Miscellaneous News

A potato said:

Must have been Mao's purges of all the smart people in China. They must have either done to advancement in secret to spite Mao or idiots managed to achieve a miracle.

The narrative that Mao killed all the smart people in China literally make 0 sense when this is the era China space and Nuclear program we're developed and a strain of rice that can feed millions of people. Like the west needs to make their narratives make sense.

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Interesting. Is there a list of counterpoints that argues all of the common propaganda against Mao and Mao era PRC spread by the West and FLG up to this time. I'm aware of the US embargo that exacerbated the famine but is there any truth of mass killing of sparrows(?) or the logic behind it? I also get the impression that Mao wasn't really a great statesman/ruler in the same vein as current CPC brass or perhaps it was such a different time and circumstance that it needed a leader of Mao's quality. The comparison to Qin shi huang is often pointed out.

A potato said:

I mean if he bad at ruling then how come a completely destoryed country became a Nuclear power.

People forgot that the KMT inherited a island already developed by the Japanese and suffered no damage in ww2 along with US aid while the CCP inherited a large country that was completely destoryed with almost no aid what so ever.

The fact that PRC maintained independence while actually started to grow and become stable means Mao did something right. After all KMT had some many famine under their rule while the CCP only had one and after that no more.

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Mainland China under Mao came after over 100 years of near nonstop warfare from both foreign invasions and internal civil wars, was sanctioned by both the US led West and the Soviet led communist block (after the Sino-Soviet split in 1961), and was under a naval blockade imposed by Taiwan/ROC* that prevented even internal shipping between coastal mainland Chinese cities.

* Officially the naval blockade was imposed by Taiwan/ROC, but in reality the US was the true force behind the blockade due to the mutual defense treaty between the US and ROC. The naval blockade was lifted in 1979 when the US switched diplomatic recognition to the PRC.

It's not easy.

Updates to the procedures and methods of handling ammonium nitrate events are definitely required.

Randomuser said:

Rather than take the Westoid view of him being bad at ruling, I would say it would have been far better to have stepped back a bit and let others have more responsibility for the major decisions as time passed during the 50s. He is still human and can't do everything himself. Then a lot of stuff could have been avoided that would hurt his name.

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I see Mao as something who's very good at making high level leadership decisions, but bad if you ask him to be a bureaucrat that has to manage day to day running of the country.

Focusing on just his role after 1949 as chairman, he still made many right calls. For example his focus on Two Bombs One Satellite at great cost was absolutely correct and we have examples for and against in terms of North Korea and Iran to demonstrate the result of the two paths today. Had he not focuses on nuclear weapon and delivery system back then China might have missed the opportunity to join the P5 and be considered "legally owner of nuclear weapon" and be instead in an Israel type situation today.

He wasn't very good at economic policies and he thought he could use revolutionary spirit to overcome economic difficulties and those were his flaws. But such flaws were no where enough to make him bad at ruling.

Or if you want another comparison: Che Guevara was a lot worse than Mao at waging guerilla war and even worse at managing Cuba's economy. Although he uniquely could recognize he was no good as a bureaucrat and went back to what he did best (and then failed at it anyway).