RE: China's nationalism mutating into aggression
July 2, 2013 at 11:24 pm
(This post was last modified: July 3, 2013 at 12:18 am by Anomalocaris.)
(July 2, 2013 at 8:05 pm)cratehorus Wrote: i personally don't understand what happened to china's cultural revolution after all they founded maoism..... why they stopped killing buddhists and taosits i'll never know..............
They stopped because Mao has achieved the purpose for which he started the culture revolution in the first place.
Cultural revolution was a tactical maneuver by Mao to achieve supremacy in communist party's internal power struggle. In 1966 he was locked in a struggle against the pragmatists, who had considerable leverage and power over Mao because of Mao's own diseasterous Great Leap Forward.
If the pragmatist fraction succeeded, Mao would have been sidelined. So he decided to resort to personality cult and incite the mass rabble to smash the power base of the pragmatists, which consisted of the educated, the intelligentia, and the traditionalists who embraced the classic culture of China.
By 1969, Mao had largely smashed the power base of the pragmatists. At the same time, he was beginning to become concerned that he had disordered China to such an extent that China may be vulnerable to an Soviet invasion. He was especially concerned with his second in command Lin, who was a Soviet trained officer that served in the Soviet army before joining the Chinese communists. He thought the Soviet Union could take advantage of the chaos in china, and use Lin to stage a coup against him. So he decided to call an end to the cultural revolution and restore order. Shortly afterwards Lin died in a mysterous plane crash in Mongolia, alledgedly while attempting to defect to Soviet Union.
Much of the political upheavals in the first 30 years of communist rule really has to be understood in the context of the tactical maneuvering in the Byzantine behind the scene power struggles between various fractions in the communist party.
(July 2, 2013 at 7:26 pm)Rhythm Wrote: The only thing that -doesn't- serve their interests is an all out apocalyptic war with the US. They don't have to fire a shot to become a superpower...but if they do fire a shot...they are almost certainly going to wind up a super-sized pile of rubble. I don;t think that you ought to worry about that too much......one assumes that the engineers of Chinas emergence of late are as aware of this as anyone else. They'll be busy doing whats best for China (a category of things that doesn't include a war with the US) - not whats best for end of days scenarios. Meanwhile, there -is- a very good reason to project strength, as you;ve noticed Creed...there are alot of nukes in the general vicinity of China........there's nothing to be gained from being the sissy on -that- particular block. Eh?
Their goal is not to seek to fight the US. Their goal is two fold:
1. To be militarily strong enough to make it a very costly and dicy propsition for the US to fight them in the region around China, so the US military power loses its credibility as a pillar of support for regional powers potentially hostile to China, and make these regional powers think three or four times before adopting any hostile attitude to China. This has been the objective of military for all up and coming powers, including a still weak but rapidly strengthening late 19th century US
2. To establish a global military presence so China could assert and protect its interests in distant areas import to the Chinese economy, such as the middle east and the mediterranean, and have a seat at the table anywhere where international military power is called to settle regional issues, like in Syrian and Libya. This too hasn't been unfamiliar as a an military objective for a major power, especially a major maritime commercial power.
