Just because a person is "Communist" doesn't mean they are inferior or demonic. Deng Xiao Ping reformed China from a backwards mess into a capitalist orientated economy. Of course he was very brutal in dealing with the students at Tian An Me; nobody's arguing with that. However, almost every single mainland Chinese person I met in my many years of living in China espressed their respect for his economic and social policies. I am not sure if you are aware, but Deng Xiao Ping was banned and imprisoned because of his evil "Westernized" ways while Chairman Mao was alive. It wasn't until Maoand all the other blood thirsty revolutionists realized that their country was going down the drain that they begged him to come back and reform their country. He laid the foundation for China's integration with the West.
I'm glad you think that a man who ordered the massacre of hundreds of peacefully demonstrating students was neither inferior or demonic. I perceive those actions to be indicative of both. Keep in mind as well that Deng oversaw a nation wide system of Lao Gai (gulags) for the politically incorrect (as well as some actual criminals). Indeed, China is one of the last places on earth, outside of some Muslim and African countries, where chattel slavery still survives as an economic and political phenomena. Of course, in China, the state owns you when your in Lao Gai, not private individuals.
Yeah, Deng was just one of the boys.
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There was another option he could have taken at the time, and that was to just give the people what they wanted: political, speech, religious, and individual libertyYou obviously are ignorant of 5000 years of Chinese history. From Chinese History Professors to students, they all agree on the same thing: China is such a complex and diverse country that it is almost impossible to guarentee Western like ideals of individual customized liberty. China has been suffering from dictators since the Qin Dynasty and everybody knows it.
First, what Chinese history professors? I'd like a nice roster of professors from non-mainland countries please, countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Europe, who all agree liberal democracy cannot work in China and that the only alternative therefore, is a police state.Chinese people are free to express their ideas in public but not in writing.
In other words, there is no press or speech freedom in this country of any substance. You can whisper your opinions to your friends, but don't broadcast it publically,I often held public debates and classes where I openly critizied communist leaders and policies but nobody cared! Everybody agreed with me! If I was to put my opinions in writing and publish them then I would be in trouble (Not like America's Post 911 current political state). Chinese people are free to attend religious ceremonies as they wish - many of my students were Christian. I often discussed the Bible and religion in my class.
All I can say regarding this gold plated, bold faced lie is that it makes me nauseas. The vigorous and many times brutal persecution of Christians (and Buddhists, even the Shaolin Temple doesn't get off the hook. Indeed, several years ago the present grandmaster of the Song Shan Temple was spirited out of the country by friends to escape persecution by the government for being a pain in the ass of some kind) in China has been so well known for so long now that this attempt at sugar coating is quite simply beyond the pall. I've come face to face with something here but I really don't quite know what yet.
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What happened at Tienanmen was nothing more than typical for a Communist regime. The same thing happened in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968, only in those cases, those countries were invaded by their slave masters. In our case, the slave masters were indigenous to the country and used their own military.Actually the Communists have done much worse, but no worse than other political groups.
And your point is?
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We've heard this kind of stooging for Communist dictators before. Many did it for Stalin, and a number continue to do it for Castro, Chavez, and now, for the Butcher of Beijing. I'd like to see this individual tell Harry Wu this stuff to his face.I am very aware and familiar with Harry Wu's work. He is a brave individual who is fighting for social justice in China. In China there is no social justice, ie, justice favors the rich (like America).
Oh, I see. You support Deng's slaughter of hundreds of peaceful teenagers and young adults and then his relentless pursuit and imprisonment of pro-Democracy leaders (which is why Wu left the country), and you also support the people he slaughtered and imprisoned. I see.
I also see you are a leftist as I suspected, which comes as little surprise.
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His shilling for Communist barbarity and despotism and his claims that the Chinese are happy in their collectivist police state is utterly classic, textbook Cold War era fellow traveling. This is the kind mind stopping ignorance and glassy eyed rationalizing that it takes long and careful cultivation to bring to maturity. What he fails to tell us is, of course, that no one ever asked the Chinese people about it.Actually many people have been asking the Chinese people about their feelings. My family is Chinese, my friends are Chinese, all of my students were Chinese, my patients were Chinese, and everybody I met in China were Chinese. Chinese people are content with their lives because they don't waste their time worrying about what they can't change. Of course if I said that everybody was smiling and happy (like in classic Culture R. poster) it would be ridiculous. Chinese people hate their government but accept it. They worry more about raising their children, having a steady job, and keeping healthy.
Anyone who believes a word of this will also believe everything ever written by Walter Duranty, Ezra Pound, Corliss Lamont, Noam Chomski, and any number of apologists for Socialist tyranny during the last century and this new one who drank the Potemkin cool aid and took the plunge.
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There is only one political party in China. It he thinks Deng had no choice but to unleash his military on masses of unarmed, peaceful protesters, I wonder what his explanation for the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution might be.The Great Leap forward was spearheaded by other ignorant Communists. The Cultural Revolution was Mao's idea to retain political power. They are separate but all equally devastating events.
My question was not about the origin of Mao's mass land collectivization program, but how you would explain the 20 to 43 million people who died in it, vis-a-vis the excuses you made for Deng's killing of some hundreds (as Stalin said, one death is a tragedy, a million is just a statistic).
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The Communists stand at present as the world's greatest mass murderers in pursuit of gknowlten's peaceful society, and that number is now approaching 60 million. Deng was there with Mao through it all, he was an old cadre and revolutionary and was part of that ruling class through Mao's reign.No arguments there - Communism overtly does what Democracy covertly does as a political institution. You have forgot about Jiang Jie Shi (Jiang Kai Shek) who killed most of the Chinese with his Nationalist Party before they fled to Taiwan.
You're first comment is unintelligible (although the aforementioned Dr. Chomski would probably understand it). You mean to tell me that the 2,335,000 Chinese killed by the Guomindang during the Chinese civil war compares with the 60 to 70 million killed by the Communists in their search for social justice?
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The claims that China is a "collective" society (whatever this means) and that democracy will not work there are as baseless as claims made for other societies by those who wish to white wash and excuse despotism. Hmmm. Democracy won't work in China, and yet, uhh....let's see, there was Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Majority Chinese societies constructed by ethnic Chinese, all of whom had come from the mainland at one point or another. Would anyone have thought, at the end of the nineteenth century, or even better, in 1945, that democracy would ever work in Japan?"Collective society" is a sociological term for societies that are collective based, not like individualistic societies like America. Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore are small controllable areas where democracy flourishes because of course, they are small and controllable. Japan and Germany did well as democracy's because they are homogenous cultures confined within a small geographical area. America forcefully integrated economic policies so of course they eventually become democratic. Countries, like those in the Middle East, are not culturally and socially homogenous so Democracy doesn't work there either.
Besides your definition being circular and explaining nothing, economic policy has nothing to do with America's success as a Republic. There is no inherent reason why China, with is many subcultures and minorities, could not exist peacefully, side by side, in a democratic state based in the concepts of the rule of law and equality under the law, with an understanding that each is free to live his life basically as he sees fit as long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others to do so. Its interesting that you frame the problem of a democratic society in terms governmental control of the population and not in terms of a self governing society in which hetrogenous peoples can exist together in peace through the acceptance of a political contract defining the boundaries, based in the rule of law, between themselves and others.
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This place is becoming a clearing house for the mentally and morally infirm. Next we'll have alien abduction stories. Just give it time.
I can't wait for that to happen. But seriously, you are very educated and correct in your views about the negative effects of Communism but you lack social and cultural understanding of China.
Frankly, and in all seriousness, even though you say you've lived there, I don't really think you have all that much understanding about Chinese culture either, at least not historical Chinese culture. Your entire perspective is of modern, post Maoist China, a China in which people think twice before being seen with a Bible in public, think twice before writing poetry, history, or philosophy some bureaucrat may not like, are told how many children they can have on pain of docked pay, loss of job, and the elimination of any chance for higher education in the future for that child, can be sent to a forced labor camp for practicing their religion or publishing politically incorrect ideas on any number of subjects, can be subjected to forced abortions and sterilizations if found with child beyond the prescribed one, can be imprisoned, tortured and beaten for religious proselytizing etc, etc, etc.
Much of Harry Wu's work here, in fact, has been alerting America and the world to the Lao Gai system in China, a system even the Russians abandoned at least at the falling of the Berlin Wall. A Potemkin village tour is one thing. Living in one is another.