Comments on: Mao vs. Hitler

By: b

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 05:02:31 +0000

As a whole, I doubt it, simply because it would be quite impossible to lift all of China up so quickly, without the exploitation of cheap labour.

However, on the other hand, If Chiang had accepted Mao’s offer of a north-south divided China, like Korea or Germany, then that would have being more interesting to compare with.

In that case, Chiang would have probably lifted the south to be far more prosperous than the north, which is even true today in the mainland.

By: lirelou

lirelou — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 06:20:00 +0000

I’d rather see Mao compared with Chiang Kai-shek, with the underlying question being: Which model was more successful? Could CKS and the KMT have wrought the Taiwan economic miracle on China as a whole if they had won the civil war?

By: Alan Baumler

Alan Baumler — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 02:35:06 +0000

Actually, I think Napoleon may work better. In part that’s because the French are more historically aware than Americans (as are groundhogs, field mice and pocket lint.) Thus at least until recently debates about him and the Revolution more generally seem to matter. (Admittedly I know very little about modern France.) On the other hand most of the issues that Lincoln works well for were pretty much settled by the end of his life. I’m not sure I agree that Lincoln’s policies were repudiated. The Union stayed whole, slaves stayed free etc. I don’t think anyone can really say what his Reconstruction policies would have been or how they would have worked.
Mao on the other hand still works. Is national power the most important thing? Then Mao is good. Hate the corrupt and unresponsive party? Then the CR is good. Convinced that Chinese intellectuals are still the same arrogant SOBs as in the Song dynasty? Then 100 Flowers is for you.

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 22:50:19 +0000

I’m going on someone’s list for this, but I keep trying to think of good analogies for Mao’s role in Chinese history and memory and I keep coming up with…. Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln did things that were very important to the survival and future of the nation, many of which now appear to have been constitutionally suspect; Lincoln is deeply revered, mostly by people who have no idea what he actually did to achieve those ends; Lincoln is deeply despised by descendants (actual or imagined) of those who his tactics hurt, even to the point of denying his actual achievements. Lincoln’s death, at the height of his political power, was followed by a repudiation of his policies by successors…. (if Mao had died in 1955, how Lincolnesque would he look now? If Lincoln had survived Ford’s Theater and carried out Reconstruction his own way, would the League of the South hate him less or more?)

Yeah, it’s strained, but it doesn’t surprise me to see people trying to use Mao as a literary device more than an historical figure at this point: Look at all the Civil War movies and literature we still produce, and how limited the historicity of it is.