64 replies to this topic

[Topgun]

[FACTS AND DETAILS]
Feelings of Ordinary Chinese Toward Mao[/sub][/sub]

from:http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=1026&catid=3

Mao Mausoleum "When Mao died, I knew I had to cry," one Chinese man told Theroux. "We had been required to love him. I was just a little kid at school. I didn't feel anything, but the teachers were watching. I had to force myself to cry." [Source: "Riding the Iron Rooster" by Paul Theroux]

Many older Chinese continue to revere Mao. "Mao saved me," a 59-year-old man with 54,000 Mao buttons told the Washington Post, "He gave me food. I have deep feelings for the chairman...Mao saved us poor people." During Mao's time there was much less corruption than there is today and arguably more Communists were concerned about the welfare of the people.

"At least with fat, crazy Mao," a woman from Canton told Theroux, "they had a kind of faith—even idealism—and a sense of working together...There was a unity in that, but it's totally lacking now. They're not nice, they're not polite. I think they're lost and it will all end horribly for them."

The people in the countryside and workers who have failed to profit from the economic reforms are perhaps the ones today who look back on the Mao years with the most nostalgia. They see it as a time when jobs were secure; everyone was poor together; and Mao was a godlike leader. Dissident Liu Binyan wrote in Newsweek, "they feel that though life was hard in those years, it was more or less egalitarian, and people had the right to, moreover, to stop the wrongdoing of bureaucrats."

One man told AP in the early 2000s, “We Chinese have made a legend out of Mao. People like Chairman Mao now even better than when he was alive. He represents a China that stood up for itself, a China that became strong."

[Bao Pu]

Many older Chinese continue to revere Mao. "Mao saved me," a 59-year-old man with 54,000 Mao buttons told the Washington Post, "He gave me food. I have deep feelings for the chairman...Mao saved us poor people." During Mao's time there was much less corruption than there is today and arguably more Communists were concerned about the welfare of the people.

The people in the countryside and workers who have failed to profit from the economic reforms are perhaps the ones today who look back on the Mao years with the most nostalgia. They see it as a time when jobs were secure; everyone was poor together; and Mao was a godlike leader. Dissident Liu Binyan wrote in Newsweek, "they feel that though life was hard in those years, it was more or less egalitarian, and people had the right to, moreover, to stop the wrongdoing of bureaucrats."

Interesting

[rudolf250]

His influence is mostly negative. Chinese economic reform that took place in 1978 was just to revert back his disastrous policy.

[china_newz]

The cult of Mao resonates more with the Chinese people than the policies of Mao.   Isn't there like a 70/30 ranking of him?  70% good, 30% bad.  

[Eidolon]

The cult of Mao exists simply because he is the winner of the Chinese Civil War. Had he been the loser, and Chiang the winner, we'd be talking about the cult of Chiang instead.