From Tianya:
Today! Just today! Make us forever remember this humiliating day! An incredible scene at the “Window of the World” in Changsha, Hunan, where a young girl climbed atop Chairman Mao’s shoulders to take a photograph. The broad masses were angrily indignant and condemned this. Amongst them was an ordinary commoner who said: “Too shameful, actually climbing on top of Chairman Mao’s head to take a picture!”
Comments from Tianya:
wert2005:
Why doesn’t God let people make a statue of him? Because he cannot guarantee every person’s loyalty/respect! I suggest erecting statues be forbidden in the future.
牛魔王008:
This is no big deal…just think of her being on her grandfather’s shoulders!
wuzheng00:
Post-90s generation behavior, so shameless, so disrespectful.
span:
Mao Zedong was always the people’s son, and he advocated serving the people his entire life. An ordinary girl willing to climb on his statue to take a picture is a little improper, but I believe Mao Zedong’s soul in heaven will be extremely happy, as it is serving the people.
janos000:
This kind of behavior at least is disrespectful to our predecessors.
I cannot believe there are actually people speaking for this girl.
被老鼠伤害的猫:
It is a result of society progressing. If we went back to the 60-70s, she would definitely have been shot!!!
tendao_hk:
So ridiculous, even this is considered “national humiliation”?
The Great Famine in the 3 years after the Great Leap Forward where millions of people died, that isn’t considered national humiliation?
The 10 years of chaos [Cultural Revolution], the national economy went backwards decades, the people were destitute, that isn’t considered national humiliation?
The Tangshan Earthquake, we saw with our own eyes over 100,000 people die, yet he refused other country’s help, that isn’t considered national humiliation?
All of you “worthy progeny,” save your breath.
V江湖美眉V:
I support the “lou zhu.” As the statue of the New China’s leader, it should receive the protection it deserves! Moreover, that girl went too far!
szcao2002:
There are many different ways of showing one’s love, so there really is nothing to debate about.
I respect Chairman Mao.
huahuadada:
If this were the Cultural Revolution, I bet this girl would no longer be alive!
If this were North Korea, the great North Koreans would have chopped her into meat paste!
In China, a bunch of xxx say to kill!
If in America someone were to do this to Washington, how would their people react!
寒冰星星:
What he [Mao] loved most was women riding/getting on him…
月亮上乘凉:
I most despise this kind of people, climbing onto any statue they see, not the least bit cherishing public property.
The park we have here has statues for the 12 signs of the zodiac, and everyday they too have people climbing on them. Now some are missing arms and legs.
射完就换:
Then what about those who use money with Grandpa Mao’s head printed on them to go buy groceries, use the toilet, even to go whoring, what crime should they be accused of?
Qgosip:
Isn’t it a very intimate/close thing to take pictures while on top of Grandpa Mao’s body?
How come so many Chinese people like to think of it is being…shameful?
老鼠甜言蜜语:
We cannot blame a little kid. Moreover, he [Mao] was once a person, and according to Chinese people’s thinking, he has already become a ghost. Think of when he was in power, only he alone was able to eat enough to be full while the rest of the people were so hungry yet could not even say they were hungry. That present society is so messy has also to do with him, no morals or legal system. We are ordinary people, no money to spend, no food to eat, and no matter what, that is a statue, no big deal. Do not use Cultural Revolution thinking to look at the world.
冲浪滴蜗牛:
Maybe it is I who have been brainwashed too severely.
Maybe it is because society now is too lenient.
But I still feel angry.
Uncontrollably angry.
Chairman Mao is someone I respect, so I believe that girl doing that really hurts my feelings.
It is just like “fensi” seeing their idol being insulted (maybe this analogy is unreasonable).
Even if you believe Chairman Mao is not worth your respect,
I still ask that you please respect those of us who do respect Chairman Mao,
because to me,
that stone is not just stone.
lijiandiri:
I truly feel sad that someone who sacrificed his entire family of 6 people for the people has his post-death statue climbed on be a mental retard. Even more sad and upsetting is that there are even more mental retards actually saying it is good!
自己为难自己:
Seeing this many people replying above, their responses so awful, it makes me suspect humanity. [They are] simply worse than animals.
Those professional Mao-haters, give it a rest, okay? Your souls are too dark and too ugly. You guys are just like mice, like ghosts, only able to stay in the dark corners and make disgusting noises, an entire lifetime staying only in the dark. Compared to you guys, that ignorant girl is nothing much! I will pray my entire life that God will give you the most vicious curse, so that you will spend your entire life as a ghost and not a person.
大国崛起2009:
I strongly suggest the Public Security Burean give these two people the death penalty as counter-revolutionaries! They have deeply hurt all of China’s 1.4 billion people’s feelings. If they are not killed, it will not be enough to calm the public’s anger! If they are not killed, it will not be enough to put right the people’s feelings!
And for those people who insult Chairman Mao, have you ever thought how you could have been born without Chairman Mao? Without Chairman Mao, could you have gone to school? Without Chairman Mao, could you be able to afford a computer? Without Chairman Mao, could you be here freely expressing your views?
Think about what it was like when the KMT/Nationalists were in power and how many people with lofty ideals were convicted by the authorities for their statements, dying violent deaths? How many patriotic stutents were brutally surpressed by the authorities, their blood spilled on the streets? How many of the ordinary common people’s food supply was appropriated, with them starving to death? And also how much of our wealth was stolen by corrupt officials, all squandered?! Today’s wonderful life, are we not to cherish it?
Some translated comments about this topic by Chinese netizens on NetEase are available at Global Voices Online.
See also:
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First…
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
Mao supports the people.
The Chairman supports the people.
Sorry for double-posting. Really slow connection…
Curse you ‘The Grudge’ for pipping me.
wow, looks like I am the first here!
Well, I am kind of a fan of Chairman Mao. You can easily condemn what he has done wrong in the culture revolution. But I will still rate him as the greatest Chinese during the last 200 years because of his ambition, perseverance, fantasy poems, beautiful handwriting and motive to encourage all Chinese. I still believe all top Chinese leaders wanted to build a strong China after hundreds of years of foreign invasion and colonization.
Anyway, I really don’t care if the girl climbs on the statute. Think in this way, if you don’t like a person, would you climb on his statute and take pics?
Another funny reply I found
holycrap, where are the agents/commarades from the China security office? So many spies from Taiwan here!
Shut the door and unleash the dogs!
作者：LDL998 回复日期：2009-02-20 15:54:30
国家安全部的同志哪里去了，国民党特务都在这里啊！
来人啊！关门，放狗！！！
The fans/agents of CCP(China) and the fans/agents of Democracy(Taiwan/US) both suck.
作者：小分队v 回复日期：2009-02-20 16:28:21
wt素质一代不如一代 jy水平一年不如一年啊 感慨下
Tianya is now occupied by foreign agents…
作者：愚民拍案 回复日期：2009-02-20 16:31:17
天涯被境内外敌对势力渗透了??
There are lots of posts using dirty words to assult mao, you can use google translate to view them
The whole “humiliation” meme is so tired.
For the record, I would let her climb my statue.
The collective case of Stockholm Syndrome is a wonder to behold isn’t it?
Well said…
No matter how people evaluate Mao in history, climbing onto shoulder of a status to make a pose for a photo is uncivilized. It’s not quite different from pissing in public.
Which happens all the time.
tendao_hk nailed it with the comment: “So ridiculous, even this is considered “national humiliation”?” and then pointing out the famine that follwed the Great Leap and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. I suppose it’s not surprising that this sort of comment comes from someone with “hk” in their name… I’d be even more impressed to see a comment like this from a mainlander (though I suppose the 90’s generation doesn’t really know very much about the bad parts of those periods… or they think it is “anti-China” propaganda)
Oh mercy meee… the humiliation!!!!
As a kid I rode on my fathers shoulders…and when I have a child I hope to do the same. Should I ever have a statue made of me, please put your kids on my shoulders, put your girlfriends on my face and take all the damn pictures you want!
The hope lies in the fact that some Chinese are blatantly honest and objective, even in the face of their conditioning (brain rinse).
It’s only a statue for crying out loud!
She can sit om my shoulders ( or face ) any time she wants to !!
She’s a babe !
when a little girl sits on you, it means she loves you. nuff said.
Alot of these people don’t have a clue about what this statue is or where it is. It’s not one of the monumental revolutionary public sculptures in some square or martyr’s park, it’s a replica, it’s new, it’s commercial, it’s in an amusement park!
One of the Chinese posters asked what would happen if this happened to a statue of Washington. If it was a public statue, a work of art, the security would likely be too tight and if it did happen, the person might even be arrested. If it was a replica sculpture in an amusement park, the staff would stop her, ask her to get down, that simple. People would think she’s an idiot but that’s it.
On a side note, one can’t compare Washington and Mao. Mao Zedong was a brilliant leader, a maniacal dictator, socialist revolutionary, and perverted old man whose mistakes cost millions of lives. George Washington was a brilliant leader, successful farmer, and reluctant president, who never killed his rivals, destroyed centuries of culture, or f-d things up in general like Mao eventually did.
@ Mike
well said, i totally second the comparison of Mao and Washington as your response tot hat Chinese poster.
Im sure I’m going to get flamed by some for saying well Washington wasn’t a good person also he did this, he did that, and rightfully so you are. In the end however Washington killed less of his people in comparison to Mao
I totally agree with you. Nicely put.
“George Washington was a brilliant leader, successful farmer, and reluctant president, who never killed his rivals, destroyed centuries of culture, or f-d things up in general like Mao eventually did.”
You need a good text on French and Indian War, and Indian policies (including those that sided with the Americans) during early days of the United States (including Washington administration)
Ahem… If you want to bring that into the picture then China is just as guilty if not more.
We Americans still have a fairy tale view of our founding, even if every one of us goes through a school that lays out a more realistic history. Its just peoples nature. However when i see the Chinese or Russians struggling to venerate Mao or Stalin it makes me realize how lucky we are. We get to venerate our founders without some very horrible stain to work around and with their foundations still standing and ideals still shared.
You’re joking right? They endorse a document and declaration to give freedom to every man but they all owned slaves. Until after MLK did the constitution become fully recognized.
stalin had over 6 million people murdered. the rest of the world (including china still to this day) practiced slavery. we were at the forefront of religious and political freedom. our transgressions have been minor compared with those of other nations.
Your transgressions are ‘minor’ if you read whitewashed history books. Toppling elected democracies in South America affected millions of lives, when was the last time any American learned how many Filipinos were killed when you colonized them? How about using chemical weapons such as agent orange in Korea and Vietnam that leave babies born deformed to this generation. Hardly minor transgressions.
Yeah, but Americans also know about this. They generally know America’s history when it comes to Native Americans, blacks, and other minorities.
@ Mike
Couldn’t agree more.
@ Interested Party
Dude, check out the latter of Jung Chang’s books and get a clue.
you can take the girl out of the country
but you can’t take the country
out of the girl
Mao would be happy to be SO close to A YOUNG GIRLS THIGHS ONCE AGAIN
I like the boots. They look real.
Fauna only translated pro-mao posts out of over 1000.
Then you can translate some for us…
I do not think I only translate “pro-Mao” comments. There are many anti-Mao comments above also.
Also, I am not going to read and translate 1000+ comments. I am not that crazy.
weedgirl wants more pro-mao posts so she can make her comments.
I think that people need to stop being so nationalistic. Get over it and start living your life. Look to the future, not the past. He is not one to be revered at all. Remember the good things he did as well as the bad things. Many bad things.
I think as long as political culture is played up by people, governments, whomever; nationalism is definitely not going away. Chinese nationalism is a brewing pot that although limited is expanding geometrically everyday.
Can I climb on the lincoln memorial and take some fotoz?
I vaguely remember someone of fame waking up after a right pisser in Lincolns lap in a movie or somewhere else.
It’s more a question of why would someone climb onto ANY sculpture? It’s just crude public behavior. If it was a real work of art, the artist would certainly be pissed off.
大国崛起2009 — Is this guy being sarcastic?!
Mao got off lucky, in the UK he would have had to settle for a traffic cone. But then again, the UK doesn’t erect statues to people that waste its own people!
Just statues of people that would easily have been tried for crimes against humanity considering the shit that those British heroes pulled off.
disrespectful? Doesn’t anyone remember how many people died under mao’s great leap forward? How much hardship people had and how many families were torn apart?
People today don’t follow Mao’s teaching’s, it’s all about money and economic power nowadays, in a communist country where all should be equal, many are more equal than others!
who seriously gives a crap? it is the girl being just a bit of a weirdo climbing on a statue. nothing to do with mao zhedong
let me conclude this matter for you, all of you, listen up:
when a little one fears you, he or she stays away from you.
Mao is China’s great leaders, we all respect him.
I admit that China’s education in certain areas are not in place of.
Such a thing happened, we are also very sad.
However, as a country with a population of 1.3 billion, and we are working to improve.
Post-90
I wish people wouldn’t rag on Fauna. She has created one of the best, most popular China News blogs and the people who criticize couldn’t do any better and probably couldn’t translate their way out of a wet paper sack!
I think Fauna is awesome!!
If Chinese people think this is a big deal, then this is. If they think it’s humiliation or whatnot, then it is. It’s their own country/culture and they can decide how to react to everything in their own way. I would hate it if people try to synchronize everything with foreign worlds and looking to them to see how to react. That would only show lack of confidence and inability to make their own decision.
Also, whether or not Mao was a good leader play doesn’t matter. This is an act of disrespecting big part of Chinese history. Mao was a great figure and shaped modern China. He did more than anyone at redefining China.
Well said, but in reality I find most Chinese are obsessed with comparison, especially with western world. And as you said, that exhibits unconfidence and insecurity in their moral underpinning.
But I don’t agree with your second paragraph, what shaped the modern China is the historical reform, not Mao.
You can say that Mao laid out the foundation, but the actual “shaping” took place as a result of the reform.
Its hard to see whether she is a supporter or a critic :)
Turnabout is fair play – Mao climbed on enough young Chinese women, particularly from the PLA dance troupes, over the years, the mucky old bugger.
I noticed she dresses better than shopgirl, for probably less than 1% of the cost, she should be features in her fashion blog.
Fl1999: You and I are finished!
wow shopgirl iz da saixay.
She can climb on me anytime.
Everybody chill…. it’s in an AMUSEMENT PARK!!! This is AMUSING, not insulting.
Oh and Shopgirl is f-n hot!
Mao is still so respected in china?
And why do these chinese netizens think that girl should give a damn about their feelings? Stop trying to play the victim card, its pathetic.
To the guy who asked what americans would do if someone climbed on washington, I suspect most would not give a shit.
i would definitely not give a shit.
It’s funny to see how many Chinese people assume that the rest of the world thinks like them!
Like if something makes them angry (and a lot of things seem to make them angry) they assume that people in other countries would have the exact same reaction.
I don’t think the chick means any harm or insult to HUMP mzd on the shoulders.
Its the old timers who can’t climb or are jealous that MZD can still attracts pretty lass.
I would climb on that man’s lap anyday. He is a genius strategist with a sense of humor.
Washington holds no flame to Mao. Washington ignorantly advised us to avoid war with other countries. Mao knew better and became prepared.
Mao Zedong was a douchebag. He ruined China worse than any foreign power could.
i get pissed and take photos of me scrweing a statue aall over chinba.
wots wrong with these gooks?
@Mao
Mao was a strategist. I would not call him a great strategist but he did get his strategy right when he knew that to take over the country, he’d got to get the masses on his side. And at that time, most of the Chinese were peasants.
After he came to power, he had no idea how to run the country. The older generation of peasants are still mesmerised by his slogans of equality and what not, and even while millions died and multi-millions were living in abject poverty, he was and still worshipped.
It was Deng Xiaoping who saved China with his visionary leadership. Had Deng been like Mao, China would not be what she is today, and there will be no chinasmack.
The only good thing I can say about Mao, after seeing his photos, taken when he was young, is that he was actually quite handsome. That is WHY this lass decided to sit on yeye’s shoulders. I bet she wouldn’t mind marrying him even if he were not Chairman Mao but just Mr Mao.
China still manages to come save my day when Muslim women wish to rule my brain. I think China was on to advanced scientific concepts early on. (string theory?)
And yeah, running and hiding may not be considered the best strategy in the world but saving your friends from a veil is noble.
I wish capitalist pigs would come to some sort of agreement with maoist pigs.
She looks young for her Mrs. degree…
China was scientifically advanced in some lofty aspects, like making rockets, but very backward in basic day to day things. It was not until after Deng opened up the economy that real transfer of technology (and modern business management)came about. In SOEs where everything is centrally planned, well…forget about private enterprise, being an entrepreneur, human resource management, blah blah blah.
Anyway, the girl is too young for Mao in his later years, even the ’statue’ looks older than her. But she would definetly marry Mao in his much younger days. I am sure of it. Why else did she get so close to him (even if it’s only a statue)? hehe.
China is a fucking backward country, that will crumble into dust once the water dry up and the glacier can’t provide water to the yellow (muddy and radioactive) river. How funny it is, to see the gov in this country, creating mantras about “sustainable development”, when they rape the environment for profit and jeopardize the future of their own people.
There’s no hope for this country. How the fuck do you think they will elevate 1.3 billion peoples to North American standards? It WON’T happen. The earth can’t take it. It will end up in pathetic wars over land and resources. China is a fucking cancer that needs to be controlled and eradicated. Last runner in the race as we say, it could have been another country, but sadly it is China.
This place is fucking doomed. 10-20 years max. China will go down, as fast as it rose.
I love Chinese people, but they are doomed to failure (as the CCP likes to remember the world with their catchy Chinglish pseudo mantras).
NO
HOPE
FAILURE TO RISE
And remember how Clinton just came here, to sell you snake oil and ask the “kind” Chinese people to support the evil empire. It’s all a fucking joke. The US don’t give A SHIT about China, not an Iota of consideration. Loot and run. The hypocrisy campaign goes on and on. Selling hope to the world. In exchange of your soul and your very own future.
@Mao’s Princess
Advanced scientific concepts I don’t know about, but take a look at the Great Leap Forward and try to argue that China was “on to” basic scientific concepts.
Mao’s failure was because he thought a country was to be “managed” like raising a child, so he liked to issue directives from his vision then sit there and hope everything would work out as he expected. And these directives were often laughable fantasies that exerted huge burden on the society.
He probably never realized, not even in his later years, that the true power of society comes from division of labor and economic liberalization, that a government shall act only as a regulative entity and grant its citizens full freedom to create wealth under rule of law, with social justice.
And luckily, the current government completely understands this crucial factor, evidenced from its report to congress. Despite overwhelming corruption and inefficiencies, China is for the first time on the right track of a sustainable society.
and it’s poignant if you think about it, 5000 years of struggles, wars, poverty, starvation, we have finally come to embrace the simply truth.
VIVA THE CHINESE PEOPLE.
Mao is a big lesson for china, it is a disaster for one person can have such strong power.
Mao deserves this，fuck him！！！He is a killer!!!fuck!!!
@ surprise
I agree with 99% of what you said. But I don’t think China will go belly up in 10-20 years. China has learned its lesson, and she saw how the USSR imploded, so the Chinese government is treading very carefully. I read some serious journals which said that China will overtake Japan and the number one economy in Europe – and that’s Germany – by the year 2040. And India too.
Of course, that’s up to you or anyone to believe or not. I was reading a few days ago some US newpapers dated “1968″ and they were writing about what life would be like 40 years on ie. in the year 2008. At that time, the writing seemed realistic, but now with the benefit of hindsight, I found it to be the most idiotic science fiction I had ever read.
The way I see it, China is adopting a free market system within a socialist system, and PeterYang described it best when he wrote:
“that the true power of society comes from division of labor and economic liberalization, that a government shall act only as a regulative entity and grant its citizens full freedom to create wealth under rule of law, with social justice.”
Just to digress a little…If China allowed multi-party system – at least for now – she will have a problem 1,000 times worse than the recent Bangkok airport news. There is no way for China to allow every 同志 to have the freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of….whatever whatever.
Instead of following the western model, she decided to follow aspects of the Singaporean model, a free and open economy, with fiscal incentives for foreign investments, but mind you, with a very paternalistic government which plans everything for its people from cradle to grave. Sorry to hurt the feelings of western democracies who may think that only THEY are right about how governments should be organised and run, but China thinks otherwise. She prefers to learn from a successful Asian model.
smickno, I agree with what you say in the first 60% of your comment. In fact, I think China actually already surpassed Germany as the #3 economic power in the world. Next up would be #2 Japan and then #1 America. It’ll take awhile.
LoL about the 1968 stuff, that’s very true.
As for your digression, I’ve heard the China-Singapore comparison before, but it is a rather dubious given the differences in sheer size and complexity. While I think China would like to take a few lessons from Singapore, I don’t think China is actively following “the Singapore model.” What works for Singapore just won’t work for China, and the rampant corruption in China is just the easiest reminder of that.
Like many others, I actually do not believe China’s government is following any one model or has a model of its own at all. I think they (China’s leaders/government) are more or less stumbling their way through, responding as best they can to problems as they crop up.
Also keep in mind that it is pretty vogue to argue that China’s economic development is rather reminiscent of America in the past, as opposed to little Singapore.
Singapore IS a successful Asian country, but China is not Singapore and I think China knows that well enough not to be emulating Singapore with any serious hopes of achieving similar results. Western democracy advocates do have their panties in a bunch because China refuses to listen to them, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say China “chose” to “follow” Singapore. What do you think?
I agree that multi-party for China right now is impractical, and could lead to civil war between political rivalries. That’s why I was catious enought to follow “freedom” by “create wealth”, not “politically organize”.
As for Singapore, China DID want to borrow its model, but it turned out it’s also unrealistic for China because China is a freaking huge country with numerous complicated and entangling issues and the CCP, unlike People’s Action Party, cannot rid corruptions and be proactive in leading the economy and society. To be more specific, I believe CCP’s top leaders know what they are doing but the local governments who are supposed to get the job done, do not.
Therefore size of a nation is a decisive factor in its ability to maintain a stable system, because it’s MUCH easier to reach consensus amongst a very small number of population. That should explain why Taiwan and Japan could copy the western democracy without too much hassle.
and as for Surprise’s claim of China drying up, sorry it aint gona happen. In fact I don’t think the Chinese government wants everyone to be on par with American or European standard of living, and when it’s about to reach the threshold of blowing up, a natural force will come into play to reset everything, e.g. starvation, epidemics outbreak, wars… and then people will start all over agin.
And who know what the future holds for China, and the world, a metoer might fall tomorrow and erase us all, save the efforts of civilization.
smickmo, I think China under Deng would have adopted their current model of government, regardless of the advice given to them by other government leaders. With due respect, there are many who would NOT regard the Singaporean model of government as being either successful or sustainable. The Singaporean model can be attributed to the vision and force of will of just one man – Lee Kuan Yew. As with Mao, another paternalistic despot, that model will change with his passing.
I think it was JK Galbraith who pointed out that democracy is an inevitable consequence of rising living standards. Despots of any persuasion, paternalistic or otherwise, would be well advised to heed this advice.
@Kai, Peter, pervert.
All of you are right and wrong. The 改革开放 was a result of Deng’s visit to Singapore after he saw how a small country with a predominantly Chinese immigrant population succeeded with a modified British Westminster Parliamentary System operating under the iron rule of Lee Kuan Yew. From pictures of Singapore taken in the 1920s, Deng had expected to see a very 4th world city much like one of those most undeveloped small towns in China. But after his visit, he was nothing but all praises for Singapore.
In the years that followed, he got various officials to go to Singapore to study her system, and to see what could be adopted. Not all of what Singapore was/is doing
can be applied as you rightly pointed out: things like the sheer size of China’s population, the problem of getting a vast number to people to come to a consensus, and so and so forth.
Still, Deng was not going to adopt the American system, never mind that he knew China would undergo SOME of what the US went through before, when you are dealing with a large population of people. As to whether the Chinese government from Deng to now has got any kind of model of government at all, or if they are actually groping their way through (feeling the stones to cross the river as Deng said), we’ll never know. We can only guess that they do have, but also face huge problems in implementation/execution.
Personally, I think that the Beijing government really and clearly wants to do the right thing for the Chinese people. I don’t think Wen Jiaobao is just a nice grandfatherly face put up there for public relations purposes, but that he and the rest really cared for his people. The problems lie with the less than stellar and often corrupt government officials at the provincial/municipal levels. As the Chinese say, the Emperor is far away and there are high mountains shielding us, so we can ….well, I can write all I want because I am now far away from the Emperor. 你奈我何？.
smickno/troll is from Singapore. Maybe that is why he thinks China is copy Singapore. He sound like some Americans who think all good things are copy from them.
I think also quite a few Chinese think everything good in the world came from China and everything bad came from somewhere else.
I get that impression too.
@pervett
This one is especially for you.
Deng was just as paternalistic as Mao, and he definitely intended to remain so. He would over his dead body not adopt the western two party, or multi party system.
But he knew that China had to open up, and thought Singapore with her paternalistic leader, using a free and open market system, would make for an instructive case study. At that time, Singapore was what Deng wanted: remain paternalistic, rule with an iron fist, open China up to foreign investments.
I am not sure if the Singapore system will crash after Lee, but they are saying that they are getting/got the system insitutionalised, like in the US, rather than depending on any one person.
please no more Singapore,
economy……everything is about money….there is no way out
if china really wants to win the world’s respect. i am sure it wont be the cheap clothes and low paid workers, it is his own unique culture.
but thanks Mao there are not so much left…..
thaks smick for the history, I didn’t know it until now.
No Chinese leaders have been willing to give up the CCP rule, stability is one thing but more importantly, a vast vested interests prohibits him to do so.
One problem though, with China’s authoritarianism, is that it suppresses innovation. From my observation, the more educated and free-thinking a person is, the more likely he or she will be critical of the political system, and vice versa. This is what I call an “entangling” issue because I see no way out.
smickmo, Deng was more pragmatist than a paternal figure. Not for him the personality cult espoused by Mao and other socialist leaders. Deng couldn’t give a stuff what people thought of him. He was result driven and he was prepared to sacrifice principle (in other cases, a whole lot more) to achieve his goals.
Having read LKY’s autobiography, I remain a little skeptical of the his claimed influence over Chinese leadership. No doubt Deng would have been more than a little intrigued at the prospect of a predominantly Chinese city-state doing relatively well in hostile region. He may have been impressed by the outward results of economic liberalisation. But to think that tiny Singapore served as some sort of model for the government of China – that would have taken things too far. Deng would only do things HIS way.
As for Singapore’s political future, that would be an interesting topic for discussion in its own right.
Going back to the main topic, I find it refreshing that younger Chinese treat Mao with a little irreverence. I don’t think climbing all over his statue in a theme park amounts to total disrespect. Now, if they could only do something about that huge portrait of Mao at the entrance to the Forbidden City. That place has seen far too many emperors ….
@Fauna
You jumped to conclusion and said I am from Singapore, simply because I wrote something about China learning from Singapore. Oh my god! And recently, you must have assumed that I was another guy attacking Kai telling him (he thinks)he was too smart…until I clarified that I am me and that fellow came out to make peace with Kai. If I were that fellow, I would have continued to troll Kai because THAT is smickno.
My work takes me places and you will never find out where I come from, chimate. Good try. By the way, I know your real identity and where you are located, eh. But I shan’t reveal it here since I have better sense of professional ethics than you, who abused an implied fiduciary duty that you owe to everyone here to not divulge any information about commenter’s particulars.
@Fangyao
You are right to say that a country’s attractiveness comes from its culture, at least to those people who go there for holidays. For example, I went to Cambodia and Vietnam recently precisely because I wanted to have a first hand experience of what I read about in the internet.
I know some trolls will say China is attractive because a lot of its women are good for fucking, but that’s another story.
But the reality in China is that the society is now controlled by money. In 10 years, Mao deculturated the people. Following that was the post 1980 generation， in particular those living in the big cities, which are like strawberries, easily fractured and unable to 吃苦。
I don’t where you are from.The only thing thing I wanna say women in your place are good to score too.
I’m guessing, just maybe, she gets reports about IP address.
Chinese people are like mushrooms,keep them in the dark, make them feel warm and feed them tons of Sh**. Of course the place has developed amazingly, it was amazingly backward in the first place, its all relative.
The latest is that they are moaning about two little bronze heads taken from some statues when the “evil foreigners” burned the palace of people that had their population in rags with zero way up, kinda like today isn’t it?
Well here’s some BIG NEWS, very many innocent women and children (including tens of thousands of Chinese) were butchered during the boxer rebellion by uneducated thugs, the foreign legation was besieged and again people murdered, your people killed tiny children, you must be so proud! wow what a civilized history ye have.
So don’t cry or winge about statue heads and minor shit like people climbing on the satutes of butchers.
Don’t forget, Chinese isn’t a race, its a nationality and your history books are less than one fifth of those being read around the world, therefore the majority of the planet know what your people do and how you are afraid of those that do it.
Funny national anthem “we aren’t slaves” yada yada, oh yes you are and the sad thing is, you don’t even know it.
I honestly don’t see what all the fuss is over. If I saw someone, even a Chinese person, climb onto the Lincoln memorial I’d be more worried that they would get hurt than about any “disrespect” to the statue. Granted, I myself would never climb statues like that, but whatever.
And I like Lincoln a lot more than I like Mao.
To Surprise,
In your post, you have a assumption that the living standard of US people will be kept forever, which is not very practical. Once the US’s economic declines, your living standard will start to fall as well.
So if US’s living standard falls by 50% and China’s living standard increases by 50%, then there might be enough resource for us to enjoy a more fair world.
Levono, why would you think China’s rise would be accompanied by a fall elsewhere? How is has worked so far is that the developed world experiences very slow growth and the developing world experiences very fast growth. Economist would forecast that sort of growth for China but they wouldn’t forecast it the other way around. Some sort of disaster like that would only severely slow down China’s rise.
I don’t think he’s trying to say it HAS to be accompanied by a fall elsewhere but such an economic scenario is not unheard of.
For example, the Chinese government has been suppressing China’s consumer purchasing power (and thus living standards) for a long time now. It has done so in part through a monetary policy designed to encourage economic growth through an export manufacturing economy. This export manufacturng economy has thus far generated jobs for China’s mass of unskilled laborers, and it is critically important for domestic social and political stability that China’s massive population be employed. The overall stability of the nation is valued as more important by the government than the average living standards of the domestic population.
However, the current economic crisis (really, a necessary readjustment as Peteryang says below) has resulted in reduced foreign demand for China. Americans, long the “consumer of last resort” for the world, are now unable to consume as much as they once did. This, in turn, affects China’s export economy. That’s why so many Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Korean factories that used to produce low-value goods are shuttering and laying off millions of Chinese workers, which is not good for the Chinese government in terms of maintaining social stability.
So, the Chinese government is now trying to stimulate domestic demand to replace lost foreign demand by promoting domestic consumption. This is done in a desperate hope that it will save jobs for many failing manufacturing industries. A by-product of doing this will be a rise in the living standards of the domestic population. Of course, the gap between Chinese living standards and American or European living standards is still huge, but it is definitely conceivable that this current crisis will bring the two at least a bit closer together if Chinese living standards rise faster than foreign living standards that are either dropping or at least rising less quickly than before.
If I interpreted your comment correctly, I think you agree that rates of growth will change relatively between countries, but you just don’t think economists would predict falling growth or (heh) “negative growth” for a country, right? I dunno, I’ve heard a lot of gloomy predictions that Americans will experience a painful drop in the living standards they once afforded through the bubble.
Finally, I do not think “some sort of disaster like that” would ONLY severely slow down CHINA’s rise. It really depends on the specifics of that disaster and how each country is affected and equipped to deal with it. We cannot discount factors such as China possessing a lot of money and the possibly untapped potential of its huge domestic market. It may have previously chosen to grow through export, but it doesn’t mean China can only grow through export and is thus at the complete mercy of foreign demand. What do you think?
there has to be a large-scale war to reduce a nation’s strength by 50%, but in that case, perhaps every nation will suffer.
this is the real world, not some science fiction, and the crisis is right now at its worst, yet we only see some people laid off and banks nationalized and that’s it. I’ve never considered the crisis a big deal, not for China, not for the world.
and ya know what, the crisis is actually a good thing, it drives the civilization toward a more secure future in terms of economy, it’s a lesson we have to learn sooner or later, from the point of grand history, it’s the inevitable turning point.
Hehe,, what’s the fuss all about? Mao was a questionable character for sure,, he did good but jeez did he also do terrible things. In my country Japanese and Chinese tourists regularly climb all over our statue of The Little Mermaid (Xiao Mei Ren Yu I think in Chinese) to get the best photo. I would have loved to see what would happen if a laowai had climbed onto Mao shoulders.
Too Yellow… if I had just written “didn’t destroy centuries of European American culture” I would still have been correct. Washington was not a powerful leader during the French and Indian Wars, just a Captain I believe. So, even though he was certainly part of persecuting and killing native Americans and destroying their culture, a very small part, he had little or nothing to do with the creation of Indian policy or the direction of war at that time. Later when he became prez, now that’s a different story. However, this argument fails in that to the New Americans, the Native Americans were like citizens of another country, if they were even considered full-fledged people at all, not really citizens of the United States. So, I think the comparison trivializes both… just as those arguments comparing Mao to Hitler do.
omg… your jumps from Washington to the Vietnam war are amazing. Why not be talking about Qinshihuang and jump to Jiang Jieshi according to your logic?
I am Chinese and I studdied Chinese history for a long time…
Mao was responsible for more than 70 million of his own people, more than Hitler, Napoleon and Pol Pot put together…
Mao was a primal illiterate peasant driven by blood, vice and greed, with no sense of social values. Like any despicable tyrants, he was a murderer and sent millions of people to the frontline only to forward and serve his own deviant ambitions. He killed his own under the cover of the so-called “bamboo curtain” to hide the genocide of his brothers and sisters.
He brought nothing good to our beautiful country except devastation, misery, poverty, famines and filled our rivers with Chinese blood.
There is absolutely nothing laudable in Mao’s life, writtings, ethics and political views. There is absolutely nothing to be praised and be proud of. He is a shame in our thousand’s of years history.
Mao should not be sat on; he should be shat on.
Ahh, Joe I wish more Chinese people thought like you.
I think you’d make a better chairman than Mao.
… Mao was responsible for more than 70 million of his own people, more than Hitler, Napoleon and Pol Pot put together…
… Mao was responsible for the death of more than 70 million of his own people, more than Hitler, Napoleon and Pol Pot put together…
He definetly gets the GOLD medal.
i thought it was changsha and it really was. keep up the good work, i like the site
Chairman Mao’s shoulders are big, he can handle her.
I can see how some can be up-set, but wasn’t it
Mao the one who liked women to the point of death?
It will be interesting when Woman’s rights start
to surface in grater China. “All we need is love …”
will be there slogan and song. It is interesting
that America needs China in this time period.
China will need America soon if there children have
anything to say about it. I wish for stronger ties,
there is so much to be exchanged at a people to
people level.
Harold P.
Mojave CA. USA
i’m sure the real mao would have loved it
Ha Ha.. Awesome!!
1st reaction = I want to make love to that girl.
He deserve that.