Not those with whom I have spoken. You write as if we are AT WAR with China. The people there are not 'the government'. Don't you think they want to be free of the oppression of Communism? Remember Tienanmen Square? Would you have that same courage?
I can't think of too many Americans who would cheer at the deaths of thousands of Chinese in a terror attack.
The ridicule posted here at FR is essentially cheering about their tragedy. Do you think that to be a Conservative American means you aren't allowed to show compassion for humanity?
I spoke with random strangers. Chinese you know have a way of telling you what you want to hear, and not just about politics.
You write as if we are AT WAR with China. The people there are not 'the government'.
Actually, the average Chinese I have spoken to thinks of Mao as a demi-god. The younger generation actually has a more favorable view than the older generation, which nonetheless venerates and makes excuses for Mao despite personal experience of his famines and personal knowledge of people killed during the Cultural Revolution.
Don't you think they want to be free of the oppression of Communism? Remember Tienanmen Square? Would you have that same courage?
The average Chinese thinks communism works as a political system for the benefit of China, and that without the Party, China wouldn't exist. Tiananmen Square was just a power grab by one faction. The majority of the Tiananmen Incident organizers are as pro-government as they are anti-American.
Were there brave people in the movement? Absolutely. The founders of the Communist Party were pretty brave, too. They fought a German-, then US-backed Kuomintang government that came close to wiping them out. And yet the Communists went on to invade Tibet and engineer famines that wiped out tens of millions of people within the Chinese empire.
We are not at war with China, but that's because of the moderation of the government. If it were up to the Chinese people... (It's weird spiral - the government plays the nationalist card, the people up the ante, the government plays along, and so on).