flying leaf,
1) You really are Chinese? (No offense, but in an earlier heated debate in which I was depicted as the big racist a certain person chimed in as a Chinese calling me racist as well. I know this was not you, but that person's statements seemed to overemphasize his Chinese identity which made me suspect it may have possibly only been someone like '6strings' logging on as another 'Chinese' person to help further his case against me as a racist by inventing third party support. I apologize for bringing this up, but the previous episode has made me even more suspicious than i already was. I am interested to know what part of China you or your family comes from as I am indeed about to visit China for a month. If you ever visit there I recommend the Lonely Planet Guide to China.
As to Mao Tse Tung, where should I begin. You should read a book by Alfred McCoy entitled 'The Politics of Heroin-CIA Involvement in the World Drug Trade.' This book came out in 1972, but a third and updated edition was recently published. The CIA did unsucessfully try to ban the book when it came out by putting pressure on the publisher. The British as is well known had an international drug trade in which they brought opium into China at least since the 1700's. This was very pronounced in the 1800's. By 1930, over 40 million Chinese were addicted to opium. When Mao Tse Tung won the Chinese 'civil' war in 1949, this drug business came to an end as far as mainland China was concerned. It was illegal in Maoist China to use drugs. All the drug adicts were put through a massive program in which they were made to watch 'propaganda' films which exposed the drugs (primarily opium) in China as a capitalist and colonialist infiltration of China by the west (which indeed it was). Those few who persisted in their addiction were sent to labor camps. By the mid-1950's the Chinese opium addiction problem had become non-existent. Now I am not a fan of the later cultural revolution, but this was a major positive accomplishment.
Neither did maoist China extinguish traditional medicine. This actually did well and exists under various forms of exercise, medicine, et cetera as qigong. Qigong medicine is based on traditional Chinese medicine. (The best institute of this traditional Chinese medicine I know in the Unted States is the Yo Han Institute in Culver City(LA), CA, but there are a great number more in China itself. The Maoist government often used this possibly because it was the only thing available, but I am not giving a judgment on that. They were approving traditional medicine at a time when it was being persecuted in the United States (like traditionalists of western medicine such as John Christopher, who had many legal problems).
Chiang Kai-shek was supported by the United States. He is the founder of modern Taiwan. When he went to Taiwan in 1949, he set up a murderous dictatorship which peresecuted the Taiwan Chinese. This is very well documented in the 1965 book 'Formosa Betrayed' by George Kerr. Chiang Kai-shek was also a major drug dealer. He was became a pawn of the western imperialists. traditional political China had unfortunately ceased (at least for a time) in 1912 with the overthrow of the monarchy by Sun Yat-sen (perhaps the Chinese equivalent of Lenin). Mao and Chiang both worked for and respected Sun Yat-Sen. These two (Mao and Chiang) inheritored the political power in China from Sun Yat-sen. Actually Chiang was the leader and his army was called the Kuomintang (KMT). These were financed by and worked closest with the western powers. China had heavy foreign involvement in its affairs a hundred years ago around the time the monarchy fell. The KMT did not in any way limit the drug trade, but facilitated it. This is part of the reason for Mao's rebellion against Chiang. And it was not only Mao, but Sun Yat-sen's wife became a maoist. So did even Pu-yi - the last Emperor of China (the little boy from 1912) declared his rapprochement with Mao rather than with Chiang in the 1950's (this was after having become Emperor again for a number of years in the exact same palace in the Forbidden City in Beijing while the Japanese held it throughout the entirety of the 1930's and until 1945). (The last Emperor of China was dethroned because of those truly malignant americans.) All this is documented in Pu-yi's autobiography which was long ago translated into english. I got my copy in the back of a bookstore in the Philadelphia Chinatown.
As to the drug trade perpetuated by Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang, the KMT was geographically split in two halves (east and west) in 1949. The eastern half went to Taiwan. The western half were the recipients of Air America (the CIA's airline) support throught the 1950's with the hope of overthrowing the Maoist Chinese government. The support continued after that even until today but the aim after the 1950's focused more exclusively on the drug trade. The western Kuomintang became the basis of the Golden Triangle. The other major warlord to come to the fore in this area was Khun Sa, who cam along in the 1960's. The CIA has cooperated with Khun Sa and the KMT in the growing of opium and the processing of this into heroin. The CIA has repeated this process in Honduras and Afghanistan and to a lesser extent in Peru and Columbia though these last two are mostly used to grow coca which is processed into cocaine. (I am not saying coca itself is bad in its traitional and medicinal uses. Sniffing white cocaine powder after processing a certain part of it is obviously not the traditional use of this coca from South America.)
Returning to the Chiang Kai-shek, I have read that stock speculation occurred immediately prior to the Korean War which greatly benefited a small circle of americans including General Douglas MacArthur and Senator Joseph McCarthy as well as a small circle of Chinese surrounding Chiang Kai-shek. I recommend a dissenting history of the Korean War written in the early 1950's by Isidore F. Stone. I. F. Stone was a prolific jewish writer. He was editor of the 'Nation' from 1940-1946 and perhaps the leader of the intellectual left in the 1950's. He was the Noam Chomsky of his era.
Chiang Kai-shek was an american supported terrorist. This is true of most of the terrorist regimes in recent decades: Syngman Rhee's South Korean anti-communist dictatorship in the 1950's, Pinochet in Chile (an example of religious support for terror as well as the protestant infiltration of catholic Latin America can be seen in the friendship of filth like Jimmy Swaggart with dictators like Pinochet), the apartheid regime in South Africa, the racist (and increasingly apartheid) government of Israel,
the anti-Castro Cuban network based in Florida, Hussein's Iraq in the 1980's when it actually was slaughtering Iranians and gassing Kurds with American support, and the CIA-connected drug lords in Myanmar (Burma) to name some.
To conclude, I am personally a monarchist in general and China is not an exception. I am not a Maoist, and his government certainly made mistakes. If anything the Chinese government's mistake involves becoming more like america in recent years.
A word about missions in China - I am wary of the misionary movement within (and actually against) China as being a tool of the west. This is no way helps bring China closer to God. I belive exclusively in the ancient Orthodox Christian Church, but to introduce Chinese to protestant or even catholic missions (or anything even "orthjodox" with a "convert to get numbers" attitude is only a nominal change. I tend (not always, but usually) to side with the Chinese government in being wary of foreign missions as history would testify it is justified in doing so.
Returning to tradtion one has and seeking the truth from there is better than following foreign gods. The Kingdom of Heaven is within.
- Dionysios