Does the spirit of Chairman Mao still live?

This is a link to a site about the life of Mao Tse-Tung that I found interesting and thought I would share.

I'm pretty sure that the Government of China blocks access to Second Life for it's citizens, but it would be really interesting to get a view point on all this from someone that actually lives in Communist China (as I am sure that this site puts a western spin on these events).


http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/mao.html


I found it particularly interesting how in 1959, after his social and economic policies turn out to be an utter failure, he publicly admits that he has no idea what he is doing and resigns. Yet a short time later he is back stirring up trouble and trying to regain power (despite the fact that his last attempt resulted in the deaths of 10's of millions of people).

One has to wonder if his return was caused by genuine concern for the welfare of the People, or if it was more the “Everyone should listen to me because I am the only one who knows what's right!” attitude of the typical egomaniac?

1966 was another interesting year. Here he tries to do an end run around the legitimate government of China by inciting the masses to rise up against those that he sees as having the wrong views. Any opposing view point is silenced. If someone dared to publicly voice a different point of view, they were labeled a subversive, then humiliated and marginalized. Anyone who disagreed with his point of view was simply eliminated.

Again, are these the actions of a man who truly believes in the revolutionary ideal, or are they more the actions of a man who desperately needs to be adored and held as a true hero by the masses? Was he holding the government accountable? Or had the insecurity of his egomania driven him almost to the point of megalomania?

I also found it interesting how in 1981 the government publicly recognized his mistakes. Yet they still considered his “immense contributions” as being immortal. Despite the fact that he was directly responsible for the death and suffering of 10's of millions of people, they still held him up as a great man. Did they do this because they truly believed that he made great contributions to the world? Or did they say this to help lend legitimacy to their own rule over China?

OK, so why did I post all this?

I am a firm believer that we must study History in order to learn from it. What did they do right? What did they do wrong? If we don't learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

Is there anything we can take from the life of Chairman Mao that can be applied today? I leave that for you to decide.

Sometimes, the good of the many outweigh the good of the few.

Doesn't Anshe Chung have an office somewhere in China, a load of students running her business or something?

That would imply that SL isn't banned in China.

Lewis

in order to know that, look at Taiwan which was the government Mao ran off the continent. I think that the wrong side won the civil war in China, but thats just me.

I currently live in China, the country that some people call "communist". Sofar the central government has not blocked or censored SL.

However, and this is no joke, just TODAY at midnight 31st July / 1st August the China Telecom began to block Second Life, the SL website and even the Linden Lab website. Since almost everybody in China goes through them, they effectively shut out more than a billion people from Second Life.

At ACS we immediately had to invoke our emergency plans we have for that situation. It sucked, but we have shown that we can still somehow operate even under these extreme circumstances.

If it weren't for Anshe and her good connections and lobbying groundwork that she laid for SL in China during the past couple of months, then SL would likely be dead in China now. Fortunately she managed to get them reopen access within less than a day.

Our Anshe = ROXXX

Holy crap, you don't suppose it was this very thread that made them block access do you?

Or does this happen ever so often?

Not to be rude, but that statement is too neutral. Does that mean you think Mao was a good influence on China, or a bad one?

I can't tell, and I'm interested in knowing.

When judging Mao one should also consider his educational background as a peasant in a country that at the time was completely underdeveloped. He for sure showed remarkable courage and took extreme risks when fighting the Japanese and the Kuonmindang when all the odds were greatly against the communist movement in China.

Sadly we know that a lot of revolutionary heroes and freedom fighters turned into miserable rulers later on. We have also seen ideologies and political concepts fail in practise that admirable people had fought for with their lifes. My personal take on Mao is that he likely did a lot better than I (or most everyone else) would have done would I have grown up in the same place receiving the same education.

This is an excellent point! The atmosphere that Mao grew up in would have surely colored his views on capitalism and government in general. There is no doubt that the common man had it rough in pre-revolutionary China.

Maybe it was his past that condemned him to fail in the future? His own personal bias and prejudices made it impossible for him to be an effective leader, even though they made him an excellent revolutionary. I don't think that Mao was evil, but I do think he lost his way in the end.

Perhaps one of the lessons that revolutionaries today can take from this is the need to truly know yourself, know your capabilities, your limits. To truly serve the good of the people it's necessary to keep your prejudices in check, and to know when it's time to step aside and let those who are better suited take the reins.

Not an easy task to do for someone as passionate as revolutionaries tend to be.

I think Billybob had a good point as well, as is demonstrated by the fact that the current Chinese government it trending more towards capitalist ideals and away from the hard line communist ideals.

The Chairman approves of this thread.

I don't know ask all the little 11-16 year old girls he used as his personal harem
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1452094/posts

In America, we call that an MMORPG sweatshop. By "students" she likely means "children" and by "office" she likely means "warehouse".

Speaking of letting your prejudices show...

Here is a link to a site with lots of these posters. I like it because they translate the slogans. They are pretty interesting to look at.

http://debrisson.free.fr/posters.html

THere's a reason China's passed laws that require any MMORPG providing service to them have their own seperate shard, you know.

too bad he wasn't in the US so we could arrest him for his shall we say "indescretions"

Don't you know that if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone, anyhow?

LOL

Actually I didn't know that such a law existed. Honestly, I'm not really sure what it means to have "it's own seperate shard". What does that mean, and how does that affect the MMORPG play?

a seperate server with its own world, it prevents Chinese players from contacting "outsiders"

Sweatshopping MMORPGs to farm in-game money to sell illicitly on the internet internationally got to be such a huge problem for both the companies (kills ingame economy) and the country itself that laws have been passed requiring Chinese players only be able to interact with Chinese players.

For context, from the San Jose Mercury News on July 18:



Rest of the story is here

Wow, I knew that some people farmed the games, but I didn't realize it was happening on this scale. Having separate shards is still a bummer though, I would love to get to know someone that lives in communist China. Hearing their point of view on things going on around the world would be extremely interesting.

But if they are not supposed to interact with anyone other than those living in China, how does Anshe and her people access the main grid with the rest of us? I know that she speaks German and I think I heard somewhere that she lives in Germany part of the time, so maybe that has something to do with it?

Not that I am trying to pry into her personal life, just wondering how she can have access when everyone else there can't.

Back to the topic at hand though, there really is no denying that the average person in China is much better off today than their counterpart from 1910. Not just economically, but socially and politically. But I still think the government can do better. China's human rights record isn't the best to say the least and there is still rampant corruption in the lower levels of government, especially in the rural areas.

The Chinese government's attempts to meld their communist ideals with the “better” parts of capitalism is fascinating as well. Historically these two philosophies have been mutually exclusive, so I am very interested to see how/if they succeed. I at least give them points for seeing the need to do so. History has pretty much proven that pure communism just doesn't work. If they can succeed at it, then they might actually come up with a better form of government than what we have in the west. I have my doubts, but looking at it as a huge social experiment I am anxious to see the outcome.

Whatever they do, they are certainly set to be one of the dominant world powers of the 21st century (both politically and economically), so it's in our best interests to try and understand them and find a way to work harmoniously with them.

Reduce their population.

With buffalo sauce on the side.

They do it because even though he's been dead for years. they're still scared shitless of him.