Free Republic

China has put all its “chips” into China’s fledgling semiconductor industry.Many companies are charging into the semiconductor industry. The trend, with the encouragement of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is occurring because of pressure from the Trump administration to cut off Chinese technology companies from U.S. chips.But this latest chip rush may also create vast inefficiencies, divert local resources into wasteful ventures, and usher in a 21st-century version of the “Great Leap Forward”—the disastrous 1950s plan by Mao Zedong to surpass the West in steel production that resulted in mass famine and economic despair.The need to invest in indigenous semiconductor...

At the height of the frenzy of China’s Cultural Revolution, victims were eaten at macabre “flesh banquets”, but 50 years after the turmoil began, the Communist Party is suppressing remembrance and historical reckoning of the era and its excesses. Launched by Mao in 1966 to topple his political enemies after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution saw a decade of violence and destruction nationwide as party-led class conflict devolved into social chaos.

...Every country is engaged in the construction and reconstruction of a usable past within a continuous history. For China today, that task is distinctively important, multi-faceted, and difficult. China’s history is extremely long and immensely complex. The People’s Republic of China that was established in 1949 self-consciously marked a new beginning, and it defined itself in part in opposition to China’s past... ...Mao himself is now part of China’s history, and reconstructing and interpreting Mao is part of what China’s leaders must do today. (They do not yet seem prepared to re-interpret the Tiananmen events of 1989, but almost surely...

Microsoft is releasing the source code for its original Windows File Manager from nearly 28 years ago. Originally released for Windows 3.0, the File Manager was a replacement for managing files through MS-DOS, and allowed Windows users to copy, move, delete, and search for files. While it’s a relic from the past, you can still compile the source code Microsoft has released and run the app on Windows 10 today.

MSNBC’s newest ad features weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry unwittingly -- or at least one hopes-- referencing the Communist Chinese economic program known as the “Great Leap Forward” which left an estimated 18-45 million Chinese dead. The 30-second ad featuring Ms. Perry is narrated as follows: No fight began just in the years preceding victory. The struggle for civil rights didn’t begin in the 1950s. African-Americans had been demanding representation since the 1880s. Women didn’t just start fighting for the vote in the 1920s. That began at the founding of this country. Immigrants to this country have been since its founding...

China’s Worst Self-Inflicted Environmental Disaster: The Campaign to Wipe Out the Common Sparrow Back in the 1950s, China was going through its Great Leap Forward, an effort to transform China from a largely agrarian nation to a thriving industrial Marxist powerhouse. These sweeping (and often brutal) reforms, touched virtually every facet of Chinese life — and as one particular episode in China's history points out, the animal kingdom was also far from immune. In 1958, China ordered the extermination of several pests, including sparrows — an ill-fated campaign that eventually led to catastrophe. The Four Pests campaign Chinese leader Mao...

Let’s hope nothing like it happens here. China’s Great Leap Forward (1958-61) was Mao’s ill conceived effort to jump start China from a rural economy into an industrialized nation overnight. Not only did it fail, but it was a disaster of epic proportions. An estimated 30 million Chinese died of starvation in its aftermath. Mao’s later Cultural Revolution, which received greater publicity, can’t compare. That was a political purification program. The Great Leap Forward was destructive communist socialism at its worst. It should be a lesson. Mao in all his wisdom wanted to build an industrial economy by uprooting peasants...

Several people have become interested in a quite controversial topic called "AGENDA 21." They have requested being on a ping list for this topic. While I do not have time to do a thorough treatment of this subject, nor am I in any way an expert, I am willing at least for a time,to ping people as I run across articles which might pertain to this concern. It might be good to start with an examination of just what it is or might be. To kick this discussion and exploration off,I did a Google search (just for fun) on "Agenda...

Founder of today’s China killed 45 million of his own people (TibetanReview.net, Sep05, 2010) Recently declassified Chinese Communist Party archives show that the Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao Tsetung's regime cased the greatest "man-made famine" the world has ever seen, reported the ANI news service Sep 3, citing a new publication from Hong Kong. Mao's Great Famine, by Frank Dikotter, Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong, is reported to show that 45 million Chinese people were killed between 1958 and 1961. Chinese propaganda posters of the late 1950s show smiling young workers marching jubilantly towards unity under the...

Pharmed food crop approved for growth despite controversy.Rice modified to express proteins often found in breast milk will be planted in Kansas. It's certainly not the first crop designed to produce pharmaceutical proteins given the go-ahead in the United States or elsewhere (see 'Turning plants into protein factories'). But this is among the first food crops containing genes that produce human proteins to gain approval for large-scale planting. Many other pharmaceutical genetically-modified (GM) crops are grown indoors or in inedible plants such as tobacco. The rice strains, made by Ventria Bioscience in Sacramento, California, produce lysozyme, lactoferrin and human serum...

Our moral imagination is haunted by monsters--and the greatest aspect of this horror is the fact that so many monsters are real. Is the world ready to face the reality of Mao Zedong? For the last seven decades or so, Mao has been a focus of admiration among many on the Left. Many Americans have known Mao primarily through the work of sympathetic biographers who became champions of the Chinese Communist regime. For many others, Mao has remained a man of mystery, whose true character and legacy have been hidden from Western eyes. All that is about to change. The...