Maybe China will be united soon. Yes, you heard me right… once Ma Ying-Jeou gets into power, and the KMT realize their long-time dream of retaking the mainland. The capital of Taipei will then be moved to Nanjing. Chiang Kai-Shek will finally be able to rest in peace.
With all the unrest going on in China in the past ten years… how’s about another peasant revolution?!
GE-MING jia you!!!
Peasant revolution?..Shoddy dressers, no manners, bad teeth…sorry…its just hard to find a good class of revolutionary now a days.
or -
“Sire…the peasants are revolting!”
“Hmmm…they certainly are.”
Hahaha… man, that’s hilarious!
Aside from that… in Edward Luttwak’s book, “Coup D’Etat: A Practical Handbook,” he states that peasant revolutions don’t work these days. Basically, military technology is just too advanced. However, guerilla tactics still DO work.
I wonder if the KMT mercaneries in the Thai-Burma-Laos border region would still be of any use? Their flower business must be turning a handsome profit by now.
shawn_c -
Know the book well. He gets some things right.
There has never been a “peasant” revolution.
easants have to work to feed theirself and their families. They have no time for going around spouting cliche’ed nonsense and formulationg plans for chaos against “Da’ Man”
Its the psuedo-elite malcontents living on someone elses dime (usually Daddy or “Da’ Mans”) who have access to the materials that allow for such things to occur. They make the ‘impassioned’ speeches about the need for ‘Peace & Justice’ while preparing to use the impoverished peasants as their convienient cannon-fodder.
Much easier to wear a beret, sip latte’s on a college campus and be malcontent than it is to actually have to work and feed a family.
Revolutionaries have typically been the work people from mid to upper-middle class backgrounds with some college experience, several failed attempts at employment and girl friends who wear black turtle-necks and smoke Gauloise.
And they have very small peni…or so its rumored.
[quote=“shawn_c”]Maybe China will be united soon. Yes, you heard me right… once Ma Ying-Jeou gets into power, and the KMT realize their long-time dream of retaking the mainland. The capital of Taipei will then be moved to Nanjing. Chiang Kai-Shek will finally be able to rest in peace.
With all the unrest going on in China in the past ten years… how’s about another peasant revolution?!
GE-MING jia you!!![/quote]
[color=red]D- See me after class[/color]
TainanCowboy… yeah, you’re totally right. It’s because those pseudo-elites are not real elites that they need to do something like that to prove themselves. If someone had the respect, the money, etc… they wouldn’t wanna change things!
One of my profs was saying, those philosophers, such as Confucius, Socrates, etc., were all on the fringes of the elite - that’s why they had to do something extraordinary to stand out.
^^ Another middle class pseudo elite with a penis envy complex, I assume. 
Well there’s some insightful commentary for you… the revolutionaries are usually the ones that aren’t in power. Brilliant discourse.
There are notable counter-examples, of course, but perhaps it’d be asking too much for you to recognize the similarities. Gorbachev, perhaps, and his ‘revolution’ eliminating the USSR. Mao, perhaps, and the Cultural Revolution that he created. Chen Shui-bian, perhaps, in the Taiwanese Revolution that he’d surely lead if he had any hope of victory.
But that’s really just a tangential point. I really can’t figure out what the message behind this thread was, except perhaps an overwhelming surplus of boredom on the behalf of the OP.
It was an attempt at reverse psychology.
See the TI supporter goes, “China will be united.”
So the logical response for a pro-China individual “China will be divided”
A crafty lot those TI supporters. Almost fell for it.
To set the record straight, Gorbachev didn’t purposely plan the downfall of the USSR. He wanted reform, and unintentionally set in motion a series of events which resulted in the collapse of the USSR.
Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” wasn’t exactly a revolution. More like an indiscriminate killing of “enemies”, reciting his quotes from the red book, and basically going nuts. Funny how he first used his Red Guards, and then turned on them!
The thread was made in jest… but I somehow knew it would incite a reaction. 
If that’s the case why should any country reform. They can also accidently set off a series of event to cause the country’s collapse.
Whether it be the USA, ROC, or PRC?
That’s right, most revolutionaries or progressives don’t come from either the lower or upper classes. The lower classes are too concerned with getting by day to day and most are under-educated. The upper classes don’t want major change because they’re already the elite, they already have what they want and let the masses eat cake. The only genuinely progressive class have been the middle class. The middle class, the bourgeios - the class where a strong work ethic and access to college education combine to make them struggle for betterment, either of their own personal station or for the greater good of society. Nearly all, at least 90%, of the progress made in the West in the past few centuries has been due to the rising middle classes. No peasant or aristocrat has been a Founding Father of a modern nation. Well, maybe George Washington, but he wasn’t that “elite”, he and Jefferson were gentleman-farmers, not nobility or anything.
C’mon shawn, no need to repeatedly prove your ignorance. We already understand you. ‘Indiscriminate’ killing, eh?
[quote=“cctang”][quote=“shawn_c”]Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” wasn’t exactly a revolution. More like an indiscriminate killing of “enemies”, reciting his quotes from the red book, and basically going nuts. Funny how he first used his Red Guards, and then turned on them![/quote]C’mon shawn, no need to repeatedly prove your ignorance. We already understand you. ‘Indiscriminate’ killing, eh?[/quote]cc-
You want to defend/jusitify Mao’s record on death & destruction?
Bring it on dude…LOL
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]
You want to defend/jusitify Mao’s record on death & destruction?
Bring it on dude…LOL[/quote]
Sure, let’s do it. How’re we doing the math?
If Mao is responsible for the death of 30 million dead in the GLF (a number that’s oft misquoted, since it refers to 30 million people who reportedly had their lives shortened as a result of famine)… then does he get some sort of positive credit for building up a national economy + stability that allowed the Chinese population to grow dramatically (in overall numbers, in standard of living, in life expectancy) from '49 until his death in '76?
Mao was hardly a saint; he wasn’t the sun, even if that’s what the songs said. He was clearly an over-bearing man who thought little of the lives of individual man, and who had no interest in the concept of sharing political power with anyone. He was an ideologue who, in his old age, became increasingly confused about what his ideology was really about. He proved far better at motivation and rabble-rousing than administration of a 600 million man nation.
I’m a better guy than Mao. I haven’t killed anyone (especially the innocent), or shortened anyone’s life significantly through my wrongful policies. I’m also a worse guy than Mao. I haven’t inspired the righteous action of a single man (forget the actions of hundreds of millions), and I can’t say with any credibility that I’ve improved the life of a single man (just struggling with my own!).
So. Let’s go. Who shall we compare him against? Gandhi, perhaps? Gandhi educated the human species to the amazingly empowering art of civil disobedience. He helped speed the end of colonialism in the third world; a remarkable man. But what exactly has Gandhi done for the people of India? Why is India/Pakistan still wracked with sectarian violence and unconscionable poverty?
What other great man should we be pointing to? The Dalai Lama? Certainly, he’s brought spiritual wealth to millions of Westerners over-bloated with their own material wealth; but what has he brought to his own people? Or, for that matter, what has he achieved for anyone in the third world?
Nelson Mandela? An inspiring man who ended the system of apartheid. Undoubtedly; an admirable man. Has anyone checked in on South Africa lately? A corrupt democratic political system where his own former allies and current heirs trade political favors for economic wealth. A nation that’s still wracked by poverty and pervasive violence. What has he actually done?
We can comment all day about the lack of “badness” inherent in all of these remarkable men. I don’t know if Mandela, the Dalai Lama, or Gandhi have ever intentionally wronged an innocent man. I don’t know if they’ve ever called upon their followers to attack anyone. Mao, on the other hand, was one bad-ass m$therfu$$er. He never compromised with his ideological or political enemies. Immoral effectiveness were preferred over moral impotence.
I think we all accept that soldiers and the generals that guide them do “horrible things” in war. They attack, they kill, and sometimes they’re ordered to die; there are no greater moral crimes any human being could possibly be guilty of. Well, that’s what China has been for most of the past two centuries: it has been at war. It wasn’t always a war against a visible enemy with guns/planes/tanks. But it was a war, nonetheless… against poverty, against those who preferred that disgusting status quo, against weakness, against backwardness… against the insidious nature of human civilization that allowed what was once the largest and wealthiest nation on earth to collapse into dust and ashes.
The China that Mao was born into was an ugly, dirty, violent place. Mao, as you’d expect, was an ugly, dirty, and violent individual. And yet
He has left China, both the nation and hundreds of millions of every day Chinese, with dramatic emotional scars that might never heal. But he also pacified and energized a China that had been in a self-destructive tailspin for a century.
He left a China that is adrift today, lacking a strong guiding ideology… but at least he also ripped out the old divisive feudal authorities and the religious factionalism that dominated old China. (How many Chinese lives were lost or “shortened” through the major religious revolutions of the 19th century: Muslim uprising in Gansu+Xinjiang, and the Christian-inspired Taiping rebellion of the east/south? How many Chinese lives were lost or “shortened” through the petty factionalism and warlord rivalries of the early 20th century?) He left a China that’s strongly convinced it owes a responsibility to improve the livelihood of all Chinese; we still lack the ability to do so, but don’t think for a second that we lack the motivation to do so.
He built a strong China that’s capable of independent policy, a China that’s capable of asserting its own interests without having to bow to any foreign colonial power, a China that doesn’t owe its creation and existence to any foreign nation or people.
And in those little points lie my final judgement about Mao… and I will pronounce it with great conviction: Mao left China a far better nation, than the one that he was born into. How many of us can claim the same?
But but… LTH is the “Father of Democracy” and CSB is the “Son of Taiwan”
Surely these two legacies will overshadow Mao.
Not to mention Annette “Mother Theresa” Lu.
:roflmao:
Mao is just a Chinese figure. The Taiwanese trinity are not.
How many people here are spouting the same propoganda we’ve heard day in and day out? Eh? Makes you wonder. You could go back and look back and you’ll find about 3,000 posts all around the internet where they repeat the same things over and over again in a drone like fashion.
Not to knock on your thread or anything, but sometime down the line we’ll see the same posts over and over again, maybe with a new crew, maybe not. Definitely the same style of quips.
I first began lurking on this forum 2 years ago, and I’ll tell you that nothing changes… Been here once, seen it all. yawn :snore:
Actually, it is more dependent on how cute the girl that is sitting next to me at the computer when I enter these post. 
If ac_dropout strongly believs in unification - why doesn’t he go and unify himself with the China he loves so much?! Just go move there!!!
And everyone knows the only reason to support the status quo is the fact that it’s a non-violent middle ground.
Mao is responsible for the killing of around 70 million in his lifetime.
It’s funny how you Chicomms keep espousing China’s “need” to be a “powerful nation” in the modern Western sense. I thought you were against “Western Imperialism”? The notion of nation was invented by Westerns!
Because one person is killed, but two people are born… that makes the killing of that one person okay?!
Whatever… Chicomms are just a bunch of closet Western imperialists, anyway.