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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lin huan chen who wrote (9399)	10/14/1999 8:11:00 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

I am especially disappointed in some Chinese in America. Don't they learn anything good from America? How about protecting the weak, helping the helpless, respecting the minorities? Well apparently you have learned these lessons well.. Great post that cuts to the heart of the PRC identity crisis. It will be extremely difficult to convince a whole party full of priviledged hacks and bureaucrats to surrender their authority and corrupt policies. But isn't that the problem with a totalitarian system?? It's never just a matter of removing one individual dictator. You have to tear the entire system down and start over. I wish the Chinese people the best of luck. Regards, Ron

To: lin huan chen who wrote (9399)	10/14/1999 9:33:00 AM
From: Liatris Spicata	Respond to of 9980

huan chen- You are a courageous man on this thread. Anyway, I'm glad to see someone with a Chinese sounding name make some of your points. I'd particularly like to weigh in on one point: that of comparing the genocide of American Indians with the Communists' mass murder of scores of millions of Chinese and Tibetans. Such comparisons are specious, even deceitful. Perhaps it would be tactful- never my long strong suit- to start by saying much of the treatment of the American Indian was wrong. It is forever a stain on America. But, the worst excesses were committed by local people and local commanders acting on their own initiative. In many cases, their initiative was at odds with a confused national policy. In any fair account, it is important to recognize that American settlers and army were dealing with an armed and hostile (with good reason) population. Whereas Chinese authorities during Mao's various massacres were dealing with a cowed, subdued, population (in the case of Tibetan monks, pacifists) who posed no challenge to the tyrant's rule. Simply owning two water buffalo (ie. being a "rich landlord") was, at one time and place, sufficient for your death warrant in Mao's glorious China. Now all of this makes little difference to the Indian civilians who were killed. The atrocities were not all on one side, however. And when the Indians were subdued, the killings stopped (again, excepting action by local thugs who placed a low value on an Indian's life.) I suspect there was much the US government could and should have done to mitigate the tragedy of the American Indian, but for generations the westward moving American frontier was in some sense a war zone. However, there was no national policy in place to exterminate Indians- in fact, diseases introduced by the white man to a genetically homogenous population killed more American Indians than did battles. Mao did, effectively, have a national policy of murdering those- including children- whom he considered undesirable for ideological reasons. Larry