China - A Titanic heading towards its Iceberg?

[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by Heibges

Or maybe folks just want to feel "great".

You could say the same thing about Stalin in Russia. After 60 years of programmed "De-Stalinization", he is more popular than ever.

Fact of the matter is that Mao got Westerners out of China, and that goes a long way.

Look at India. They would much rather build weapons than feed their own people.

You could even say folks feel much the same about Reagan. He moved all our jobs overseas, and killed the family farm, but he made America feel "great".

You have to wonder what the Germans really feel about Hitler?

I think that you make an error is considering Mao, Stalin, and Hitler all as equivalent. True they were all tyrants of the 20th Century but Hitler is not a national figure that is celebrated and sold in memorabilia and Stalin is regarded in a different way that Mao. China is the only nation of the three that still encorporates the cult of personality for Mao into its mandatory culture for all citizens. The practises of indoctrination are still present and he is regarded as a hero for the people. Now you can make whatever claims about the ruthless efficiency of Stalin but peope still recognize his true colours. The general feeling of Mao I get from delusional Chinese people is that he never did anything wrong. It was not that I denied he didn't do anything good that sent that girl running, it was the mountain of bad that I accused him of that she couldn't even contemplate. These three leaders were blurred together in our own propogandistic attempts to rally nationalism in our fights against them. But the reality is that they are all three distinct cultures and three distinct leaders that share only a timeframe with one another.

In the other thread about Hiroshima we talk about the good and evil of the decisions that the leaders made and how we understand the the difficulty of it. There is no grey in Mao's following. He is a clear cut demi-god figure and you don't question it. This isn't affection out of reason but a learned passion that isn't rational and is instinctually embedded in childhood far beyond recollection.

Thats my attempt at sounding like a Poli sci/sociology major.

[Heibges]

I agree about the cult of personality in China. Whether Mao happens to be in or out of favor, he is the founder of the PRC, so they have to build their legitimacy upon him. Much like Stalin first built the Cult of Lenin just so that he could later build the Cult of Stalin upon it. And then you have this wave revisitionist historians trying to say that Lenin was just a swell guy, especially compared to Stalin.

I'm not saying they are the equivalent, just that the types of endeavors they embarked upon made them very popular with their populations, despite other heinous acts they may have committed.

Those guys were popular for many of the same reason George Washington is popular in America.

I know a lot of Chinese folks here in San Francisco, and the scary things I hear from them is not so much that he didn't do anything wrong, but that they don't perceive what he did as wrong. But maybe that's the same thing?

But the idea that if 5 million folks had to die to free China from opium then so be it, is a fairly common opinion amongst Chinese immigrants that I know.

Mao accomplished what the Boxers had been unable to a hundred years before: getting the Westerners out.

This sort of makes him the George Washington of China.

[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by Heibges

This sort of makes him the George Washington of China.

Cept George washington then didn't walk up to Thomas Edison and shoot him in the head while sending the population of Harvard to work in the fields.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by P_Funk

Cept George washington then didn't walk up to Thomas Edison and shoot him in the head while sending the population of Harvard to work in the fields.

Especially since Edison was not born until 1847.

[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

Especially since Edison was not born until 1847.

It was the best I could think of. Give me a good 18th century american inventor then.:p

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by P_Funk

It was the best I could think of. Give me a good 18th century american inventor then.:p

Benjamin Franklin.

[Heibges]

NO, NOT BENJAMIN!

If a leader, is able to expel "the foreigner's", he is most likely to be pretty poplular with his population, was all I meant.

Look at Moses. His legend had lasted 3000 years.

[August]

Originally Posted by P_Funk

Cept George washington then didn't walk up to Thomas Edison and shoot him in the head while sending the population of Harvard to work in the fields.

And Mao didn't voluntarily hand over the reigns of power to an elected sucessor after 8 years like Washington did either.