Talk:Mao Zedong/Archive 3

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NPOV tag

I added a NPOV tag to this article. I've never seen a more biased article on wikipedia! Mao is described here as some sort of saviour of China. I don't dispute that he might have done some good, but he's also the 2nd greatest mass-murderer of all time, but all this page mentions is that he is criticized for 'ineffective economic policies'. That's not NPOV!

70,000,000 - Mao Zedong's Regime (China, 1949-1975) - How many people were killed under Mao. Why isn't this in here? He is far far far worse then Stalin or Hitler.

Is Mao Good or Bad?

Mao isn't the best thing that happened in China. He literally ruined a generation of people's education. My parents is the very example of this. This is becuase back in China, (during Mao's leading) my parents couldn't finish their education. This has led them to work very hard and every night when they come back, they'd be really tired and they still had to cook for us. Their work hours has taken something from us, quality family time. MY parents has unsteady work hours and they work very very hard to earn money and this is thanks to Mao Zedong!!

~ [email protected]

Mao was probably bad, but that is not an issue here. Some people probably revere him, while others loathe him. This wikipedia article should attempt to portray him from a neutral perspective. --Ezeu 01:53, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

The biggest friggin mistake in history is dividing leaders between "good" and "bad". Mao could be defined as neither. He's just a person who happened to lead the country, and happend to make some mistakes. Colipon+(T) 04:14, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

The fact that your parents didn't finish school doesn't mean much. Tons of people didn't finish school during Bill Clinton's presidency, and tons of people are still dropping out during Bush's presidentcy, doesn't that mean a thing? During Mao's leading, my parents and many other people's parents went to good Universities such as Tsinghua.

Your comparison with the US and Red China is rather spurious. In the US, people are not barred from going to university. During the Cultural Revolution, when Mao had most control over the country, university education was severely disrupted. Whether people went there or not was irrelevant - most learnt nothing because all the teachers were being pushed around by the students. The same was happening in the schools. And in any case, there were periods during "Mao's leadership" when he had little effective control. For example, in between the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Liu Shaoqi and Deng were running the show and sensible university education was permitted. John Smith's 13:18, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Mao Zedong is responsible for 20 million deaths in China, why is he not known as a dictator among the likes of Pol Pot? My ancestors died because of his policies.

--Number 8 05:09, 12 October 2005 (UTC)number8

We cannot portray someone from a neutral point of view. I say this because the only way to write about someone is to get to know them/their past. Therefore, if we get to know that, we automatically form an opinion. For Mao Tse-tung's case, people can like a murderous piece of ****, or they hate him. No one is neutral when it comes to this. And for whether Mao is good or bad? Multiply your feelings towards Hitler 10 times and there is your answer.

Number 8, you are obviously not neutral here, but don't judge too quickly on others ("No one his neutral when it comes to this"). I might as well turn your point around and say that the more you know a person, the more subtle your opinion gets, because you get to see through his complexities, you get to know his virtues and faults, you realize it's just too simplistic to single-handedly qualify a person with one single word like "genius" or "lunatic". Therefore, when you really get to know someone, you automatically form an opinion that is not either love or hate.

And while we're here: you portray Hitler neutrally if you describe his life and actions without resorting to judgements on his character, and that goes for anyone else. Describe what happened, and let people take their own conclusions. Avoid reasonings of the kind "Hitler killed Jews because he was insane". When we have a very good account of one's life, we can devote sections of an article to the judgements historically made on that person. Mixing up both is not a good idea. --koenige 14:48, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

--Number 8 04:23, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Koenige, you're right I didn't say anything about Hitler. Do I need to? No. "avoid reasonings of the kind "Hitler killed Jews because he was insane"." I think you are right in some aspects- Hitler killed Jews because that was his belief, and he did not think that what he did was wrong. However that doesn't give him an excuse to kill, so therefore, neither does Mao Tse-tung have an excuse of killing tens of millions of people. And for the record, I'm Chinese. I lived there until I was 9 years old - 1999. I was fed with facts, from Kindergarten, through primary school, that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and Mao Tse-tung was China's hero and China would be a whole lot worse if it was under Chiang Kai-shek. This was done from the 50's up till now. I have many friends who say Mao is good, however, they are without a reason to say so. The propoganda in China had just said Mao was good, and they were told so without good reasoning, therefore it's propoganda. I hate Mao, you are right, and the CCP, because they tried to brainwash me with all the CCP crap. The CCP also has a slogan "if you don't love the Party [CCP] you don't love your country", which is rubbish. The CCP do these things to silence the opposition, and that's why I detest them.

---

Well koenige, I will be very interested to hear your response to that! I totally agree with Number 8, the facts remain that dictators like Mao and Hitler murdered masses of people. You either condemn that and call it what it was or you don't. You don't try and wash it away by pretending to be some kind of academic intellectual exhorting people to be "neutral" It's a total cop-out. The Great Veritas 11:53, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Number 8, I respect your feelings. The thing is, this is an encyclopedia, i.e. not a place for our personal opinions, but for opinions based on historical/scientific research. Naturally, these also vary, so we should present them in a balanced manner so as to give a good account of where the debates are standing. Neutrality here is a bit like the mathematical concept of limit: you never actually reach it, but you can always get closer to it. Is it easier though to recognize what is definitely not neutral, like calling Mao a murderous piece of shit and the like.

Maybe I didn't make my point clear previously: what I strongly believe we should avoid is statements of the kind "Hitler was a lunatic", "Mao was criminally insane" (which you, Veritas, wanted to include in the article some days ago). What is a lunatic? What is criminally insane? Either we have a reliable psychiatric account, or that's just personal unresearched opinions and there are other places for them.

Mind you this doesn't mean at all I admire these individuals, quite to the contrary. But I believe the only way we might be able to avoid the reappearance of phenomenons such as Hitler is if we actually understand them, and understanding means systematic doubt and employing reason, not moral judgement. As for Mao, I don't hold the holy truth, I have many doubts on the overall assessment of him. It just baffles me that so many people know it all so much better -- he was a murderer, a bloodthirsty butcher and that's it! -- without giving much of a reasonable argument for it. Jung Chang at least tried, but looks like her efforts were also flawed -- as Frank McLynn states in the Independent, a sustained polemic does not make a good biography.

I have wasted a lot of time here better spent improving wikipedia elsewhere. Let's just move forward if we have nothing new to say. -- koenige 16:44, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

---

I'm sorry koenige, but I just think that you perhaps should do the research yourself before commenting on Jung Chang's book, because I don't think it's flawed and biased, I just think she may have sometimes wrote things from a negative point of view when it's not necessary.

And I think that if Jung Chang listed at least a dozen, at least a dozen of people who was killed in cold blood by Mao - isn't this enough for "evidence"?

It is very dangerous to simply rely on others for your information. Unless you read the book and approach it with an academic attitude, you can't even begin to form a proper opinion of it - you're just reading the opinions of other people and letting them sway you. In any case it appears you've already made up your mind for the simple fact you quote only the Independent. John Smith's 12:02, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

I am from China and I can't believe how Mao is portrayed here!!! Maybe its the communist propaganda they fed me with when I was a child, but Mao to me is the equivilate of Washington or Lincoln to you. I can't believe the west thinks of him as a ruthless dictaor, warlord, sociopath! He is(yes is and not was, as long as his spirit lives he lives), He is a selfless, altruistic, idealist who wanted nothing more than to help the people. So what if on top of that he was a great military leader? He had a vision of an utopia and of a free China. Free from the oppressive and corrupt Kuomintang, the chaos of the warlords, and the control of the west. He saw communism as a way to achieve both a free China and an utopia. The only deaths he caused were in the Chinese civil war and the war againist the Japanese invasion. He cannot be held responsible for the deaths caused by famines. Nor can he be held responsible for the deaths/mass murders caused by angry mobs of peasants and youth after the civil war and the cultural revolution. All of which he had no control over!!!But yet they count that as people he "murdered". Gee, why don't we just count all the people who died of old age and sickness at the time as people he murdered too? In the end he was sick, his wife and the Gang of Four took over control; again, the people they killed and the actions they took he had no control over. Its probably just/mostly western bias propaganda againist communism at the time. Mao is a great man with great intentions, who unintentionally and at most indirectly caused deaths that he didn't know about and had no control over. Under the law the most you can charge him with is negligent manslaughter. Norman Bethune 24-Nov-05

Interested to see that the above comment was apparently written by someone who died in 1939!

Whatever propoganda you've been subjected to, it's pretty clear to me that the comment above is a bit of a whitewash. First off, Mao was very much directly responsible for The Great Leap Forward, where he declared he wanted to see back-street furnaces all over China, leading the people to neglect their jobs to tend these furnaces, which was a patently crazy way to attempt to catch up in steel production, and lead to food shortages and even famine. He even accepted himself that this was a mistake.

He said "let a hundred flowers bloom", but didn't publicise his follow-on statement about "drawing the snake from his lare", ie. let everyone criticise the party, and when they do, send them off to labour camps for "re-education".

He encouraged the Red Guards or "angry mobs of peasants and youth", with his statements "To Rebel is Good", and "Bombard the Headquarters", and "Be Violent"

He encouraged the closing of schools and universities during the Cultural Revolution, and declared exams to be "bourgois" - no other communist in history (apart from Pol Pot) retarded education in this way.

Small point: "his wife and the gang of four" - that would make five - his wife was one of the gang of four.

Camillus^{talk|contribs} 01:10, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that Norman lives under a bridge. Mark¹ 01:17, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, Mao did make tops on somebody's list. See Democide. LuiKhuntek 06:19, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Mao is still revered by many in China. I tried every morning for 4 days to go see him lying in state and the lines literally went around the building by 7am every morning and this is a big building roughly the size of a pro basketball auditorium. Busload after busload of Chinese from all over the country would come and stand in line for hours to view his body. A pilgramage such as this cannot be cheap for a rural Chinese family to make. At the same time, there are many many people, particulary in Beijing that either lost family during the Cultural Revolution or were Red Gaurd themselves and therefore dropped out of school on Mao's instructions (after beating their teachers no doubt) that feel differently. These people now despise Mao as they have no education and are not included in the economic boom. Most it would appear have become taxi drivers. Mao was able to rewrite much of history as the victor is often able to do. But he was also able to propagate much of the myth OUTSIDE of China thanks to journalist Edgar Snow. For an alternative (and seemingly well researched) version of Mao's ascension, read Mao The Untold Story. It is an eye opener as, according to it, Mao the Myth is completely different from Mao in reality. Mao was not competent, not charismatic, not loyal, and completely lacking in integrity. But he was ambitious, ruthless, greedy, lucky, and cunning in spades. This book should be required reading for any MBA program.

Marxist Theory

This seems to be developing into a very nice article. However, I would find it very helpful if there were a section on Mao Zedong's Marxist theory. He's listed as a Marxist theorist in the Marxism section (that's how I got here), yet there's no section on his contributions, differences, etc. I'm putting this here because it doesn't really fit in any of the subsections. --JECompton 22:57, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Uh... try Maoism. Colipon+(T) 05:19, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

It says here:

• "Mao also built on the theories of Hegel and Marx to create a new theory of materialist dialectics. By applying the theory of the dialectic to real-world conflicts, then by asserting that only the empirical reality of the conflict mattered, Mao developed a type of dialectic theory that was studied for decades."

Maybe the article Maoism is the place, but even as a summary, this is a bit strange to me. Like, what was the difference between "materialist dialetics" that Mao is here credited with, and "dialectical materialism" that is another word for Marxism (along with "historical materialism"). Was Mao's great achievement that he turned the phrase around? Wow!

Camillus^{talk|contribs} 00:49, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

As far as I can tell from the article on Maoism, the only addition Mao has made to Marxist theory is that class stuggle must continue through the entire socialist period. I dont see how this addition could be "studied for decades", unless a vast amount of information is missing from "Maoism" Hantale 02:11, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

New book

I was reading MacLeans today, there's apparently a new book out that Mao killed more people than Hitler or Stalin. Anyone read this book yet? Is it a bunch of opinionated BS or actually valuable? Colipon+(T) 05:18, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

He Killed 70 million people

Some sources say 80 million. Even if you choose to minimize or discount this estimate, he ADMITTED to murdering 800,000 people after he gained power. Hitler improved Germany's economy, should he be held to some cultist high standard (he is, of course, by modern Nazis, but they are correctly reviled as fringe weirdos)?

Wanna go back, check your sources, and come back with less opinion and more tangible evidence? Colipon+(T) 17:38, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, the Chinese Communist Party that still keeps Mao pickled in a mausoleum and his photo high above Tian'anmen Sq and that declared Mao to be 70% correct puts the figure at about 30 million and you figure they'd be a little on the conservative side with their estimate. LuiKhuntek 06:28, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Your way of thinking is from a very western perspective. Dictators are not evaluated by how many people they killed. Dictators can't be "good" or "bad". Mao succeeded in a revolution. He had some bad policies in his late years. I'm no fan of those policies myself, but you have to look at the whole picture. And Mao is more of a symbol than a man to the CPC and many people, that's why he's in a Mausoleum. Colipon+(T) 22:38, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Deaths

What source says 80 million? Mao: The Unknown Story says 70 million, but fails to explain it. Higher death-rates in the Three Years of Natural Disasters are treated as equivalent to intentional killings, though only for leaders who are disapproved of.

The 800,000 'murdered' refers to various landlords and pro-landlord bandits killed by mass meetings of peasants after the Chinese Communists chased out the Kuomintang and declared that landlord power must end. it was done by the people they had ruled over, not by any party death=list. Plently of landlords survived, with reduced status. Most of those killed were killed for specific acts of murder that they were blaimed for. Some also for having worked with the Japanese during the invasion.

--GwydionM 19:34, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Terrible, just terrible

"Mao's legacy has produced a large amount of controversy. Most mainland Chinese believe that Mao Zedong was a great revolutionary leader, although he made serious mistakes in his later life. "

Got any independent polls of the Chinese people to back this up? Or are you actually just referring to the offical statements of the Chinese government? Warm beer 13:24, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I changed that to "some mainland Chinese" a few days ago - I think you must be thinking of an old version of something. John Smith's 16:26, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Mao succeeded where many others had failed

In the century before Mao took over, China was the ‘sick man of East Asia’. Unlike India, Vietnam etc. it was not modernised as part of a colonial empire. Unlike Japan, it failed to modernise within its own traditional framework. China fell into even worse chaos when it tried to imitate the West with the Republic of 1911. It needed Mao’s ruthless determination and radicalism to ‘turn it round’. Though the West now sneers at his memory, he left behind a strong unified state, a healthy well-educated population and a flourishing economy.

Chiang’s 22 years of power left China as badly off as he found it; China’s net economic growth during his time on the mainland was zero. (The World Economy: Historical Statistics). Success in Taiwan after 1949 means little: Taiwan had been part of Japan’s brutal but successful modernisation. Taiwan had vast sums of US aid pumped into it, along with a land-reform that was undoubtedly helped by the example of what was happening to landlords in the rest of China. A blue-arsed baboon could have made a success of Taiwan.

Starting from a very low base, Mao more than tripled China’s economy during his period of rule. (The World Economy: Historical Statistics). He did this while also uprooting ancient systems of oppression and asserting China’s status as a Great Power. And he did it without much outside help—some Russian help in the 1950s, but at a price. In most other cases during the Soviet Union’s existence, the recipient of aid eventually had to choose between throwing them out or else becoming subordinate to Moscow. Mao chose to throw them out—strictly, they were pulled out, but it was the foreseeable consequence of not accepting Moscow’s demands. But unlike other leaders who threw out the Soviet Union, Mao did not then become subordinate to the USA. Which explains why he gets condemned, while pro-Western capitulators get praised far above their achievements for their own people

Mao: The Unknown Story claims 38 million famine deaths, to which Chang & Halliday add 32 more unspecified deaths to make up their much-publicised 70 million. Yet at the time, observers agreed that there was no famine in China, though there was certainly hunger. They also agreed that the weather was abnormally bad.

“The increasing preoccupation with the weather, which began when vast areas in north and northeast China suffered a lack of snowfall and spring rain, grew steadily with the constant threat of floods throughout the southern provinces and a persistent plague of locusts in the region along the yellow river… The deluge in June (which brought 30 in. of rain to Hong Kong in five days) moved northward, flooding the countryside as it moved, so that the greater part of the country south of the Yangtze was seriously affected.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica Book of the year 1960).

This can now be recognised as the backwash of the El Nino event of 1957-58, the first to hit China since the 1920s. This happened while Chinese agriculture was being massively re-organised—a process that in the longer term succeeded. But after several years of genuine success, local officials started lying when the weather turned against them. Mao let himself be misled; and when Peng Dehuai complained to him on the matter, Mao took this as part of an overall challenge that also aimed at professionalizing the army and remaining subservient to Moscow. Mao wasn’t alone in this suspicion: see for instance Han Suyin's Eldest Son, her biography of Zhou Enlai. Among the Chinese leadership there was general agreement that Lin Biao should replaced Peng as Defence Minister, even while Mao transferred some of his powers to Liu Shao-chi.

Official Chinese figures show the death-rate rising to 25.5 per thousand in 1961, having been brought down as low as 10 or 11 per thousand in the first years of Communist rule. This compares with a norm of 21 per thousand under Chiang Kai-shek, and a norm of 24.6 in the Republic of India for the same period. At the start of the 20th century, India had had a death-rate as high as 48 per thousand ([1]).

Chang & Halliday claim 38 million excess deaths, but on a very vague basis, comparing a norm of 10.8 per thousand to an alleged high of 43.4 per thousand. They seem to be taking their norm from the official figures but their high from alternative ‘reconstructed’ figures. The whole calculation lurks in a footnote to pages 456-457, with no indication of the complexities and no details of sources.

If one accepted their rather odd figures but took 20 per thousand as a normal death-rate for a poor country, then there were 7 million less deaths in 1957-62 than the Third-world norm.

An assessment of famine and disaster should anyway look at deaths per thousand, allowing a sensible comparison between big and small countries. The alleged 38 million deaths in a population of 650 million would be 59 per thousand, a middling sort of disaster. The Encarta reckons that the Irish Potato Famine killed 1 million out of 8 million, 125 per thousand, with as many again forced to emigrate.

China under Mao developed atomic weapons and launched its own satellites. Deng Xiaoping knew that he was building on a base created by Mao, even though he wanted to change a lot that Mao had done. Post-Deng, the leaders keep the same view.

Mao's China and the Republic of India under Nehru have been two of the big Third-World success stories, along with the East Asian 'Tigers', most of which build on a basis created by the obnoxious but efficient system of Imperial Japan. Several different methods are able to succeed, but all of them involve a degree of authoritarian rule and ideological control. Significantly, you find the same in Singapore, the other big success. A single party has successfully dominated politics in Singapore and Singapore has succeeded. Whereas those Third World countries that followed Western advice remain poor.

--GwydionM 19:23, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I very much believe that part of that previous excerpt should be part of the Mao article. I was very surprised this came from a person in the west. Colipon+(T) 05:17, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

A Nony Mouse:

Ha ha Quite funny....rationalizing a dictator. The best day for China will be when they rid Mao out of Tianmen Square. They must come to terms with their own past. Not that I am too knowledgable of Japanese politics....it is quite ironic China (rightfully) wants Japan to apologize for war atrocities when they will not apologize for their own. I can understand people hating Mao....but the gross reverence is out of "not losing face." Can you imagine? The government is passive agressive. A friend at HP agrees that sometimes there are freer markets in China than the US. We are giving Mao a spiritual kick in the ass....and China knows it because they do it too. --MMRivera 06:36, 30 December 2005

First, I'm gonna suggest you read a bit into Chinese history to make any educated judgments. Second, you've seen everything from a purely western and economic point of view, and obviously have very little understanding of Chinese (and on a broader scale) and Asian politics. Regardless, it's useless for me to tell you all this, as you haven't lived through the Mao era in China yourself. I don't know, but for a person that has, I think I'm entitled to defend GwydionM's position.

There are a few areas, however, that need clarification. Mao was a great philosopher, and exceeded in this area compared to his contemporaries. The biggest mistake Mao had made, in my opinion, was in his struggle to implement policies based purely on ideological procedure. We saw such an example in the Hundred Flowers Movement, the Great Leap Forward, and even the Cultural Revolution. Most of which ended in disaster, and it would be unfair to say that China's development wasn't cut short 30 or so years because of it. The point that needs to be stressed however, is that throughout Chinese history, unity had been an area that met the most failure. Mao had succeeded here, more than anywhere else, both ideologically and in practice. It is upon this basis that Deng Xiaoping implemented his economic reforms.

Colipon+(T) 20:00, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Anyone can achieve unity through a mixture of fear and propagandist brainwashing. Hitler, Stalin, all those monsters can be said to have "unified" their countries in the same way - blame someone else for everything that goes wrong and unite the country in suspicion of everyone else.

Mao's backers always fail to recognise that he was not some superman that controlled the Party's every action. It's arguable that for most of the time he was just a propaganda piece to make it look good. So a lot of the CCP's "achievements" had little or nothing to do with him. What about the hard work of Liu Shaoqi and Deng? They worked at least as hard as Mao did and didn't rip the country up in the process. But when Mao got directly involved in anything (e.g. GLF, C.R.) he screwed things up royally.

He also had a tendancy to make his opponents conveniently "disappear". I remember someone trying to argue that he had no idea Liu had been thrown in jail. Where did he think he'd gone? On holiday?? A leading member of the Party "disappears" and he can't be bothered to work out what's happened? If that was the case, it proves that Mao really didn't give a monkeys about anyone other than himself.

Finally the KMT arguably united the country long before Mao did - the situation was far worse for them when they started off than it was for Mao. He had a cushy ride in comparison. John Smith's 21:45, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Just because GwydionM is a "Westerner" does not mean his contribution should just be stuffed into the article. It is, after all, personal reseach as it is not backed up and thus is against wiki policy. Plus just because someone is from THE WEST and supports Mao does not make them impartial - indeed it probably makes them quite the opposite. Look at his father's page - he was a Marxist. Hmm, I can see a potential sympathy for Mao there....... John Smith's 21:51, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, sir, have you lived through the Mao era in China? Have you worked for the provincial wing of a CPC propoganda department to know what it's like? I'm not saying i'm totally impartial, but answer me. Colipon+(T) 02:43, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

If you looked at my profile page you would see that I obviously couldn't have done. And, yes, if you did work in the CCP propaganda division I can't see as how you could possibly be impartial when talking about Mao, given that your job would have been (amongst other things)to produce positive news for him and push his agenda. Thanks for sharing that. John Smith's 13:23, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Your welcome. I thought just because I can, I'd share more of my propaganda for you because I just love the Great Chairman and Helmsman so dearly because he was the provider of all things, and never made mistakes. Too bad I had to quit that Pr.D. job to go teach some free-thinking bastards at a University. And oh look, an English guy with a BA in History thinks he has impartial views on Chinese history and politics. Let's listen to him. :) Colipon+(T) 19:51, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Well what can I say - there are some impartial people in the West, contrary to the propaganda you were taught in school ;) Seriously you left yourself wide open, so don't complain when I made a joke about it. Plus your last comment rather demonstrates why GM's posts should not just be inserted into the article. If you think a Welsh Marxist is automatically trustworthy to talk about Mao without any risk of him distorting the facts, whereas another Briton isn't because he doesn't agree with your POV, then I'm not really sure what else I can say........ John Smith's 02:47, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Now let me refute some things in a less sarcastic manner. John Smith's helpfully pointed out "Mao's backers always fail to recognise that he was not some superman that controlled the Party's every action... So a lot of the CCP's "achievements" had little or nothing to do with him." I am not discrediting Deng or Liu Shaoqi, but it is ludicrous to think that while not all of the CPC policy had little to do with Mao, every bad policy of the CPC had somehow been attributed to him.

Again I raise the point that ideologically and in practice, Mao had succeeded in the area of unity, and this is not because I'm a Marxist fanaticist, as Marxism is more of an economic system as opposed to a handbook on how to unite your people. Regardless, John Smith's comparison to Hitler and Stalin was misused. You cannot compare apples and oranges. Although they were all dictators, they were dicatators of different lands, and thus, completely different backgrounds. China is a vast country with a myriad of linguistic, cultural, religious, and ethnic backgrounds, and had gone through some 40 years of civil war (mind you, not only between CPC and KMT, but between rival warlords as well) that had divided the country to a similar scale to the Warring States Period. I am no expert in Russian or German history, but as far as I know, Germany and Russia's progression into their respective political dictatorships had mostly dealt with economic woes, and cannot be directly analogous to China in any way.

In my opinion, to the cultural and political situation of China at the time, Mao's achievements can be recorded (I welcome refutation on these):

1. More freedom and justice to the peasantry, the vast majority of China's population at the time.
2. His personal life not taken into consideration, his contribution to women's rights in a society where women's inferiority was engrained.
3. The unity of China's language; the creation of a united identity for the Chinese people, and subsequent displays self-determination.

Dictatorships involve murder, and mass campaigns that go wrong, or are seen of as completely cruel and unecessary. On this subject, I am in agreement that Mao had committed some grave errors. This is why I think he should have resigned in '53, before all the large campaigns. In restrospect, I think the GLF and Cultural Revolution not only hintered Chinese economic progress by about 50 years, but also gambled away in the process the education of an entire generation of people, and the majority of about 4000 years worth of cultural relics and historical artifacts. That was truly a time that we should all regret. Mao was no great economist, or was he really even a Marxist. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in total agreement with GwydionM's points either. But I have a somewhat revolting feeling everytime Mao is being evaluated without any consideration to the complex and unique backdrop that was China. It's almost like when people consider Confucianism a religion, without really knowing what Confucianism is. This is why bashing Mao is not reasonable when Chinese culture and history is not being taken into consideration, and it's hard to make these beliefs understood. If you think I'm trying to spread Mao propaganda abroad, 29 years after his death, fine. But hopefully you'll see the situation differently after you read this.

--Colipon+(T) 03:15, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

1. How do we know that was Mao and not the Party generally?

2. Yes, but at the same time relationships between men and women were heavily controlled. Perhaps women were "freed" in some respects (even today there is still considerable sexual discrimination in China) but in others both men & women found they had to give up their private lives for the Party. Didn't people have to get permission to marry? Weren't personal relationships for love frowned upon? Didn't the Party even suggest that the Party was a better parent to children that their own mothers and fathers - that Mao and the Party had to be loved more?

3. Again how do we know this was all Mao and not the rest of the Party? Plus I think the KMT had also started the idea of unifying the country long before the CCP did.

Perhaps Mao should have retired a lot earlier. But he didn't - he wanted to hold on to power. He encouraged people to criticise the Party in the 100 Flowers movement so that he could work out what people really thought and deal with them accordingly. And when he was sidelined after the GLF he threw a temper-tantrum to subvert the Party and get control back - otherwise known as the Cultural Revolution. What Mao "achieved" before pales in comparison into what he did to China from the mid 1950s onwards. It isn't a question of him causing "some mistakes", it's about him possibly doing "some good things" alongside his catalogue of failures and crimes. 70% good 30% bad? Try 70% bad 30% good. John Smith's 15:51, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Again, I fail to see why you attribute the CPC's failures to Mao and all its success to "the party in general", which is quite a vague concept, considering the great membership. As for women's rights, the KMT did little, as polygamy, forced marriage etc wasn't criminalized until... well, 1949, when Mao came to power. Descrimination based on sex exist, until this day, I agree, but really when you compare the situation to say... Japan, or Thailand, you'll get a vastly different picture in China. (PS if you're thinking recent female infanticide numbers, that was the result of a Deng policy) The whole love and marriage thing, as far as I was concerned, was never one of my points. I don't know why you are trying to lecture me on Mao-era propaganda, and the effects it had, but okay, I'll assume I know less than you. And on the third point, I have to ask, the KMT had a goal of uniting China, never achieved it because around 20 factions were fighting each other, but they're better for some reason? Is it because they favoured the west more? If then, by your standards, you can say Yuan Shikai also wanted to unite China, and is better than Mao. Furthermore, I want to understand your view of Chiang Kai-shek, was he somehow a better dictator?

Colipon+(T) 19:31, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Well put it like this. I doubt very much that anyone in the CCP was against women's rights or peasant "emancipation". However Mao was the driving force behind the GLF and CR. The latter was his attempt at a power grab, so it is clear that those two things were his fault. When senior members of the Party tried to stop the CR they were arrested by Mao. Equally he had the power to stop it, given that it was launched in his name, but he didn't.

Chiang is not the subject of this discussion, I was merely trying to indicate that the CCP was not the only organisation that helped build modern China. More importantly given that the CCP was trying to fight the KMT for control of China I can't see as how Chiang and his party could build a unified nation that easily. They also had to deal with the Japanese in Manchuria. Whereas after 1949 the CCP had total control over the mainland - so it's job was vastly easier.

So basically Mao caused an immense amount of harm to China, while only really achieving things that the Party itself probably would have done without him. And I don't think those "achievements" balance out his negative impact on China at all. John Smith's 21:08, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

We sure got ourselves a real dilemma here don't we? All pro Mao arguments are dismissed as propaganda, all anti Mao statements are proofs and are right. Arguments from Chinese immigrants who understand China and Mao are dismissed are biased. Arguments that reflect western views are backed by westerners and possibly historians; no way to disprove them in the west because all sources say Mao is bad. Any source other than western sources are again dismissed as biased or propaganda. The few impartial westerners are dismissed as stupid or fooled by Chinese propaganda. Most proofs are from books, which for some reason can’t be western backed propaganda. Of course pro Mao books wouldn’t be published here, would it? Publishers would dismiss it as biased plus it wouldn’t sell as well. For some reason authors who publish anti Mao books mysteriously become rich. So how do we know all the stuff the west said about Mao isn’t western propaganda? 70 million really?… Did people actually go house to house and record this? There wasn’t any computers or proper documents back then other then paper, so a lot of people can go missing in documentation, so when the numbers don’t add up assume the missing number is the amount of people who died right? How many people died exactly of the Spanish flu? Yes, Mao made mistakes, and yes, that caused people’s lives but lets not exaggerate them like the press does with the pass mistakes of politicians. Yes he was is the strictest sense of speaking a dictator, but thats like how geishas are prostitutes; he wanted the goverment to serve the people and would have made China a democracy had he understood what it is(and not associated it with capitalism, remember he was a communist). He only liked communism because he and many other thought its was the only way to make people's lives better and fair. He associated capitalism with oppression and discrimination not freedom. Let us at least consider the possibility that Mao is vilified because he defied the west(defended China?) and removed its KMT puppet government. Pseudoanonymous 02:25, 20 February 2006 (UTC)