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[woen]

Stalin had quite a few, there's just not much left of them

There's been a de-stalinisation process in the URSS. That's not something that happened in China with the Mao figure, because leader of the revolution etc.

But it's good to see people over the world interested about China. Well at least when it's about pollution, earthquake, industrial disaster, or a funny story that allows you to make a good joke and spit.

 

[jblank83]

Gaudy
Ugly

Not really in the spirit of the revolution, either, is it?

In other news, China to drop giant ugly Mao statue off the coast of California to claim territorial rights to all Pacific waters.

 

[adj_noun]

Ooooooh, gold MAO.

Not this guy.

 

[Forkball]

Bad news guys.... they demolished it.

BEIJING – A gargantuan gold-painted statue of Communist China’s founding father, Mao Zedong, has suddenly been demolished, apparently for lacking government approval, state media said Friday, days after images of it went viral.

Images of the statue of a seated Mao towering some 37 meters (121 feet) over empty fields in the central province of Henan made worldwide headlines this week.

But the 3 million yuan ($460,000) structure has been destroyed, the People’s Net news portal cited local officials as saying, adding the reason was “unclear.”

The website is linked to the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party.

It cited reports from unspecified media as saying the likeness of the man who ruled China with an iron grip for nearly three decades until his death in 1976 “was not registered or approved” by the local government.

Pictures circulating online — which could not be immediately verified — showed a gaping hole in the rear of Mao’s massive golden torso, and his head shrouded in black. Local officials could not immediately be reached.

Construction was reportedly funded by several local entrepreneurs and finished in December after nine months of labor, the HMR.cn portal said this week.

Despite being blamed for millions of deaths, Mao is still widely revered in China and credited with uniting the country.

Meanwhile the Communist leadership tightly controls public discussion of history and seeks to use his legacy to shore up its support.

China’s current President Xi Jinping has praised Mao as a “great figure” and revived some of his rhetoric and centralization of power, while following the party’s 1980s conclusion that he also made “mistakes.”

Some Internet users criticized the statue, pointing out its location in Henan, the center of a famine in the late 1950s resulting from Mao’s economic policies, which are estimated to have killed as many as 40 million people.

“Have you forgotten about the Great Famine, building that?” asked one poster on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

Others questioned the statue’s resemblance to the “Great Helmsman,” who also launched the decade-long Cultural Revolution that saw violence and destruction nationwide.

 

[Chairmanchuck]

Because the comment I was responding to was about TV shows set in China 40 - 50 years ago.

ed

Actually, I'm sorry. I see the confusion. The comment I replied to was about TV shows depicting negative things about Mao/CR/the government. There vast majority of TV shows tend to take place in ancient China specifically because the government does not allow you to depict negative political intrigue about modern China. You simply can't create a show that is critical of the government.

The ones I saw about the revolution where always on either BTV or CCTV and they showed the poverty. The dad of my wife was really into these (since he grew up during that time).

 

[LogicStep]

That looks so bad.

 

[Vhalyar]

That looks so bad.

Good thing it got brought down then!

 

[DeSo]

He's history's greatest monster.

 

[Meciu]

I'm glad that it got destroyed.That thing was hideous.

 

[SymbiantXenos]

No giant golden homer pics yet?

 

[Poodlestrike]

So... it's really more of a giant yellow Mao statue, isn't it?

EDIT: Or was, at least. Chinese Government buying into the "conservatives' misunderstanding of Keynsian Economics" school of development, I see.

 

[Dice]

He's history's greatest monster.

Worse than Genghis Khan, Hitler, Emperor Showa, Stalin, Pol Pot? Nah. I think the famine was the result of an incredibly stupid and massive oversight, and the rest of everything else in many ways got away from him as there was a lot of momentum around him. Seems like he was more incompetent than the driving force of terrors.

 

[cm osi]

china trying to steal japan's figma market

 

[Kenshin001]

Worse than Genghis Khan, Hitler, Emperor Showa, Stalin, Pol Pot? Nah. I think the famine was the result of an incredibly stupid and massive oversight, and the rest of everything else in many ways got away from him as there was a lot of momentum around him. Seems like he was more incompetent than the driving force of terrors.

Yes, worse than them. 40 million. The famine was the result of Mao's determination to catch up with the West. Everything just didn't get away from him, his ideas and policies were instrumental in everything that happened. He boasted of killing counter revolutionaries and being more brutal than Qin Shi Huang. He also knew peasants were short of food but dismissed it. Mao did not care if millions of Chinese died, he said himself it had happened many times before in China's history.

 

[uuaschbaer]

Aaaaand ... it's gone.

edit: Questions being: who took the legs, where to, and where did he get a blanket like that?

https://twitter.com/tomphillipsin/status/685406215757672448/photo/1

and where is the platform, are these pictures in reverse chronological order?

 

[Shaanyboi]

what a depressing image

 

[1st Course]

Yes, worse than them. 40 million. The famine was the result of Mao's determination to catch up with the West. Everything just didn't get away from him, his ideas and policies were instrumental in everything that happened. He boasted of killing counter revolutionaries and being more brutal than Qin Shi Huang. He also knew peasants were short of food but dismissed it. Mao did not care if millions of Chinese died, he said himself it had happened many times before in China's history.

Pretty sure Genghis Khan has him beat.

http://www.hostpic.org/images/1408130053170109.jpg

 

[Dice]

Yes, worse than them. 40 million. The famine was the result of Mao's determination to catch up with the West. Everything just didn't get away from him, his ideas and policies were instrumental in everything that happened. He boasted of killing counter revolutionaries and being more brutal than Qin Shi Huang. He also knew peasants were short of food but dismissed it. Mao did not care if millions of Chinese died, he said himself it had happened many times before in China's history.

Do you have sources? Everything I have read on the Great Leap Forward leaves plenty of room for confusion and incompetence. Even at max estimate, 40 million out of 900 million can easily come from misjudgement/mismanagement rather than intentional sacrifice. As for his brutality against counter-revolutionaries, it was a civil war. It was brutal and merciless on both sides from the very beginning, so I think it was an everyone-involved thing rather than something he made happen that wouldn't have otherwise. I'm not saying he was a great guy, but I just don't think he was in himself such a force of wanton slaughter as to be called the worst in all history. Stalin for example seemed much more in control and more like the personal director of all the terrible things of his time.

 

[Nivash]

Pretty sure Genghis Khan has him beat.

http://www.hostpic.org/images/1408130053170109.jpg

That's if measured in relation to the global population at the time and by that metric, yes; the Mongol conquests were the deadliest conflict in human history. But going by pure body count, Mao "wins" handily: the Conquests killed between 30 and 40 million people while the Culture Revolution and associated famines killed between 49 and 78 million people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...c_disasters_by_death_toll#Other_deadly_events

Difference is, no one's building statues to Genghis Khan in Baghdad or Moscow.

 

[Kenshin001]

Pretty sure Genghis Khan has him beat.

http://www.hostpic.org/images/1408130053170109.jpg

The source I looked at had him at the same as Mao.

http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Mongol

Do you have sources? Everything I have read on the Great Leap Forward leaves plenty of room for confusion and incompetence. Even at max estimate, 40 million out of 900 million can easily come from misjudgement/mismanagement rather than intentional sacrifice. As for his brutality against counter-revolutionaries, it was a civil war. It was brutal and merciless on both sides from the very beginning, so I think it was an everyone-involved thing rather than something he made happen that wouldn't have otherwise. I'm not saying he was a great guy, but I just don't think he was in himself such a force of wanton slaughter as to be called the worst in all history. Stalin for example seemed much more in control and more like the personal director of all the terrible things of his time.

Read his speeches from 1958. They are long and rambling and pompous but they also show how callous he was.

 

[rpmurphy]

The statue reminds me of the ones at Abu Simbel.

 

[Bregor]

Do you have sources? Everything I have read on the Great Leap Forward leaves plenty of room for confusion and incompetence. Even at max estimate, 40 million out of 900 million can easily come from misjudgement/mismanagement rather than intentional sacrifice. As for his brutality against counter-revolutionaries, it was a civil war. It was brutal and merciless on both sides from the very beginning, so I think it was an everyone-involved thing rather than something he made happen that wouldn't have otherwise. I'm not saying he was a great guy, but I just don't think he was in himself such a force of wanton slaughter as to be called the worst in all history. Stalin for example seemed much more in control and more like the personal director of all the terrible things of his time.

He didn't intentionally set out to kill 45 million Chinese, but a lot of the miss-management can be shown to be due to the goals and pressures he placed upon his subordinates. He approved and applauded many policies that directly lead to famine and destruction of homes, tools, and clothing. He insisted that large amounts of food were exported at the same time that China was suffering major shortfalls.

Furthermore, even after he knew that these policies were leading to famine in some areas, he bullied party leadership into continuing because he didn't want to lose face. His actions in this period are inexcusable.

 

[Nivash]

Do you have sources? Everything I have read on the Great Leap Forward leaves plenty of room for confusion and incompetence. Even at max estimate, 40 million out of 900 million can easily come from misjudgement/mismanagement rather than intentional sacrifice. As for his brutality against counter-revolutionaries, it was a civil war. It was brutal and merciless on both sides from the very beginning, so I think it was an everyone-involved thing rather than something he made happen that wouldn't have otherwise. I'm not saying he was a great guy, but I just don't think he was in himself such a force of wanton slaughter as to be called the worst in all history. Stalin for example seemed much more in control and more like the personal director of all the terrible things of his time.

The famine was directly caused by distribution policies that left rural populations too little food to survive on and local authorities then proceeded to cover it up. These policies were directly overseen by Mao which is why the famine deaths are typically included in the death toll for the cultural revolution as a whole, because the alternative - that Mao simply didn't know about it or wasn't able to deal with it - would, while exonerating him from genocide, instead paint him as the most incompetent statesman since Louis XVI of France.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine#Government_distribution_policies

In any case, it's not that he intentionally starved millions to death. It's that he didn't care one fig about it if it furthered his vision of a purely communist China and a fast tracked start on industrialising the country. Still genocide though, murder through apathy is still murder.

 

[Slayer-33]

what a depressing image

Rofl

 

[Kurdel]

what a depressing image

It's really amazing.

 

[Dice]

The famine was directly caused by distribution policies that left rural populations too little food to survive on and local authorities then proceeded to cover it up. These policies were directly overseen by Mao which is why the famine deaths are typically included in the death toll for the cultural revolution as a whole, because the alternative - that Mao simply didn't know about it or wasn't able to deal with it - would, while exonerating him from genocide, instead paint him as the most incompetent statesman since Louis XVI of France.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_...ution_policies

In any case, it's not that he intentionally starved millions to death. It's that he didn't care one fig about it if it furthered his vision of a purely communist China and a fast tracked start on industrialising the country. Still genocide though, murder through apathy is still murder.

See that link is the kind of thing I mean, though. It makes it sound like he was duped by his own dishonest officials and that they were dishonest because he put too much pressure on them. Makes him sound like a moron who believed ass-kissers rather than someone who knew what he was causing.

 

[Ol No Bones]

The whole cult of personality thing is so strange. One of the worst leaders in history.

 

[mdubs]

Wouldn't be surprised to see it take off one take, looks like cover for one of Dr. Evil's rockets or something

 

[Dai Kaiju]

Lmao not that thing again.

 

[Nivash]

See that link is the kind of thing I mean, though. It makes it sound like he was duped by his own dishonest officials and that they were dishonest because he put too much pressure on them. Makes him sound like a moron who believed ass-kissers rather than someone who knew what he was causing.

In which case he was astoundingly incompetent instead. He held all power in China at the time, the buck stops with him - if he was duped by his own officers it's still his responsibility. But there's nothing to indicate that he actually was a massive idiot when you look at his other accomplishments. Mao emerged victorious from one of the most brutal and complex civil wars ever and then proceeded to transform China with incredible success. The China he started with wasn't even a shadow of its former glory and had been declining for a good 150 years. It was fractured, impoverished and utterly dominated by foreign imperialist powers ranging from Britain during to opium wars to occupation by Imperial Japan in the Manchurian War. Mao managed to turn it into a unified regional power in a few decades and laid the groundwork to the budding superpower it is today.

There's no way that he didn't know about the famine when you take all that into account. He was a deft leader and controlled all facets of Chinese society at the time. Everything points to him thinking some tens of millions dying from starvation was an acceptable price for his grand plan.

Not to mention that famine gave him another means for controlling the population, seeing how food control makes for excellent reward and punishment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/opinion/16iht-eddikotter16.html

 

[SlaughterX]

I read mario statue lol

That's what I thought at first too.

 

[Spieler Eins]

As for his brutality against counter-revolutionaries, it was a civil war. It was brutal and merciless on both sides from the very beginning, so I think it was an everyone-involved thing rather than something he made happen that wouldn't have otherwise.

Civil war was already long over when he maliciously lured out imaginary counter-revolutionaries with the hundred flowers program. After he cowardly bailed out of China to deny any responsibility in the famine and his successor took measures to cope with it, he purposefully came back to undo political improvements with more propaganda of counter-revolutionaries until his passing. And while not being counted as deaths, the cultural revolution also destroyed the lifes of several generations of children, who were taken out of school, militarized, talked into bringing authorities including their own parents into labor camps, driving them into suicide or straight up killing them, before then simply being dropped by Mao once he realized he couldn't control youths anymore.

 

[Dice]

There's no way that he didn't know about the famine when you take all that into account. He was a deft leader and controlled all facets of Chinese society at the time. Everything points to him thinking some tens of millions dying from starvation was an acceptable price for his grand plan.

Not to mention that famine gave him another means for controlling the population, seeing how food control makes for excellent reward and punishment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/opinion/16iht-eddikotter16.html

Yeah this kind of information is what is needed. I am interested in it, too, because it seems collectivism is just a fact of life for us stuck on this one planet together. To embrace it properly and make the most out of our reality, we need evidence of past failures and intentional misdirection to know what poisons things and move past it and make something better. I don't like blaming communism for things people like Mao did in war climates against capitalism. We also did terrible things to push away communism, like operation condor. The wars made both sides monstrous, and nearly all atrocities today are still due to these clashes and wranglings of power and manipulation rather than actual systemic failure. If people are dumb, we need to acknowledge how they were dumb. If they were monsters, we need to acknowledge how they were monsters. However, it has to be done with evidence in a historical manner, not just popular characterizations from our wartime attitudes.

 

[Van]

NPR is reporting that the damn thing is gone on twitter, the fuck https://twitter.com/NPR/status/685489528526667776

 

[BladeoftheImmortal]

I should go see this. Lol

 

[LookAtMeGo]

I hope to have a giant gold statue built in my honor one day.

 

[Bregor]

Yeah this kind of information is what is needed. I am interested in it, too, because it seems collectivism is just a fact of life for us stuck on this one planet together. To embrace it properly and make the most out of our reality, we need evidence of past failures and intentional misdirection to know what poisons things and move past it and make something better. I don't like blaming communism for things people like Mao did in war climates against capitalism. We also did terrible things to push away communism, like operation condor. The wars made both sides monstrous, and nearly all atrocities today are still due to these clashes and wranglings of power and manipulation rather than actual systemic failure. If people are dumb, we need to acknowledge how they were dumb. If they were monsters, we need to acknowledge how they were monsters. However, it has to be done with evidence in a historical manner, not just popular characterizations from our wartime attitudes.

Could you clarify what you consider collectivism and Communism? Because I doubt you are using them in the same sense that founders of Communism did.

 

[Dice]

Could you clarify what you consider collectivism and Communism? Because I doubt you are using them in the same sense that founders of Communism did.

I don't give a single shit how the founders of communism thought when discussing acceptance today. It has very little to do with where the school of thought is today, and making a distinction between the two is done through the essential process of recognizing the failures of individuals in their individual judgements as personal failures rather than pretending an entire school of thought must be rigidly forever defined by what its originators conceived and enacted, which was most often deeply mutated by war. That's exactly what I was saying.

What I mean by collectivism is understanding that individualism is the product of an illusion. It is a physical fact of this earth that whatever one takes to themselves, they take from everyone else. Everyone has needs which are equally justified human rights, and everyone makes impact. Existence on this planet is symbiotic, and any models of civilization or ethics that remain willfully ignorant of this fact are directly responsible for every problem that comes from imposing the notion of autonomy where it does not exist. If we model to individualism and end up with most of the sort of problems we have today, it is from that mistake of presumed autonomy, breaking the individual from the collective in our minds when such a break does not exist. Conversely, as happened before in old models of collectivism, viewing the state as an entity apart from the individuals which comprise it is the cause of suffering among those individuals within it. You can't break apart the state or the individual from the collective.

What I mean by communism is rather open and complex. There are many different thoughts on it today, and it is more of an end-game dream that could only be accomplished through a very long and gradual process of socialization and willful acceptance through enlightened understanding of our existence together on the planet and mutually beneficial existence owing to our mutually dependent nature. It can never be forced, not by violence or propaganda. It has to be from genuine understanding and cooperation or it won't work. Some would say then it is democratic socialism not communism, but that would be speaking from rather old definitions of both, being rather ignorant of inevitabilities of technological and resource trajectory, operation and education logistics, and safeguards for corruption, natural disasters, and migrations.

 

[Blizzard]

NPR is reporting that the damn thing is gone on twitter, the fuck https://twitter.com/NPR/status/685489528526667776

CNN is reporting the same thing -- that businessmen and some rural communities chipped in over $400,000 USD, but it lacked official authorization so it's being torn down. http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/09/trave...nt-statue-henan-province-destroyed/index.html