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Big_Bird

Interesting article, for anyone who's interested in China or Mao - that is.

Mao was cruel - but also laid the ground for today's China

ddeubel · Joined: 20 Jul 2005

I think this same arguement can be attempted on the current "regime" also.

Much corruption, state murder, tyranny, waste, famine, poverty, injustice etc........ presently. Even though there is economic progress and some liberalization -- I don't think we should still put up with these "negatives" and say, "Oh well, they can be forgiven." No way and same with Mao revisionism.

Just one year out of the cultural revolution alone, is enough to condemn him to infamy and damnation.

DD

fiveeagles · Joined: 19 May 2005 Location: Vancouver

Sorry, but what a disgusting article. Almost excusing his crimes, because of the prosperity now seen.

Big_Bird · Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 7:24 pm Post subject:

I'm not sure that the author's intention is to excuse Mao. However, his piece would serve nicely the line that the CCP itself takes. While I lived there, there was a big move to rehabilitate Mao, and a lot of that article does look like could have come straight off The China Daily or one of the state TV documentaries.

On the other hand · Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue

Nothing new here. These are the same arguments that were made by that renowned progressive Richard Nixon, both in praise of Mao and in defense of the Deng regime. (See his book called "Leaders") That's probably not the intellectual company that Guardian writers like to imagine themselves keeping, but there you have it.

cbclark4 · Joined: 20 Aug 2006 Location: Masan

If man (people) had manners we'd need no laws.

Revolution has always had a cost.

cbc

manlyboy · Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 9:14 pm Post subject:

I can see The Guardian running an article like this on Kim Jong-Il in a few decades time.

Ya-ta Boy · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: Established in 1994

The 20th Century produced world-class monsters of the far Right and far Left. Their intellectual heirs feel a need to excuse the sins rather than confront them. It looks like they haven't learned a thing. Sad really. It's not a good sign for the future.

cbclark4 · Joined: 20 Aug 2006 Location: Masan

And the culture abounds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_Xul5Bbghs

cbc

stevemcgarrett · Joined: 24 Mar 2006

Big Bird:

I realize you're a leftist sympathisizer but how do you expect those of us who aren't to take this article seriously? It's from a leftist rag, The Guardian, which clings to neo-Marxist analysis of history.

If you doubt me, consider this: Would they ever try to rehabilitate the historical image of Mussolini? More people were senselessly killed under Mao than Mussolini? Oh, but wait, he was a fascist so we can't have any of that.

I always laugh how the commies try to distance themselves morally from the fascists; they're both birds of a feather, that is, totalitarians.

Have you read the most recent biography of Mao by the author of Wild Swans? If not, I suggest you pick up a copy online.

You need reeducation.

But let me entertain The Guardian's thesis. Had the Guomindang remained in power they would have received considerable American economic assistance, which in turn (despite admittedly rampant corruption) would have led to China's modernization decades before Deng Xiaoping facilitated it. And the old habits were already dying, especially in large urban coastal areas, long before Mao came to power.

This article reminds me of the Hitler revisionists who claim, you know he was really adept at diplomatic maneuvering and improved the German economy immensely.

thepeel · Joined: 08 Aug 2004

Interestingly enough, it seems that communist dictatorships morph typically into right-wing military dictatorships and right-wing dictatorships into democracy.

Mao was a monster. There is not a sane person on earth would would even slightly disagree with his regime being characterized as one of the most horrific in human history. But, then again, it was the Guardian.

Of the article itself, it is such crap I don't know where to start.

1) Industrial output climbed 13-fold, albeit from a tiny base.

This is a bold faced lie. What happened was that, under fear of death, local officials lied about their output so that it would match that demanded by the government. This is why so many died of hunger. The output of both industrial and agriculture products was ALL given in a "tax for the people" to the CCP officials as to give any less would be an admission that the targets were not met. I can't believe he wrote that. Wait, I can.

The rail network doubled.

And? Firstly, the nation was war torn. So, did it double pre-Japanese colonialism or post? Big difference. Additionally, if it did double (he is pulling the word "double" out of his ass, it was doubled with SLAVE LABOR. I guess any nation would find it easy to do anything if the entire population was a slave.

Half of Chinese land became irrigated.

What Mao did was do away with industrial production in many areas. The "elite" (meaning people who wore glasses) were sent into the fields to work the land in an effort to reeducate them. The crop yield was lower than in the late 1800's (when China was the largest economy in the world, btw). Let me put it very simply for BB. They had to expand the amount of land that was being used as the land that they were previously using had a lower yield as slave labor isn't as productive and mechanization.

There was a dramatic lowering of illiteracy.

Maybe cause those who were illiterate were killed, alone with about 40,000,000 others? Ok, seriously, the Left has a boner for "literacy", but I ask you, what the falk is the point in knowing how to read if you are only permitted (by penalty of death) to read a "little red book" (ironically, colored the same color of the only thing it was able to draw or produce).

Near universal health care was established.

If I took a nation and made it dirt poor, then took all the doctors and stuck them behind an ox, it would be easy to have "universal" health care, as "health care" would involve saying "you are sick and will die" thousands of time every day. It isn't health care if 40,000,000 people die. It isn't health care if nobody other than the CCP benefits from it. DO YOU GET THAT BB?

Life expectancy rose

This has always been the greatest weakness of the Left. Math. Now, granted, after a period of being run by the Japanese and then civil war I suppose that people were kickin the can quite early in life. But you tell me how, in a nation where 40-60million people died from famine and bullets, how LE would INCREASE? Maybe the guy took a sample of the worst of the civil war and then a sample of middle 80's China. I don't know. But it simply isn't possible that in a nation with famine as widespread as was then, that life was getting longer for anyone other than the CCP. Here, we have a classic case of a "useful idiot" believing the stats of this "masters".

Reminds me of a story. Well, not a story. In Canada, when I was in high school we used a text book about the Soviet Union that used USSR stats as if they were honest. Of course, we now know that soviet stats exaggerated output by, in some cases, more than thousands of percents (yes, 1000's) but that is what we learned. Because people are gullible and dumb.

Mao was a response to the horrors of Japanese occupation. That is true. But he was a LEFT WING COMMUNIST MONSTER. End of story.

thepeel · Joined: 08 Aug 2004

And while I'm still fuming. The "ground for modern China" was laid by a man named deng xiaoping who UNDID the economic aspects of Maoism and laid the groundwork for Capitalist development.

Privateer · Joined: 31 Aug 2005 Location: Easy Street.

I don't know much about Mao but he was the one who had all the collective farms in all of China smelt their own iron to make their own tools...only using processes that produced nothing but worthless scrap. Quite apart from those killed by his crimes, millions starved as a result of mind-boggling incompetence. (Of course, that's why he was no longer at the helm after that...)

Then there was his protege Pol Pot who forced everyone out of the cities and into the countryside to work on digging irrigation ditches and rice-fields that were supposed to feed everyone but...guess what? They didn't know what they were doing. Millions starved again.

And you have to wonder why so many rice terraces collapsed in North Korea. Nobody knew how to build a rice terrace that wouldn't collapse? Nobody was able to find someone who knew? (And this in a country where engineers were able to work out how to build tractors by disassembling a single working model)

It's stupid of course to build an iron smelting furnace (or an irrigation ditch or a rice terrace) that doesn't work. But stupid is too small a word for someone without the nous to check that something f****** well works before they embark on a program across an entire country. Insanity.

thepeel · Joined: 08 Aug 2004

[quote="Privateer"]I don't know much about Mao but he was the one who had all the collective farms in all of China smelt their own iron to make their own tools...only using processes that produced nothing but worthless scrap. Quite apart from those killed by his crimes, millions starved as a result of mind-boggling incompetence. (Of course, that's why he was no longer at the helm after that...)

In fact, sometimes they were using iron to make iron. As in, melting down existing iron and then molding new iron and presenting it to the communist thugs as "output". And the Western Left gobbles up this crap with glee.

jaganath69 · Joined: 17 Jul 2003