Word: kmt
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...China's in the endgame of its civil war and Mao Zedong's communist forces are poised to take Beijing. Just south of the Yangtze, in Nanjing, Mao's archfoe, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, holds court as the leader of the Republic of China and its Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) government. But Mao believes that winning Beijing first will deal a mortal blow to the morale of the KMT. En route to what will be the future People's Republic's capital, he and his top lieutenants pause in a town that has been deserted by shopkeepers and merchants fleeing...
...temporarily allied communists and Nationalists celebrating the defeat of the Japanese and culminates with the declaration of the People's Republic by Mao at Beijing's Tiananmen Square. It purports to tell the true and full story of the tangled dance between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the KMT to forge a new, unified China. As you'd expect, many - but surprisingly not all - elements of the KMT are portrayed as malevolent and capricious, and the CCP justly triumphs (of course!). Yet Founding goes beyond routine propaganda. What's striking is how the film exposes - intentionally, we would assume...
...democracy. This way, the CCP can be promoted as a party with roots in a broad-based political movement and not just in the spoils of war - thus further boosting its authority. Taiwan figures too. Mao tries to persuade Li Jishen, an influential southern China figure aligned with the KMT, to join the communist government. Li confesses to Mao that he is responsible for the deaths of many communist cadres. Mao's reply: Let's forget the past and begin a new future. That's directed at Taipei - part of Beijing's ongoing charm offensive toward Taiwan, once relentlessly denounced...
...Stuart, son of missionaries to China and U.S. ambassador to Chiang's Nanjing government. At the time, the real-life Mao vilified Stuart as an agent of American aggression toward the communists. In the film, Stuart, as well as the U.S. State Department, is lukewarm toward Chiang and the KMT - reflecting, perhaps, Beijing's desire to maintain the momentum of its improving diplomatic ties with Washington. (Last November, the Chinese acceded to a four-decade-old request by Stuart's family to have his ashes buried in a cemetery in Hangzhou, near Shanghai...
...China looms ever larger in the global consciousness, anything we can glean about its leadership is especially valuable. There's one moral in Founding, however, that Beijing probably did not intend. Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek's son, is briefing his father about his fight to rid the KMT of corruption and injustice. Chiang praises his son's idealism - and gently advises him to desist so as not to undermine the KMT at a critical juncture in the civil war. "If you go ahead," says Chiang, "you lose the party." But, the Generalissimo quietly adds...