What if Mao had lost... ?

[galvatron]

What if Mao had lost...
By Dinah Gardner in Beijing



$this->handle_bbcode_img_match('http://english.aljazeera.net/mritems/Images//2009/9/28/2009928135116424954_8.jpg') Footnote or figurehead: Mao's place in Chinese history could have been very different [EPA] October 1, 1949. After two decades of brutal civil war, Mao Zedong, chairman of the Communist Party of China, stood atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace and, addressing hundreds of thousands of his supporters in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, declared the founding of the People's Republic of China.
It was one of the pivotal moments in 20th century history.
After the end of World War II in 1945, civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists started anew.
The Communists, who enjoyed popular support, crushed the corruption-ridden and now poorly-managed Nationalists, led by General Chiang Kaishek. By 1949 Chiang was cornered. He fled with the remains of his party to the island of Taiwan, where he ruled as dictator until his death in 1975.
As the People's Republic marks 60 years of Communist Party rule, the consensus view is that China would be a much freer and more democratic country under the Nationalists.
"China would be much better off," says Ai Weiwei, an outspoken Chinese architect and artist.
"You would have a democracy; you would not have state-controlled media; you would have freedom of expression; freedom of speech. Society would not be so corrupt. There wouldn't be so much bureaucracy... in the art world you wouldn't have taboos or censorship."
Others point to Asian democracies such as Japan and Taiwan as possible models.
"My guess is that if you look at what happened in Japan and in Taiwan you would have seen China developing into some sort of democracy with a proper civil society," says Jasper Becker, a British journalist who has written several books on China.

$this->handle_bbcode_img_match('http://english.aljazeera.net/mritems/Images//2009/10/1/20091012355216148_8.jpg') Chiang Kai-shek ruled Taiwan as a one-party state after his defeat on the mainland [AFP] "I don't think there would necessarily be a multi-party democracy but more like Japan where the Liberal Democratic Party almost always wins." While Chiang himself was no champion of democracy - he ruled Taiwan as a one-party state for several decades - he was not as tyrannical as Mao, say academics.
He would also have come under pressure from the US and politically-motivated sectors of Chinese society to move towards a more democratic model.
"Chiang would probably have continued, at least for the duration of the Cold War, to rule China as a primitive fascist,” says Gregor Benton, professor of Chinese history at Cardiff University in the UK.
"Perhaps the Americans would have persuaded him to take some ameliorative measures, but look at Vietnam, where that tack didn't work... Perhaps a different form of socialism would have developed in Chinese cities, from which radical movements had been wiped out by the Japanese occupation - a sort of socialism that I, and perhaps you, would have preferred."




In human rights terms, at least, many believe devastating campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward - a disastrous economic plan that killed tens of millions of people - and the social upheavals of mass purges would not have happened. "Mao is judged to be 70 per cent right and 30 per cent wrong. I like to turn that around; in my mind he was 70 per cent wrong and 30 per cent right,” says professor Meredith Goldman, a research associate in Chinese studies at Harvard University in the US.
While Chiang did purge his enemies in Taiwan, they were only his direct political rivals.
Although he was an authoritarian leader he never persecuted ordinary people or completely stifled dissent, Goldman explains.
"You wouldn't have such destructive policies against the population if Chiang was in charge. He didn't have Mao's extremes," she says.
But how about the status of minorities?
Some 60 years after its founding, the Uighur Muslim minority of the northwest Xinjiang region and ethnic Tibetans are still a thorn in the side of the Communist Party of China.
Both these ethnic groups complain of discriminatory policies and security forces regularly struggle to contain illegal protests

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The Link
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2...746123550.html

Will it be like Japan of today ?

[Dennis Chen]

I doubt Chiang would have allowed Tibet, Xinjiang or Mongolia to break away.

[jiang bao]

Mao sucks *** big time but I doubt KMT rule would suddenly be much better given how awful life was pre WWII anyway. Commies saved China, even though Mao was a dickhead – and I wish I could dig up his bones and lay a diarrheic dump on it. People did want commies in charge, with a more moderate commy in charge, life in the 50’s-70’s wouldn’t have been so bad.

[Ken Cheng]

MI wish I could dig up his bones.

I don't think you would need to dig. As I understand it, Mao was interred in a MAOsoleum (heh) in which he's been preserved to this day.

[yittz]

Stupid schemes like 5 year leap and cultural revolution fked China up bad. Madame Mao should bear a lot of responsibility too. Modern day China politics is much better than Mao, who essentially was an emperor.

[Trien Chieu]

I doubt Chiang would have allowed Tibet, Xinjiang or Mongolia to break away.

Of course not. No capable ruler would give up so much land just to please the foreigners. I do not like Mao and his policy but keeping Tibet, Xinjiang and part of Mongolia was in the best interest of China. Tibet and Xinjiang are huge. Losing those territories would greatly weaken the country.

[Trien Chieu]

Mao sucks *** big time but I doubt KMT rule would suddenly be much better given how awful life was pre WWII anyway. Commies saved China, even though Mao was a dickhead – and I wish I could dig up his bones and lay a diarrheic dump on it. People did want commies in charge, with a more moderate commy in charge, life in the 50’s-70’s wouldn’t have been so bad.

If Mao's policy didn't affect your family, would you hate him? After all, he was a champion of marxism along with Stalin of Russia, Pol Pot of Cambodia, and Kim Jon Il of North Korea.

[jiang bao]

A monster is a monster, whether it's personal or not.

I rank him up there with the monsters of history.

And I am not a commy, if that's what you're trying to insinuate.

[Guo Xiang]

Stupid schemes like 5 year leap and cultural revolution fked China up bad. Madame Mao should bear a lot of responsibility too. Modern day China politics is much better than Mao, who essentially was an emperor.

She does? How much decision-making power did she have? Were her opinions respected and by Mao?

I read he kinda dumped his wives, anyway.

[yittz]

1, 2 and 3. Madame Mao was the 4th. She was part of the band of 4 that were killed after Mao's death, to the glee of much of China.

[jiang bao]

It’s scapegoating. I doubt Mao let anything major get done without his approval.
It’s how people love to blame Qin Hui for Yue Fei’s death. If the emperor didn’t want YF to die too, YF lives. It’s just that it’s hard for China to blame the head of the state much like they couldn’t really blame the emperor, so it was always the evil ministers who tricked the emperor and sold out the country.

[PJ]

What if Mao had lost... ?

He may have changed his hairstyle, and Ken would no longer closely resemble him!

[Cesare]

As for madame Mao - never underestimate the wife...
(I'm not taking blame off Mao's shoulders, but I harbor no illusions at all about his wife or the whole gang of four either.)

jiang bao: Talk of scapegoating. Naming Mao as the root of all evil is pretty easy. Not that he wasn't the root of *much* or even most of the evil...
But the ministers are hardly ever innocent babies.

[jiang bao]

I am not freeing Madam Mao of blame. She clearly deserves a lot of blame, but all or most of the blame? I think not.

There’s no way he let his underlings run wild without his at least implicit approval. As the numero uno, the blood of those who died belong on his hands first and foremost.

My point is that Mao being regarded as the “Father of the Country,” China will never officially look back on him as a villain because that would reflect poorly on the country. At the same time, how can it deny the evils done until his rule? The solution? Blame the second in command.

Look at Japan, that emperor got off scot free after the war, but he was just as responsible as the top generals for the war. He was let go because killing or imprisoning the “deity emperor” of that brainwashed country would have had undesirable consequences in the big picture.

[Ken Cheng]

I thought that by the time that the Gang of Four was running around causing problems, Mao was already at a point of senility that he couldn't do much of anything anymore.

[jiang bao]

The commies claim Mao turned against them at the end of his life. You can buy it or not. I sure don’t. The way the G of 4 was scapegoated, the official story had to put a separation between them and the Father of the Country. But who really knows. In any event, the biggest blame is squarely on Mao. They came to power because of him and they didn’t launch the Cultural Revolution.

[forgot password]

1, 2 and 3. Madame Mao was the 4th. She was part of the band of 4 that were killed after Mao's death, to the glee of much of China.

that s not true, none of the gang of four was killed, they were only imprisoned.

[jiang bao]

Anyway, though I despise Mao, there's no doubt the commies did save China. I dunno if you know family from the pre-commy era who experienced life under the KMT first hand, but it sucked panda butt. And my family lived in an area where things were relative ok. Note, by "relatively ok" I mean that a relatively small number of villagers starved to death, and there were not frequent raids by bandits and such. My family was poor as dirt as was everyone else, but by barely having enough to feed the family somewhat adequately, they were considered "rich." My grandpa saved some people by lending them money, loaning them an acre of land to till. All it got him in return was persecution by commies.

Funny thing is, during the civil war, a small team of PLA stayed with my family, and they were just teenagers. Pretty nice guys from Hunan according to my mom. Then the frigging land reform and leap forward happened, and the oppression happened.

[Trien Chieu]

The commies claim Mao turned against them at the end of his life. You can buy it or not. I sure don’t. The way the G of 4 was scapegoated, the official story had to put a separation between them and the Father of the Country. But who really knows. In any event, the biggest blame is squarely on Mao. They came to power because of him and they didn’t launch the Cultural Revolution.

This is a rare occasion that I agree with you. Yes, the biggest blame should be squarely on Mao. However, the gang of four wasn't saint either. I have no doubt they did not follow Mao's order 100% and abused their power for personal gain.

[Trien Chieu]

My grandpa saved some people by lending them money, loaning them an acre of land to till. All it got him in return was persecution by commies.

That is the consequence of communism/Marxism. My grandpa was a land owner too and he was sentenced to death by the commies without any trace. People believe such land owners like him were burried alive by the communist government. He was considered well off land owner in a small town, but no way considered to be rich.