Peking Duck's Piece On Mao Is A Worthwhile Read...

The post is a review of a piece by former Hong Kong investor Sin-ming Shaw, now a visiting scholar at Columbia University.

The writer, Sin-ming Shaw, argues that the only way for China to move forward is to eliminate the cult of Mao and embrace a new tradition, and that tradition is democracy. Something that is feared and loathed by the current CCP leadership and gets their sphincter muscles twitching. But given the molasses slow progress in Hong Kong, that prospect appears dim as it ever was in China.

I particularly like the parts of his article showing Mao's brutality and subjugation of the Chinese people. A couple of choice excerpts follow:

Killing “enemies” was not the sole purpose. Mao wanted to instill obedience by having as many people as possible witness the terror. As he put it in 1951, “Many places don’t dare to kill counter-revolutionaries on a grand scale with big publicity. This situation must be changed.”

In Beijing millions of inhabitants were ordered to witness some 30,000 sentencing and execution rallies during the early 1950’s. Indeed, in 1950 and 1951 an estimated three million people perished by execution, torture, or suicide.

Masses of Chinese were sent to work camps, where prisoners endured harsh physical labor to “reform” their “bourgeois” habits and thoughts. In any given year, roughly 10 million such “laborers” existed. During Mao’s rule, an estimated 27 million died in the camps.

Lovely isn't it?

The reason why the CCP leadership continues pushing its cult of Mao is that it makes them look better by comparison and gives them justification for brutal repression when they need it. Otherwise, they have zero legitimacy to lead in modern China.