Word: mao
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...which aims to eject the monarchy and take the country into Stalinist isolation. The guerrillas have an attachment to an antique dogma that borders on the bizarre in the 21st century. Much to the embarrassment of the modern Chinese leadership to the north, they studiously model their uprising on Mao Zedong's Basic Tactics (1937) and On Guerrilla Warfare (1937). Their rhetoric is filled with an idealism and romance elsewhere found only in history books. "We want to turn this beautiful Himalayan country into an invincible red fort and a shining trench of world proletariat revolution," declared Maoist leader Baburam...
...rebel commanders tell TIME they have a division of several thousand men in the Langtang mountains north of Kathmandu, which would give them a stranglehold on one of the capital's two road links to the outside world. They say they are now embarked on the final phase of Mao's revolutionary timetable: eliminating all enemies of the revolution, bringing a terrorized capital to its knees and, eventually, overrunning the city and seizing power. "We control all the countryside," gloats Maoist political officer Ram Lohani Chaudhray. "The government and most of the army hide in Kathmandu. But we have many...
...years. And it's unrealistic to expect Hu to take any initiative on those fronts because his authority does not reside in his credentials as a visionary or ideologue. Having been on the losing side of the defining ideological battle of the 20th century, China's rulers since Mao Zedong have learned an unequivocal lesson: no one, not even Party leaders, can afford to use ideological solutions to resolve the country's social problems. Hu's power is solely dependent upon his legitimacy within the Party, which he maintains by balancing internal factions skillfully and sticking to the Party line...
...This generated a flood of praise from around China, and the whispers of "tame puppet" that were floating around faded away. But the true litmus tests have yet to come. One such test will occur the next time leadership is tempted to use force to suppress dissent. Among post-Mao rulers, Deng Xiaoping stumbled in both 1979 (crushing the Democracy Wall movement) and 1989 (the Tiananmen Square massacre), while Jiang Zemin failed in 1999 against the meditation group Falun Gong. Another litmus test is the Party's relationship with the media. Now that public opinion has swung...
...Chinese public has long been prone to worship leaders who appear even infinitesimally different from dictators. Take, for example, the public's veneration of Premier Zhou Enlai toward the end of the Cultural Revolution. That reverence had much more to do with disillusionment with Mao than evidence that Zhou was truly another kind of leader. As the French politician L?on Blum once said, "I believe it because I hope for it." The Chinese public might mistake benevolence from their ruler for democratic values and might confuse administrative reforms with real political reforms?but the leadership will...