A Winter Soldier's Tale - WARNING! some graphic video shots - disturbing

[Xavier_Onassis]

If just takeing over is such a great accomplishment, why not admire Napolion and Hitler?

China is not Germany
China is not France
There is a matter of scale involved.

One could certainly admire Hitler's powers of persuasive speech, and Napoleon's subversion of the French Revolution, but neither of them had to defeat a foreign invader and a powerful opposition and unite a country as huge in area and population as China.

[Plane]

If just takeing over is such a great accomplishment, why not admire Napolion and Hitler?

China is not Germany
China is not France
There is a matter of scale involved.

One could certainly admire Hitler's powers of persuasive speech, and Napoleon's subversion of the French Revolution, but neither of them had to defeat a foreign invader and a powerful opposition and unite a country as huge in area and population as China.

I do not admire Hitler , I do not admire Napolion , I do not admire Mao , they are not worthy of the admiration of a common man like me , each one of them had the choice of being a common man and doing much less harm.

There is no point in saying that China is not Germany etc..., unless you mean that China cannot be governed . How does Chinas being huge mitigate Maos bad decisions?

[Xavier_Onassis]

There is no point in saying that China is not Germany etc..., unless you mana that China cannot be governed . How does Chinas being huge mitigate Maos bad decisions?

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It has nothing to do with his bad decisions.
Mao united China, which was never really united, for the very first time.

Napoleon did not face unifying France, nor did Hitler face any serious challenges in uniting Germany.

Before a national government can change a country, it must unify that country to a degree that the government has the power to do so. Mao and Chao Enlai managed to do this. Chiang Kai Shek was unable to unify China to any manageable degree.

If you take the stance that everything that a leader did is bad because the results were bad, then you will have a defective view of that leader. Napoleon and Hitler both had some positive achievements, even though their terms ended in overall disaster.

The French monarchy and nobility never had anything like the powers they had prior to Napoleon. The French after Napoleon did nto allow the Church to dominate society as before him. The sciences, literature, and philosophy have flourished since Napoleon. Militarism, oppression, and Master Race theories  died in Germany as a result of Hitler. Autobahns, Volkswagens and a superior healthcare and pension system were created or improved as a result of Hitler's reforms. Hitler also managed to get all of Europe to drive on the right side of the highways, which they did not previously.

[Plane]

There is no point in saying that China is not Germany etc..., unless you mana that China cannot be governed . How does Chinas being huge mitigate Maos bad decisions?

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It has nothing to do with his bad decisions.
Mao united China, which was never really united, for the very first time.

Napoleon did not face unifying France, nor did Hitler face any serious challenges in uniting Germany.

Before a national government can change a country, it must unify that country to a degree that the government has the power to do so. Mao and Chao Enlai managed to do this. Chiang Kai Shek was unable to unify China to any manageable degree.

If you take the stance that everything that a leader did is bad because the results were bad, then you will have a defective view of that leader. Napoleon and Hitler both had some positive achievements, even though their terms ended in overall disaster.

Napolion and Hitler were trying to unify Europe , a goal worthy of excess in means?
If they had succeeded in unifying Europe their accomplishment would match Mao's more closely.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Napolion and Hitler were trying to unify Europe , a goal worthy of excess in means?
If they had succeeded in unifying Europe their accomplishment would match Mao's more closely.

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Napoleon would have probably been deemed a success had he not tried and failed to conquer Russia. Keeping the British off the European continent was a worthy goal for France: the Brits had nothing to offer but a return to decrepit monarchies and of course, alliances of said decrepit monarchies with England.

Hitler's economic success was based on a military buildup of the economy, and eventually, he would have had to start a war. Internally, Hitler would have stifled Germany as Stalin did the USSR, and the whole Master Race schtick was extermemly counterproductive. So the authbahns and the Volkswagens (which had a really stupid name that translated something like "Strength through Joy car" and a few other things were all Hitler did that was truly positive.

Neither of them was actually competing with Mao to best him or match him at anything. The success of China today would not have happened were it not for Mao. Chiang was not independent from foreign exploiters. Taiwan was different, because Taiwan is a tiny island with no serious resources to exploit. Mao was able to separate China from the rest of the world and protect it from exploitation. Within a few years, he separated it from the USSR, which is no mean feat, since the PRC and the USSR share a very long common border.

 And no, nothing mitigates anything. It's not like you could make Mao disappear *poof!* from the history of China because you proved that they would have been better off without him. Americans could not change China in 1949, and no one can change 1949 China now. Perhaps you have noticed that time flows in just the one direction., and once something has happened, everyone is powerless to unhappen it.

[Plane]

The success of China today would not have happened were it not for Mao.

I see no reason to think this way , China recovered very slowly from WWII , why can't I think that Mao with his "great leap forward" delayed the recovery that would naturally have happened anyway?

The People of Tiwan have been exploited by the Uninted States and Europe quite a lot , it seems that the most exploited nations turn out to be much more comfortable to live in than the ones most insulated from this exploitation.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I see no reason to think this way , China recovered very slowly from WWII , why can't I think that Mao with his "great leap forward" delayed the recovery that would naturally have happened anyway?

The People of Tiwan have been exploited by the Uninted States and Europe quite a lot , it seems that the most exploited nations turn out to be much more comfortable to live in than the ones most insulated from this exploitation.

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Look, Mao unified China. No one else had ever done this in all of recorded history. That is what he did that was an absolute sine qua non for Chinese progress. If you are building a highway, first you lay down a heavy layer of rocks and gravel, without which the pavement will crack and sink into the mud. That is what Mao did.

After that, he screwed up. The Great Leap Forward was a disaster and the Cultural Revolution an even bigger one.

Chiang also screwed up by oppressing the native Taiwanese, the Fukien Chinese that had been educated by the Japanese, and anyone in his own KMT party that opposed him. But, like Mao, he died, and with his death came progress.

Taiwan did not progress because it was exploited by the Americans and Europeans, but despite it. The base for Taiwanese progress was laid down by the Japanese, who were experts at unifying the diverse population that they found when they invaded in 1895. As the Japanese people rejected the Tojo dictatorship and embraced democracy when the US occupied Japan in 1946-50, the Taiwanese rejected the dictatorship as soon as Chiang's son slipped from power in the 1980's. The Taiwanese combined the best features of Sun Yatsen's KMT Constitution with the Japanese system and some features from the US.

Without Mao, China would not be even one country today, but several countries that would be played off against one another by everyone. Money from Taiwan and Hong Kong entrepreneurs were also crucial to the development of China that we see today.

Exploitation by the West is not the driving force behind the development of Taiwan. In these places, most businesses were not run by Americans or Europeans, but by Chinese.

[Amianthus]

Look, Mao unified China. No one else had ever done this in all of recorded history.

Except for Qin Shi Huang. And Yang Jian. And Kublai Khan. And a few others.

[Xavier_Onassis]

That depends on what you mean by "unify".

China was ruled as an assortment of conquered states prior to Mao. That is not the same as a unified country.

[Amianthus]

China was ruled as an assortment of conquered states prior to Mao. That is not the same as a unified country.

Those leaders all ruled a unified China. I guess you can quibble if you want, because the borders might not have matched the current borders exactly. However, all of those leaders unified the governments and bureaucracies of the various states. And there were other leaders that also did so, but to a lesser degree. And several have lasted much longer than Mao's China has lasted until now.

[Xavier_Onassis]

You must consider yourself some sort of expert on Chinese history.

The fact is that Mao's government had a much higher degree of control over the people than any of the previous rulers.

[Amianthus]

The fact is that Mao's government had a much higher degree of control over the people than any of the previous rulers.

That is typical for dictators. Control, however, does not equate to "unity".

China has enormous control over Tibet. Do you think that Tibetans feel like they're a unified part of China?

[Amianthus]

You must consider yourself some sort of expert on Chinese history.

I have studied history extensively. China was a hobby for a while. Had a friend living over there.

[Plane]

Look, Mao unified China. No one else had ever done this in all of recorded history. That is what he did that was an absolute sine qua non for Chinese progress.

Not really , did Europe need to be unified to recover from the damage of WWII?

I have to guess that sine qua non , means "requirement"?

so what makes it absolute?

Jaban did a lot better and became the second largest economy in the world from a standing start , but is a pitiful fraction of Chinas size. If China were less obsessed with size , they might do better at prosperity because they would devote more to prosperity and less to controll.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Jaban did a lot better and became the second largest economy in the world from a standing start , but is a pitiful fraction of Chinas size. If China were less obsessed with size , they might do better at prosperity because they would devote more to prosperity and less to controll.

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China is not obsessed with size. At least being obsessed with size is not why China took so much longer to industrialize.

 Japan managed to develop its economy because they had the US as a market where they could sell their manufactured goods, starting with stuff like toys made from discarded American beer cans. My father used to bring me these crappy little toy cars every week from the Katz Drugstore where he cashed his paycheck. They cost a nickel or a dime, depending on size. I loved the ugly little things. I imagine they are serious collectors' items these days.

China could not do this, because the US refused to recognize China and allowed no Chinese products to enter the US. Japan had a highly urban population that had extensive experience in factories. China had millions of rural peasants with no such experience, and no decent roads, no developed sites for raw materials, at least not compared with China.

Taiwan, being much more like Japan than China, managed to imitate what Japan had done. Hong Kong and Singapore and Korea followed the same pattern.

Taiwan and Japan are are among the major contributors to China's industrialization. Observe where your Sony products are made these days.