Word: communist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...amid all the memorials there are surprisingly few details about some of the most pivotal periods of Mao's life. The museum focuses on the early days of the Communist Party, the Long March, resistance against the Japanese and the defeat of the Nationalists. As might be expected in a country whose founding father's image is rigorously managed, there is little mention of the disastrous Great Leap Forward, a period of forced collectivization that led to famine and the deaths of millions, or the Cultural Revolution and the persecution of millions more labeled as counterrevolutionaries...
...Luckily, one doesn't have to travel far from Shaoshan and its blaring patriotic songs and armies of hawkers to find a more nuanced and interesting look at modern China. The birthplace of Liu Shaoqi, another communist leader and Mao's contemporary, lies an hour's drive from Shaoshan in Ningxiang county. Liu's memorial is quiet and forested. Once you pass through the entry gates there are no touts or trinket stands, and noticeably fewer visitors. Liu was known as a practical, down-to-earth official. During an inspection tour of the region in 1961, he learned...
...particular, the American embargo of Cuba has proven spectacularly unsuccessful in its stated goal: bringing down the Communist dictatorship. It has, however, succeeded in impoverishing the general population and placing the Cuban people in a state of cultural isolation, such that they have no opportunity to see the beneficial side of our mixed-market economic system and continually view the United States as a dangerous aggressor and a cause of their poverty. Today, many experts agree that ending the costly and counterproductive embargo would almost certainly contribute to an end to the Castro regime. Its continuation does little but galvanize...
...oppressors. Second, many United States companies who possessed property in Cuba before the government seized and nationalized it during the early ’60s still stand strong in lobbying against an end to the embargo. While both of these admittedly powerful constituencies have legitimate grievances against the brutal Communist regime, the Cuban government has not and will not become more accommodating to their interests on a mere whim. Dropping the embargo would allow us to facilitate the change we hope for without holding ignorantly to egotistical positions that do nothing but broaden the rift...
...Charter 77, a human-rights manifesto signed by dissidents in Czechoslovakia in 1977 - calls for several political reforms in China including direct elections, a separation of political powers, free speech, legalization of political parties and the creation of an independent judiciary. Critically, it doesn't call for the Communist Party to step down, but envisions a system that advances beyond one-party rule, says Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong?based researcher for the NGO Human Rights Watch. "It does not say, 'We should set up a party to topple the Party.' They say, 'We must work to outgrow the Party...