Word: mao
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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DIED. LI ZHISUI, 75, Mao Zedong's former physician; in Chicago. He was Mao's loyal confidant from 1954 to the Chinese leader's death in '76-an experience Li recounted in his 682-page The Private Life of Chairman Mao. Propelled by Li's attend-and-tell tales of Mao's keen sexual appetites and grotesque personal hygiene, the book shot up the best-seller list last fall. DIED. L.C. GRAVES, 76, police detective; in Kaufman, Texas. It is an enduring image: Lee Harvey Oswald walking through the basement of the Dallas police building, his upper arm gripped...
...Communist Party's errors, the most serious was its failure to deal with the vast, impoverished countryside and the 700 million mostly poor peasants. It charged the intelligentsia with forgetting how to think. Most shocking, it asked directly whether the post-Deng leadership should adopt some of Mao Zedong's more centralized policies...
...overstatement to suggest that without Deng, China will tumble into disorder. But his departure will usher in the greatest period of uncertainty since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. So pervasive is his influence that rumors of his illnesses regularly launch East Asian stock markets into stomach-churning plunges. For years the reclusive leader has proved those reports premature, quelling the buzz by appearing in public, hale and hearty as ever...
Deng is rightfully credited with wrenching the country from the xenophobia and brutality of Mao's flawed experiment with collectivism. But by amassing the power required for such a prodigious turn of the helm, he foreclosed debate on crucial issues like political reform and institutional change. Left unresolved in his lifetime, those questions will now be thrown open in a way that threatens to loosen China's moorings. The country's stability, at least in the short term, may depend upon finding a new strongman, one who can offer a gravitational center while the nation struggles with the questions Deng...
Certainly, there are inaccessible aspects to this film. The ubiquitous pictures of Chairman Mao probably mean little to an American audience, but Yimou's films can be enjoyed...