Word: mao
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...When I first came to London, even the most pro-China overseas students denounced the Chinese government. I quickly swapped my faith in Chairman Mao for a conviction that the West would help the Chinese people advance to liberation and happiness. In school, I was taught to critically examine everything I was told. But I became perplexed by the behavior of the supposedly neutral media. No report of China was ever complete without a mention of Tiananmen; no Chinese interviewee ever had anything positive to say about his or her life. It seemed to me that Western media were exclusively...
...streetwise, hand-drawn roughness that is far closer to the actual character of the city than official depictions are. Jon Fong's white paper-cut rendition of the infamous couplet "A hundred flowers blossoming/ A hundred viewpoints contending" is wonderfully funereal, referencing the use of the motto in Mao's Hundred Flowers campaign, during which hundreds of thousands of rightists were imprisoned, tortured or killed. Ren Qianyi's obscene eye charts - in which the letters and numbers used by opticians are replaced with bawdy illustrations - might be a comment on the nature of pornography, or an invitation to look...
...propaganda director," Cloud tells me that weight-lifting is her favorite sport. Any hobbies? I ask. "Weight-lifting," she answers. Anything Cloud likes besides weight-lifting? "Weight-lifting," she repeats. I try again. Cloud glances at the two men near her. Behind them is a poster of Chairman Mao Zedong, the founder of the People's Republic and architect of China's state sports system. "Once, I liked to run in the fields near my village," she begins softly. The propaganda official steps in. "But now, she prefers weight-lifting," he says. "Her goal is to become a star athlete...
...will not only prove their country's status as a potential superpower but also erase its historic humiliation by colonial powers. Stupefied by opium, cowed by Western firepower, China was dismissed at the outset of the 20th century as the "sick man of Asia." Indeed, the first article Chairman Mao ever published was on the importance of sporting success to the national psyche. "Our nation is wanting in strength," he fretted back in 1917. "If our bodies are not strong, how can we attain our goals and make ourselves respected?" Winning, Mao and his followers deemed, would be a fitting...
...Maoism's methods are no gentle wake-up call. India's Naxalites have taken to heart Mao Zedong's maxim that "the seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and the highest form of revolution," killing and abducting enemies and using coercion and force to win support among the very same villagers they claim to be liberating. To protest state "exploitation," the Maoists regularly order farmers in their regions to stop growing food or to raise the sale prices for certain items. Farmers who defy such bans have been summarily...