147 replies to this topic

[mrclub]

do classrooms in China still put Sun Yat-sen's portrait ?

[xifangren]

Sun Zhong Shan clearly worked to overthrow the Qing government capital at Beijing China. Sun had almost no relation to Taiwan except that he vehemently objected to Qing ceding Taiwan to the Japanese.

That Sun's is seen as Guofu in Taiwan is clearly leftover ambivalence in Taiwan. If Taiwan considers Sun Guofu, then Beijing should be a part of Taiwan, or Beijing and Taiwan are both parts of the Guo in Guofu.

I certainly consider Sun, not Mao, Guofu of China. That the PRC is virtually all of China is only one consideration. The other is which is more revolutionary and seminal for the Chinese civilzation generations to come, the overthrow of Qing to form the ROC or the defeat of the ROC Nationalist by the CCP? I think the former.

Edited by xifangren, 04 December 2009 - 08:59 PM.

[WuXiaHer0]

Well,Sun Yat-sen is the Father of MODERN China.
As for Mao,he's the Father of Communist China.

Then again,there's no reliable source for this.

[xifangren]

Communist China is/was a transient entity; modern China is permanent.

Mao had transient importance to China; Sun, permanent.

I'd say Mao had importance in class struggle within China; vs. the rest of the world in terms of standing up against imperialism, Mao’s effort in this regard has been misplaced and anachronistic. Western imperialism expired on Western volition before the PRC's opening up to the rest of the world.

Without Sun, what would China be today? May be a constitutional monarchy. Somehow I can't believe China today can still be an absolute monarchy.

But then without Sun or Mao (which one or both), would China had held on long enough for Japan to need to attack Pearl Harbor? If Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor, would Japan have conquered China?

Edited by xifangren, 07 December 2009 - 04:22 PM.

[ahxiang]

Communist China is/was a transient entity; modern China is permanent.

Mao had transient importance to China; Sun, permanent.

I'd say Mao had importance in class struggle within China; vs. the rest of the world in terms of standing up against imperialism, Mao’s effort in this regard has been misplaced and anachronistic. Western imperialism expired on Western volition before the PRC's opening up to the rest of the world.

Without Sun, what would China be today? May be a constitutional monarchy. Somehow I can't believe China today can still be an absolute monarchy.

But then without Sun or Mao (which one or both), would China had held on long enough for Japan to need to attack Pearl Harbor? If Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor, would Japan have conquered China?

You have a point that Mao was irrelevant as to China's role against imperialism. The Republic of China, from day one, was faced with the British imperialism, the top enemy of China as well as the world. British imperialists, after the so-called Great Reapprochment with the United States, tacked on the United States to be its ultimate "imitator". The United States, in the late 19th century, began to walk in the footsteps of British imperialism, snapping Hawaii and the Philippines consecutively, which led to the debate as to republic vs empire. There was in America the China Exclusion Act, by the way, that became effective around that time. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, ROC, in fighting against the British imperialism, endeavored to revoke the extraterritoriality, take back the customs, and etc. Every step of the way, the British attempted to obstruct China's efforts. It was in 1943 that ROC finally done away with the majority of the unequal terms imposed on China, as well as done away with the Chinese Exclusion Act.

There is one single Chinese who realized the role of British imperialists. He was Lanxin Xiang who published a book entitled "Recasting the Imperial Far East - Britain and America in China, 1945-1950." Nobody else had ever come on top of Xiang in piercing the mask of the British hand in the demise of the Republic of China. What you had was merely Yu Maochun's inference to Comintern agent Chen Hansheng's seeking shelter with the British in Culcutta in 1944, nothing more than that. Waserstein casually mentioned the collaboration between the CCP and the British secret service in Shanghai, and it was just a casual sentence. To fully understand the British role, you want to read CPUSA writing "The British role in creating Maoism" by Michael Billington at
http://www.larouchep...and_maoism.html

[xifangren]

"You have a point that Mao was irrelevant as to China's role against imperialism."

Yes. Certainly

People progress; China does, so does the West. Japan was defeated and has been in a different category for some time; even Japan progresses.

There has been much social progress in the USA.

In Europe, there has been much edification on the issue of colonialism, even a little before WWII.

Within 20 years after WWII, the major global de-colonization movement started under Western initiative.

I am sure that Mao thought that China needed to stand up against imperialism, but by the end of the CR there was little imperialism to stand against. Have Asians had to stand against Western imperialism ever since the late 1960's? I don't think so. Mao's anti-imperialism amounted to nothing.

Mao has been a seminal figure in terms of social/class struggle within China, but not against the West.

Some people say that Sun had not lived long for the fruition of a republic. I disagree. Sun gave the Chinese, the more educated elite, spirituality of a republic, and Qing was indeed overthrown. Sun actually gave China an effective and lastingly valuable start toward a republic and hopefully democracy later.

Sun gave China a lot of spirituality.

[ahxiang]

"You have a point that Mao was irrelevant as to China's role against imperialism."

Yes. Certainly

People progress; China does, so does the West. Japan was defeated and has been in a different category for some time; even Japan progresses.

There has been much social progress in the USA.

In Europe, there has been much edification on the issue of colonialism, even a little before WWII.

Within 20 years after WWII, the major global de-colonization movement started under Western initiative.

I am sure that Mao thought that China needed to stand up against imperialism, but by the end of the CR there was little imperialism to stand against. Have Asians had to stand against Western imperialism ever since the late 1960's? I don't think so. Mao's anti-imperialism amounted to nothing.

Mao has been a seminal figure in terms of social/class struggle within China, but not against the West.

Some people say that Sun had not lived long for the fruition of a republic. I disagree. Sun gave the Chinese, the more educated elite, spirituality of a republic, and Qing was indeed overthrown. Sun actually gave China an effective and lastingly valuable start toward a republic and hopefully democracy later.

Sun gave China a lot of spirituality.

I will present some of the opinions that differ from you. You do not sound like a "Xifangren" in my opinion, not a "zhongguoren".


Sun Yat-sen was a pragmatical person. He colluded with Japanese twice, during the 1894-5 Sino-Japanese War and the 1900 Boxer War, to overthrow Manchu Qing. Sun never " vehemently objected to Qing ceding Taiwan to the Japanese."



"People progress; China does, so does the West. Japan was defeated and has been in a different category for some time; even Japan progresses.

There has been much social progress in the USA.

In Europe, there has been much edification on the issue of colonialism, even a little before WWII."

There were many factors contributing to the collapse of colonialism. But none of them had arisen as a result of benigh transformation of the colonialists and imperialists. I would say Wilson's self-determination during WWI was a good inducement, which directly contributed to the Korean independent movement of 1919 and the subsequent Japanese massacre across the Korean peninsula. WWI, for Germany's defeat, first gave China a taste of recovering the rights. The subsequent factor was Soviet Russia's agitations in 1920s. The Soviets had some role in forcing the European nations into giving up the extraterritorial rights in China. During the WWII, Roosevelt, who resented the British imperialism, first outlined the Atlantic Charter, a blueprint for the independence of Asian countries, that was sabotaged by the British. (Roosevelt's reason of using secret emissaries was due to his suspicion that the British hands controlled the State Department, which was partially true, as the truth was that the Comintern agents controlled probably 65% of the decision-making at the State Department, while the British hands controlled about 30% of the State Department.)

ROC was at the forefront of anti-imperialist movements. The British was fearful of the possibility that ROC would obtain the freedom from the colonial shackles - because China was looked upon by all the peoples of Asia as the beacon tower and could trigger the domino effect that was to lead to the collapse of British colonialism. Unlike the CCP, KMT, in 1920s, 30s and 40s, had organizations, so-called "dang bu" or party branches, across Asian countries to push forward the anti-colonial movements. What the CCP did was draining the overseas Chinese elites by inducing about one million overseas Chinese into mainland China and then persecuting them during the anti-rightist movement and the cultural revolution, not to mention the dire consequence of ethnic cleansing against Chinese in Indonesia in the aftermath of Mao-sponsored armed rebellion against the Dutch. (See the point about the armed rebellion against the Dutch, not the British? Mao, who was nurtured by the British, had a deal with the British, not restricted to the territory of Hong Kong.)

"I am sure that Mao thought that China needed to stand up against imperialism, but by the end of the CR there was little imperialism to stand against. Mao has been a seminal figure in terms of social/class struggle within China, but not against the West."

Mao was ambitious in that he wanted to be the communist leader after his master, Stalin, died. Whatever Mao did, like his bomdbardment of Quemoy in 1958, was for sake of challenging the new Russian leader who wanted a rapprochement with the United States. Mao's export of revolution, mostly in Africa, was more to do with winning 'friendship' of those African countries against the Soviet Union. The United States, with some of the old China hands claiming that their early prediction became true when the PRC broke with the USSR [like in the case of a broken clock being right twice a day], did not believe in the tense confrontation till the Soviets proposed to the US to have a joint [atomic] attack at the PRC. Since the Soviet Union was more an immediate threat, it was natural that Mao and the "arch-imperialist" - the U.S. - ironically became friends. Mao might through he was smart and controlled his fate and China's fate. The truth was that Mao was merely a pawn in the hands of the Soviets and the British.

For the role of the Soviet Cambridge spies and the British colonialists during Mao's cultural revolution, refer to http://www.chinahist...ier-eg-by-1960/

Now a brief summary of motives of the interest groups involved here.

As people said that the stock market was rigged, the power politics was set up. In ancient China, like Qin Dynasty, wise leaders knew "money talks" and enacted laws to limit the influence of money and money changers. The story of Qin's prime minister Luu Buwei selling his [merchant] fortune to rescue the crown prince from hostage at Zhao principality was an good example. In Britain, up till Cromwell and the Glorious Revolution, there was law banning the meddling of politics and diplomacy by the merchants - such as the Venitian and Jewish financial blocs. In the 19th century, some of those families, in both Britain and the United States, reaped fortune by engaging in opium selling to Manchu China. With opium money, the same families invested in the industrial revolution, and founded companies such as the AT&T, as well as imported Chinese coolies for building roads and railways. Those families, on both sides of the Atlantic, became powerful enough to control the economy of the Great Britain and the United States. They meddled in Russia, playing the role of directly sponsoring the Japanese attack at Russia as well as the rebellion by the Russian socialists and later Bolsheviks. At the national level, the motive of the British/American capitalists was to overthrow Russian Czar whose expansionist policies made him enemy of every other powers, and at the ethnic level, British/American capitalists tried to help the Russian Jews to create an Israel in Russia. Twists and turns occurred when Roosevelt came to power in 1933. Roosevelt, while harboring the ideas of the Soviet command economy and hiring quite some Jews, was vehemently opposed to the British colonialists who were allied with another group of powerful capitalists, i.e., the London and Wall Street bankers, with some of them being Jews. The British, like Churchill, likened the emergence of the American power as a product of the British incubation, namely the saying that Britain was to the United States the same way as Greece was to Rome. What happened was that the "British hands" and the Soviet agents inside of the United States State Department [as well as Treasuty, OSS and etc] colluded together in destroying the Republic of China. In the matter of taking out Chiang Kai-shek and nurturing Mao, British/American capitalists shared the same objective.

Above, I had covered the motives of the British and the American prior to the rise of Mao's PRC as well as the time period prior to Mao's death. What about the motives of the British and the American today, this very day? You would need to look no further than the records of the Nixon family, such as Nixon's son and grandson, et al. The whole Nixon family are the top guests of the PRC, and they have extensive business interests in China, beyond your ken. -This is why the PRC is prodding on the current path, with no chance of revision. It is not merely the interests of the PRC core leadership and their sons and daughters at stake, but also the Nixon family and the American corporate interests at stake. (Please refer to http://www.chinahist...2 for the NAFTA story, as well as the "Walmart: A Progressive Success Story")

Edited by ahxiang, 13 December 2009 - 12:23 AM.

[melody]

Do not doubt,Father of China is Sun
http://baike.baidu.com/view/65205.htm

It's the folk idea,and the official idea never appear.

Edited by melody, 05 January 2010 - 09:03 AM.

[Lafaso870]

Sun is a starter ,but actually the country is built by Mao's struggle,this is the fact.

[lesterado]

Whenever you hear some people said so-and-so is the Father of a particular-country, its non-factual political propaganda. Its subjected to interpretations. History is never dictated by the efforts of a single individual. When an individual tries to take control, its most likely disastrous.

Sun Yat-sen is merely standing on the shoulders of pioneers like Huang Xing and Song Jiaoren. Sun, also known as "Sun the cannon" (not because he is endowed with a prominent one, but due to his propensity to brag about things) is seldom taken seriously by his contemporaries.

Mao on the other hand, seemed more like the Brat, rather than the Dad, of modern China.

Its ROC and PRC propaganda. Believe them at the expense of knowing the Truth.

Edited by lesterado, 19 December 2010 - 07:29 AM.

[lesterado]

Duplicate.

Edited by lesterado, 19 December 2010 - 07:29 AM.

[mingjing9496jayson]

I am from Hong Kong. We always regard Sun as the father of "China", instead of father of ROC or Taiwan. Actually most of Chinese people, no matter the Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or even overseas Chinese, consider that there is only one "state of China" but not two. Both of Mainland and Taiwan are in one state although there are more than one regime.

[maming]

I suggest that we should call Yuan Shikai as the Father of Republic of China.