09 Feb 17
The post that was quoted here has been removed"Although he could be infamously anti-intellectual, Mao Zedong ..."
Quite mixed messages have been given out about this. Obviously, Mao did inflict huge harm on intellectuals, and Chinese society was bereft as a result, a lesson that America will have to learn the hard way. But Mao himself was quite obviously a very proficient intellectual, for example in his appreciation for classical Chinese poetry, which shows in his use of the most astonishing language at times - "Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom" is just not the kind of political language a Republican like Trump or his associates is likely to employ.
One can deplore Mao's political legacy without losing the ability to notice his evident talents. I do not think, though, that the definitive biography of Mao has yet been written - or if it has, I'd like the reference.
With Trump, sadly, one must also deplore his pig ignorance and the wall of gobsmacking nonsense emerging from the White House since his inauguration, as the President of Australia would have confirmed had he existed. Trump's main talent seems to be gaslighting. American voters are not sufficiently good at avoiding its effects. But they will come to be appalled at the damage done in their rejection of intellectuals.
09 Feb 17
Originally posted by finneganI really liked this one:
"Although he could be infamously anti-intellectual, Mao Zedong ..."
Quite mixed messages have been given out about this. Obviously, Mao did inflict huge harm on intellectuals, and Chinese society was bereft as a result, a lesson that America will have to learn the hard way. But Mao himself was quite obviously a very proficient intellectual, for example ...[text shortened]... cts. But they will come to be appalled at the damage done in their rejection of intellectuals.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao:_The_Unknown_Story
Originally posted by AThousandYoungYes I have that book and was very struck by it at the time it came out. It is a shocking read. It takes time to get perspective on a tour de force like that. I used to think it gave me the inside track on the story of Mao. But anyone who knows me will recognise that I like to go for books that challenge what I believe, not books that repeat what I think I know.
I really liked this one:
wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao:_The_Unknown_Story
A number of different books brought me to a more critical response. Of these, one was Chang's book about the Empress Dowager Cixi, in which the extent to which she was distorting the story to make ideological points was tediously transparent. It was as though she had a target market in America and was writing political soft porn for their delight (and their dollars). This is a shame because in both books she had the opportunity to tell terrific stories. Sadly, the American market demands that history be repackaged to suit their prejudices. I just happen to have read so many other, seriously written histories in topics overlapping with the Dowager Cixi story that I was better able to cross reference her claims and reject them. (A recurring theme is how the Americans arrived to bring civilisation to the primitive Chinese. Fancy that! The book is so sensationally uncritical it made me weep with laughter at times. You have to know fkg nothing to take her seriously.)
Meanwhile, other histories are emerging that look far more critically at claims that have been made about modern Chinese history, and amazingly enough (given the wall of propoganda on both sides of the Cold War divide) the reality calls for a far more complex, multi faceted account, in which there is a lot more sense to Chinese policies under Mao than we have been accustomed to recognise.
There is too much of an assumption that China was locked in a world of its own by choice. Just one theme worth giving more attention is the impact on China of the AMERICAN imposed embargo on trade, followed by Nixon's move to start removing that embargo. The extent to which the USA was a major factor in Chinese politics is not sufficiently discussed. It will continue to be the case, and not necessarily for the better.
Look, to an American, this is probably too much to tolerate. They are fragile souls with a very fixed story line to keep under control. So to them, we must either love Mao or hate him. Actually, neither response is of any interest or value. The challenge is to understand history, not to take sides in a numbskull competition.