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Re:China's new Long March-8 rocket makes first flight by mikem170 on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @07:55PM (#25524096)
The Chinese don't like Mao because of the Great leap Forward, they like him because he led a peasant revolution and kicked the foreigners out of China, after decades of national humiliation.

We supported Chaing Kai-shek. He lost, retreating to Taiwan.

It seems that many Americans are not aware of the propaganda they are being exposed to. The world is not black and white. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Re:China's new Long March-8 rocket makes first flight by someperson on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @09:05PM (#25524432)
Mao only defeated the war-weary KMT.

It was the KMT who kicked the foreigners (the Japanese) out of China with the help of the allies (Soviets and the US) declaring war on the Japanese mainland.

Re:China's new Long March-8 rocket makes first flight by mikem170 on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @05:42PM (#25652238)
I did some more reading on this, and found various fuzzy and confounding factors. I have to admit that much of it might boil down to "winners get to write history". For example, whoever won their civil war was going to end up being credited with unifying China.

Lots of interesting stuff I bumped into, though. It did seem that the KMT made some pretty big mistakes, such as disbanding more of their army then they should have after the Japanese were defeated, mismanaging the economy causing hyperinflation, and being very corrupt. Also I had no idea that the KMT backed muslim insurgents on mainland China in the 1950s.

Given all of that Mao's popularity makes enough sense. There's also a lot of curb appeal in a successful peasant/worker revolution.