"He was, as great a leader, as a Chairman Mao."

[Bono]

A 20 something Chinese woman's comment (seen on CNN Headline News) on the passing of Zhao Ziyang.

I think she masters the art of backhanded compliments.

[phk]

Chairman Mao was one of the greatest leaders the world has ever seen.

[Tory]

Chairman Mao was one of the greatest leaders the world has ever seen.

Yeah, if your definition of great is butchering millions of people.

What you've said is infinately worse than if I were to say that my idol is Ted Bundy.

[opebo]

Chairman Mao was one of the greatest leaders the world has ever seen.

Yeah, if your definition of great is butchering millions of people.

What you've said is infinately worse than if I were to say that my idol is Ted Bundy.

If they're the 'enemy' of the people you're leading, its a great success.  I think everyone can agree that Mao was an amazingly successful and able leader, though of course most of his goals would not be very popular.

[Rob]

Mao was an utter failure, and incompetent to boot. Not a "great" leader in any way.

[Jake]

Mao was as great a leader as Carter and had the human rights record of Stalin 10 times over

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Mao was an utter failure, and incompetent to boot. Not a "great" leader in any way.

He was "great" at crazy scams schemes that killed millions though

[Peter]

Chairman Mao was one of the greatest leaders the world has ever seen.

Yeah, if your definition of great is butchering millions of people.

If thats your definition of great then I would posit that Pol Pot is the greatest leader of all time given that he successfully executed about a third of his population. Frankly, the level of logistics involved in such an operation are breath-taking, shame he had to use such administrative ability for such destructive purposes.

[Storebought]

Mao was an utter failure, and incompetent to boot. Not a "great" leader in any way.

He was "great" at crazy scams schemes that killed millions though

He had that certain flair for sloganeering, too: "Great Leap Forward", "Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom" "Cultural Revolution"...

But none of Mao's measured up to the Imperial Japanese, though: When they raped Nanking, it was "East Asia for the Asiatics!" After they invaded the Dutch East Indies and the Phillippines, they made sure to set up a "Greater East Asia Co Prosperity Sphere"  Those humanitarians.

[jaichind]

Mao was one of the worst leaders in Chinese history.  Namely the Great Leap Forward was one the greatest fiascos ever.  I will give him credit for coming up with the atomic bomb and building an independent foreign policy that showed some flexiblity in forming an de facto alliance with the USA.  His irrational hostility to the USSR in the late 1960s and early 1970s should be condemed.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Mao was a great revolutionary but a lousy head of state.  China would have been much better off had he died shortly after Stalin did.

[phk]

Between 1949 and 1975, life expectancy in socialist China more than doubled, from about 32 to 65 years.

By the early 1970s, infant mortality rates in Shanghai were lower than in New York City!

The extent of literacy swelled in the span of one generation--from about 15 percent in 1949 to some 80 to 90 percent in the mid-1970s.

Let's go a bit more deeply into the profound difference socialism made to most people. Before the revolution came to power in 1949, China had been dominated by foreign imperialist powers. By practically all available measures, the economy was near the bottom of the world development scale. It had little industry. Agriculture was brutal serfdom. China had the most ruinous inflation in modern world history. It had a vast criminal underworld of gangsters and secret societies, and almost 90 million opium addicts. For women, it was a living ****: foot binding, arranged marriages, and child brides were widespread social practices.

These kinds of social evils and the extreme polarization of wealth that existed before 1949 were eradicated by the revolution: through the establishment of proletarian state power and the creation of a just social and economic order that unleashed the masses of people and served their interests.

Only a revolution could, and did, uproot the feudal economic system in the countryside. The land reform and repudiation of peasant debt carried out under the leadership of the Communist Party in the late 1940s and early 1950s represented the most massive expropriation and redistribution of wealth from rich to poor in world history.

Well lets look at China's industrial economy which under Mao grew impressively at an average rate of 10 percent per year, even during the Cultural Revolution.

China, the former "sick man of Asia," transformed itself into a major industrial power in the quarter century between 1949 and 1976 a rate of development comparable only to the greatest surges of growth in history.

Agriculture grew by some 3 percent a year, slightly exceeding population growth. By 1970, the problem of adequately feeding China's population had been solved. Keep in mind that the amount of arable land in China is only 70 percent of that in the U.S.but had to provide for four times as many people.

This was accomplished through integrated economic planning, a system of collective agriculture that promoted grass-roots mobilization, flood control, steady investment in rural infrastructure, and the equitable distribution of food to peasants and rationing of essential foods so that all people were guaranteed their minimal requirements.

This was a radical break with China's past in which floods, droughts, and feudal oppression caused routine mass starvation--a condition common today in many Third World countries.

To conclude.

Not only is the real record of Maoist China light years apart from what you've been told.

It is also completely different from the polarized and sweatshop-ridden capitalist China of today, which has nothing in common with socialism or Mao.

[they don't love you like i love you]

Mao was a great revolutionary but a lousy head of state.  China would have been much better off had he died shortly after Stalin did.

agreed.

[WMS]

Mao was a great revolutionary but a lousy head of state.  China would have been much better off had he died shortly after Stalin did.

agreed.

Yep. The Communists weren't even the first Chinese revolutionaries to come up with women's equality, better conditions for the peasants, and so on - that honor goes to the fascinating Christian-inspired Taiping revolutionary movement of the 19th Century. To be fair...the Chinese Communists do admit that the Taipings were the originators of the Chinese Revolutionary spirit.

Seriously, once the land has been redistributed and the literacy rate improved, Communists really should just step down at that point, since they've done about all the good they can do and haven't gotten around to discovering new and interesting ways to spark a mass famine...

[Bono]

I'm not sure you got it, but this thread wasn't about Mao, it was about backhanded compliments.

[Platypus]

Australian Treasurer Peter Costello on his then ALP counterpart, Simon Crean- "I love Simon".

[minionofmidas]

Pretty cool thread, actually.

[went that way]

Mao was a very good leader he just had too much power
"It is also completely different from the polarized and sweatshop-ridden capitalist China of today, which has nothing in common with socialism or Mao."
The goverment did force Wal Mart to have Unions though.