Re:2022 Letter
by FooBarWidget on Sunday March 05, 2023 @04:14AM
(#35028077)
China was in terminal decline in the late 1800s. The period until 1980s was not decline, it was attempt to recover with various success. Mistakes were made, but success were also made. Despite the famine, life expectancy was steadily increasing during the Cultural Revolution, in no small part thanks to the "barefoot doctors" program of organizing and allocating medical personnel.
Western comments on the Cultural Revolution is one-sided and myopic. The Great Famine was a failure to recover. It was also the last famine: famines were a regularly occurring event even before PRC. And Taiwan also wasn't a great place back then.
Well, although arguably not as bad as mainland China under Mao's rule. Taiwan didn't have any democracy back then (before late 1980s). And interestingly, the US was OK with Kuomintang's dictatorship.
Re:2022 Letter
by seanmcdirmid on Sunday March 05, 2023 @03:55PM
(#35033823)
Oh for sure. The reason Taiwanese dislike mainlanders ruling them so much is probably more due to Chiang Kai Shek than Mao Zedong. They would just have nothing to do at all with Chinese politics, they don't want to be ROC as much as they don't want to be PRC.
The USA was actually on China's side about supporting Pol Pot, with Vietnam against. Things are definitely blurred in history.
...And they would have been right until the 1980s. "If only Taiwan were unified with the mainland in the 1950s, they also could have experienced the horrors of the cultural revolution" is not great marketing for reunification.