I'm sure Mr. Zhanxuan has nothing to fear.
Posted on 12/26/2018 12:03:44 PM PST by C19fan
Chinese police detained a well-known Marxist at a top university on Wednesday, a witness said, on the sensitive anniversary of the 125th birthday of the founder of modern China, Mao Zedong, whose legacy remains deeply contested.
Qiu Zhanxuan, head of the Peking University Marxist Society, was grabbed and forced into a black car outside the east gate of Peking University by a group of heavy-set men who identified themselves as police, a student told Reuters.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Trotskyed?................
China has, as I have claimed for years, successfully transitioned from a Communist to Fascist dictatorship.
I am not sure one is better than the other.
It’s only a matter of degrees..................
There is communism in theory and communism in practice. Whenever communist theories are put into practice, it inevitably results in fascism, because the only way to do that is through force of government. One simple principal applies which communists refuse to acknowledge: power corrupts.
He was taken away vomiting dialectic pudding.
Barksing Marxing !
Communist theory is revolutionary and stands against the rich Chinese upper class. Maos message is radical and must be stamped out along with an older radical movement—the message of Jesus Christ.
Mao always warned that revisionists, bureaucrats and Neo-bourgeouis would constantly lead the Party away from its revolutionary roots!!
I'm sure Mr. Zhanxuan has nothing to fear.
He’d fit in well at most of our universities.
Mao’s butt-buddy in Albania, Enver Hoxha, was the same.
China is best understood as a nation ruled by an emperor with a hereditary aristocratic class carrying out the emperor’s edicts. Unlike earlier dynasties, the throne isn’t hereditary (yet?), mainly because of a lack of non-defective sons or sons with political ambitions among the emperors with the strongest grip on power. Mao had his son killed by USAF airstrike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Anying Deng’s only ambitious son, a Party member, was crippled during the Cultural Revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Pufang Xi has one daughter.
I’d say China is Leninist, which is just a way for “Communists” to justify assuming the emperor’s and the aristocracy’s powers in “the people’s” name. It’s never really been Marxist except in name only. Famines certainly killed few officials except those executed as counter-revolutionaries for reporting accurate (dismal) numbers in order to try to summon up food aid to save the commoners (i.e. non-Party members) starving to death by the tens of millions.
[In China, the right to private gun ownership is not guaranteed by law.
I’m sure Mr. Zhanxuan has nothing to fear.]
The issue was never gun possession. It was continued gun possession after the Communists took over, with capital punishment for having a gun, and bounties for turning in gun owners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_offences_in_China The Communists started their reign like every other dynasty in Chinese history (and like many other new regimes in other countries in medieval times), by purging (killing or imprisoning) potential political opponents. Many gun-owning land owners were killed outright along with their entire families. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_of_landlords_under_Mao_Zedong
Could they have resisted successfully? I think it’s unlikely, the government generally has the upper hand, as long as it’s somewhat united and ruthless in its approach to quashing resistance. Most rulers have eliminated guerrilla resistance using fairly low-tech, low-resource methods, by imposing collective punishment typically involving the physical elimination of anyone merely suspected of supporting guerrillas. From the standpoint of the ruler, it is better to kill 100 innocents than to let 1 rebel go free. Because that rebel could turn out to be Lenin (who did end up killing the entire Romanov clan - the last of the Russian royal family).
[Guerilla warfare can be easily defeated if the attackers are resolute.
Genghis Khan, probably the greatest conquerer ever, never had a problem with guerilla warfare, even though the lands he conquered included Afghanistan. Why? Because his army simply slaughter all civilians, including their babies, who dare to fight against them.
In the Vietnam war, the Americans struggled against the Vietcongs. When China fought Vietnam, China simply romped through North Vietnam (north of Hanoi), transport removable factories/infrastructure back to China while destroying those that they cannot bring back. One crack Vietnamese division that was rushed back from Cambodia wisely decided to settle into prepared defensive positions near Hanoi instead of reinforcing the surrounded troops north of Hanoi. Why didn’t China has problem with Vietcong guerilla fighters?
When I first visited China in the 1990s, a retired veteran bitterly told me that his Major was killed by a ~6 year old Vietnamese kid holding a secret pistol when he was giving out food to the kid. Apparently, this is not an isolated incident. Very soon, they enacted Genghis Khan’s strategy. North Vietnamese villagers encountered were simply labeled as “civilian militia”, treated as combatants and showed no mercy. PLA never encounter anymore guerilla problems because there were no civilians left to provide the guerilla with information, shelter and food!
In the 1980s, there is no internet and no international reporter who has access to report on this. Chinese body counts, which included “civilian militia combatants”, concluded that enemy casualties were in excess of 10 times PLA losses.]
If you haven't read it, I'd recommend the somewhat outdated but highly relevant The Samurai, the Mountie and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies. Professor Kopel does an outstanding job of defending his thesis that effective gun control and/or gun rights are tethered to a nation's culture. Thus, an individualist country like the US (the cowboy) would chafe at gun control while in Japan (where the Samurai protects others) gun control works because it is...
a racially homogenous society (97% ethnic Japanese) with a state religion (Shinto). Police are not handcuffed by civil rights concerns. The criminal confession rate of 95% is attributed to routine police torture of suspects (pages 25 and 26) and even illegally-obtained evidence is admissible in court. Japan is a police state and is an island.
Kopel didn't cover China but I'd be interested in knowing the extent to which China's pre-Mao culture was more akin to individualism or collectivism.
Thank you again.
I’d say China is in transition to some point that is not actually known.
The youth are a force to be rekoned with as are the emerging and respected chicaps to which the youth aspire.
How ya gonna keep em down on the farm after they’ve got daisey maes? (and ripped knee jeans)
I think it's traditions more than culture. The Chinese way of war involves giving no quarter, although the losing parties will always ask for it - understandably, given the stakes (i.e. not only their deaths, but the deaths of all their kin and perhaps close acquaintances).Thank you for the extremely thoughtful reply. It is a good query: would the tactics you outlined have a chance of breaking the back of an individualist nation? Against the tactics you outlined, I *could* see many people being like Loyalists in the Revolution and siding with the govt/"Great Britain." However, there is no doubt many of the nation's owners of the estimated 300-600 million firearms would rather die that give up their guns and I could also see gun owners becoming even more brutal in retaliating in the face of the tactics you outline...two can play at that game.
If you haven't read it, I'd recommend the somewhat outdated but highly relevant The Samurai, the Mountie and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies. Professor Kopel does an outstanding job of defending his thesis that effective gun control and/or gun rights are tethered to a nation's culture. Thus, an individualist country like the US (the cowboy) would chafe at gun control while in Japan (where the Samurai protects others) gun control works because it is...
a racially homogenous society (97% ethnic Japanese) with a state religion (Shinto). Police are not handcuffed by civil rights concerns. The criminal confession rate of 95% is attributed to routine police torture of suspects (pages 25 and 26) and even illegally-obtained evidence is admissible in court. Japan is a police state and is an island.
Kopel didn't cover China but I'd be interested in knowing the extent to which China's pre-Mao culture was more akin to individualism or collectivism.
Thank you again.
My impression of the Chinese is that they are extremely individualistic relative to society at large. Whereas the average American hews towards the collective. To get a couple of Chinese to overlook their individual or familial interests to work for the greater good is a difficult thing. Hence the line-cutting and litterbug tendencies we see among Chinese tourists the world over, and the rampant tax evasion and corner-cutting on materials that have become an issue in China itself. In this respect, they are similar to much of the developing world. Whereas Americans volunteer at their kids' schools as a matter of reflex and obey the law, whether it's paying taxes or not running red lights.
The idea of the Chinese being a docile mass of people probably comes from the fact that the average individual is fairly pleasant to deal with. Back in the 18th century, foreign diplomats and merchants who ventured into China found the domestics they employed to be attentive, almost servile. But that's the Chinese tradition. Servants were expected to be docile, at a time when their family land holdings had been subdivided (due to multiple sons) to the point of postage stamp-sized lots, the trades were a constant struggle, with guilds limiting admission, and work with noble or wealthy families being plum assignments because of their relative stability and the potential for advancement. These domestics appeared docile, because that's what Chinese employers expected of the help, and this apparent servility was necessary for them to keep their jobs.
The principal counter to the idea that the Chinese are docile comes from the fact that in the last 2000 years, two peasant rebellions have created fairly well-regarded dynasties (Han and Ming) that lasted a combined total of 700 years, and a half-dozen others came within a whisker of taking power. It's hard to think of another country where commoners not only won power but established ruling houses that held on to power for centuries. And that's not counting the current Red dynasty that is closing on to a century of incumbency, since its ascent to the throne in 1949.
Historically-speaking, short of life-threatening conditions (e.g. famines), the average Chinese possibly made the calculation that he was not interested in getting involved in a movement to make someone else emperor, while risking his own life and the lives of all his relatives and acquaintances if the movement failed to win power. At the same time, the principle of collective punishment meant, whether they liked it or not, all of a rebel's relatives were automatically in the same boat as he was - targeted for execution. So once a rebellion got going, it could snowball really quickly, as relative pulled in relative and acquaintance pulled in acquaintance. If you were going to be executed anyway, why not go for broke, and strike for the emperor's head? Only if he and his entire extended family and retainers and their extended families were safely dead would you and yours be safe. It's informed speculation on my part, but I believe that's the reason why Chinese revolts tended to be bloodbaths.
I don't know if you're a history buff, but there's recent book about a big Chinese revolt (in a sea of unrelated little ones) around the time of the Civil War that I found very readable - Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen Platt. It was eye-opening for me, and I consider myself a fairly jaded China watcher. I think you'll find it at your local library, at minimum via its association with a consortium of libraries, because it seems to have sold so well that there are multiple used paperback copies available at a nominal price. Lastly, thanks for the tip about the David Kopel book. I've read a lot of his essays, but haven't actually read any of his books. I'll add it to my reading list for the coming new year.
And, by the way, Happy New Year. May there be many more.
Thank you, and the same to you and yours.
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