"fear is healthy, respect will follow, and happiness will tag along"
That sounds like something The Great Helmsman might have said. He certainly put a great deal of thought and effort into instilling fear among his subjects, even those at the highest level. Have you read "Mao: The Unknown Story", by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday? Highly recommended. It is clear that Mao was at least on a par with Hitler and Stalin. Khrushchev, who had plenty of contact with both, said "When I look at Mao, I see Stalin, a perfect copy."
What is amazing, and rather disgusting, is that the current regime in China persists in supporting the myth of Mao. This is presumably because they know that their legitimacy depends on his, since over the 40-odd years of his rule he shaped the party in his image. Deng was a great man, but even he only dared to rate Mao as 30% bad, perhaps because to go further would have threatened his own legitimacy. China needs a Khrushchev.
By the way, CCP crimes against Tibetans pale into almost total insignificance in comparison with their crimes against the Chinese people. About 30 million died in a few years during the Great Leap Forward. |
