of the already diminishing numbers of many of the eastern tribes.

The Cherokee Nation was allocated land in Georgia as a result of the 1791 treaty with the U.S. Government. In 1828, not only did whites for settlement purposes desire their land, but gold was discovered. Georgia tried to reclaim this land in 1830, but the Cherokee protested and took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court decided in favour of the Cherokee, however, the President and Congress forced the Native Americans to give up their land. 1838 called in federal troops in to "escort" approximately 15,000 Cherokee people to their new home in Indian Territory. On the way, approx. 1/3 of the Cherokee people died. This event, known to the Cherokee as "The Trail Where They Cried", is better known as the Trail of Tears in U.S. History textbooks.

And the audacity of the President: 832 In Worcester v. State of Georgia, the Supreme Court rules that the federal government, not the states, has jurisdiction over Indian territories. The case concerns a missionary living among the Cherokees, Samuel A. Worcester, who was jailed for refusing to comply with a Georgia law requiring all whites residing on Indian land to swear an oath of allegiance to the state. In ruling against Georgia's actions, Chief Justice John Marshall writes that Indian tribes must be treated "as nations" by the national government and that state laws "can have no force" on their territories. Defying the court, Georgia keeps Worcester in jail, and President Andrew Jackson, when asked to correct the situation, says, "The Chief Justice has made his ruling; now let him enforce it."

And what about Indian massacre of 1622?
Indian massacre of 1622 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If one wants to comment on 'evil', then what could be more evil that perpetuating slavery and stealing the country from the native American Indians and making them some exotic species by keeping them in reservations?

I do not hold a brief for Mao, but then one must be careful in the use of words. One just cannot bandy words like 'evil' as if it is one is morally above board to condemn another with strong and despising words, when they themselves are guilty to the hilt in perpetrating evil in a most unChristain like manner, more so, in the Bible thumping South!

There's really going to be a clash in mass migrations like in the case of the USA, much like Australia. But would have the desperate Indian tribes been able to develop America into what it is now had the Europeans not established themselves there?

 

[asianobserve]

Okay, I think we have strayed too far already from the topic.

 

[Ray]

The only thing lacking with Deng that Mao had in abundance was charisma. But in every other respect I find Deng in a more favorable light. I believe that there's nothing that Mao did that Deng could not have done post 1949 (he could do them better). A lot of the adoration I see for Mao especially among non-Chinese are nothing more than romanticism of doing revolution. It's the same adulation being given to Che Guevara.

Deng exercised a key role as political leader and propaganda master as Political Commissar of the 2nd Field Army commanded by Liu Bocheng. He was not cut out to be a revolutionary leader as such. He was more of a follower and an intellectual and hence hardly the type to galvanise the people to rise or mould them into a cogent revolutionary force.

You correctly have said it by stating that he did not have charisma. Leaders who can galvanise a nation require charisma since no leader is absolutely perfect in all leadership qualities.

Deng, thus could hardly have replicated what Mao could do to China.

Deng's hardline during the Tienanmen Square 'rebellion' was more of a acquired reaction of a Communist hardened to realise the efficacy of Mao's line of action, he himself, having been a victim of the same to realise its worth to hold on to power.

I would hardly be adulatory of Communists let alone Mao or CHe.

But in all fairness, both have certain qualities that require that one cannot but acknowledge, even if grudgingly.

 

[Ray]

There's really going to be a clash in mass migrations like in the case of the USA, much like Australia. But would have the desperate Indian tribes been able to develop America into what it is now had the Europeans not established themselves there?

I don't think anyone can state what would have happened on issues of 'If'.

For instance, if Mao was still alive, and if Deng had died before Mao died, would China be where it is?

If there was no Gandhi, would India have become independent in 1947?

If the white colonialists not have been there, what would be the state of the countries they had colonised and 'raped'?

If there was no slavery in the US, would their economy been so strong?

It is not feasible to reconstruct what would have happened if the events in history did not happen.

 

[asianobserve]

He was more of a follower and an intellectual and hence hardly the type to galvanise the people to rise or mould them into a cogent revolutionary force.

That's why I said that Deng would have been the better leader for China post-1949, after the defeat of the KMT.

 

[kseeker]

And somehow there are always people who admire these psychopaths.

That attitude can also be seen in India as well ! i.e. people still support that evil Nehru-Gandhi dynasty who suck big time on Indian civilians blood. While Mao and his likes were all psychopaths, Nehru-Gandhi blokes are blood suckers, these blokes kill people silently.

 

[Ray]

That's why I said that Deng would have been the better leader for China post-1949, after the defeat of the KMT.

I wonder if Deng had he charisma to lead a lazy, addicted, agrarian, exploited people into what they became.

Leadership also requires some ruthlessness when leading sheep oif a humanity.

Deng was not of the same ruthless streak that Mao displayed.

 

[amoy]

I wonder if Deng had he charisma to lead a lazy, addicted, agrarian, exploited people into what they became.

Leadership also requires some ruthlessness when leading sheep oif a humanity.

Deng was not of the same ruthless streak that Mao displayed.

I guess most of u prefer to focus on "charisma" or "personality" of Mao, Deng or Chinese. That's why many adjectives such as "lazy, addicted" are poured.

Here again I wish to highlight SYSTEMATIC changes I put as "fundamental" or the so-called foundation Mao and his comrades laid down as "irrevocable" >> 1952: New China's land reform movement


"Lazy" peasants suddenly became diligent in ploughing their own lands distributed that had been promised as early as in Sun Yat-Sen's revolution overthrowing Qing Dynasty.

http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/shang-ying-wu_sun-yat-sen-and-land-reform-in-china-1955.html

Chinese intellectuals first began to discuss land reform with reference to land value taxation around 1910 following the publication of a resume of Progress and Poverty in the Chinese language by the Min Pao Magazine, an official organ of the Chinese Nationalist party printed in Tokyo. The slogan "Equal Rights to the Use of Land" was, of course, first adopted by SunYat-Sen as a cardinal principle of his Nationalist party, in China known as Kuomintang, when he organized the Chinese revolutionary movement. The phrase itself was taken from Progress and Poverty, the work of the famed American economist and social philosopher, Henry George, and officially brought before the Chinese people when Sun Yat-Sen became the first president of the Republic of China.

 

[jon88]

That attitude can also be seen in India as well ! i.e. people still support that evil Nehru-Gandhi dynasty who suck big time on Indian civilians blood. While Mao and his likes were all psychopaths, Nehru-Gandhi blokes are blood suckers, these blokes kill people silently.

Absolutely...seen a lot of those characters around these days. While those psychopaths kill you directly and visibly, the blood suckers kill you indirectly and invisibly. In the blood suckers' case, someone else always takes the blame.

 

[kseeker]

BEIJING: Chinese president Xi Jinping on Thursday used the 120th anniversary of Mao Zedong to send out a stern warning to officials of the Communist Party of China (CPC). He indicated he would be as strict in enforcing discipline as the former leader.

He vowed to "seriously treat illnesses which harm the nature and purity of the party and rip out 'malignant tumors' on the healthy body of the CPC".

Xi appeared to be giving a new dimension to China's political thinking by reviving Mao Zedong Thought as a source of guidance "forever". Mao's ideas have been put on the backburner in recent years.

"Revolutionary leaders are not gods, but human beings," Xi said. Mao's legacy would always serve China even though it had a few faults. "The banner of Mao Zedong Thought could not be lost," he said.

The president seemed to be using Mao's thoughts to strengthen his new "mass line" programme, which has resulted in a widespread crackdown on officials found to be corrupt and irresponsible. He called for maintaining "flesh and blood ties" between the party and the people.

Xi's statement came two months after a court confirmed the life imprisonment of Communist leader Bo Xilai, who posed as the leader of ultra Maoists sections in the party. Maoist sections, usually older people who worship Mao, feel they have lost their voice in the present trend towards capitalism.

Xi challenged doubters who feel the Mao era is best forgotten at a time when China has become an economic power. "The principle of holding high the banner of Mao Zedong Thought should not be wavered at any time and we will hold high the banner to advance forever," said Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party.

Talking about revolutionary leaders like Mao, Xi said: "(We) cannot worship them like gods or refuse to allow people to point out and correct their errors just because they are great; neither can we totally repudiate them and erase their historical feats just because they made mistakes."

"(We) should not simply attribute the success in historical favorable circumstances to individuals, nor should we blame individuals for setbacks in adverse situation," he added. "(We) cannot use today's conditions and level of development and understanding to judge our predecessors, nor can we expect the predecessors to have done things that only the successors can do."

China's Xi uses Mao legacy to issue stern warning - The Times of India