Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

gaodawei.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 309 posts

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#131

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

WeylandYutani wrote: post #111
mytailorisrich wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is normal pragmatism and real-politik. Mao is looking after his and China's interests. The public are usually fed simplistic, emotional propaganda by their governments, all of them: good vs evil, right thing to do, freedom, whatever. But in fact policies are based on interests and cold calculations.

Funny thing is that things started to go bad for Mao when he suddenly started to have ideals. Luckily Xiaoping entered the chat and the rest is Chinese history. (I have always liked the Chinese for their pragmatism. Americans are too far up their own ass).

> Luckily Xiaoping entered the chat and the rest is Chinese history.

I think Deng Xiaoping is a direct result of these developments during the Mao years.

Things would have been very different for China, without the rapprochement with the west. Without friendly terms with the west they would have to maintain an enormously big army.

Think of a China today that is more like North Korea.

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#132

Post by [deleted] »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #72
ggm wrote: post #7

I'm not entirely sure I get what this tells us. A degree of cynicism in politics is inevitable, for the players. And, Kissinger was undoubtedly playing. As was Mao, with other people. Interesting Edgar Snow was brought up, I read his long March piece as a child, it's pretty accessible. ("Red Star over China" 1937) Zhou EnLai was a survivor and a moderating force in the bad times. The national museum in Tienanmen squa…

The fascinating thing with Kissinger is that he's still alive, still wields political influence, and has been active for eighty years and was wielding his influence in essentially all major conflicts during that time. He just published another book and just celebrated his 100th birthday. He started out as a German Jewish refugee. Fought in WW II and became an American, ended up being part of the post WW II effort to…

[deleted]

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#133

Post by [deleted] »

hguant wrote: post #122
H8crilA wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. He just meant that old people find it hard to learn to speak Mandarin, even if they can read the Chinese script (which is the same for all Chinese languages). He likely saw this as a major obstacle to his vision of a grand, unified China. He's also responsible for the simplified Chinese script, which was introduced everywhere but in Hong Kong and Taiwan. They are still very mutually intelligible, from wha…

Just to touch on this - Cantonese is not really mutually intelligible with modern Chinese, that's CCP propaganda. They're big on the idea that there's only one Chinese language, and there are "regional dialects" but...those dialects meet an awful lot of criteria for being a different language. It's very similar to their push to make all Chinese culture and history Han Chinese. The mandarin spoken in Taiwan is 1:1 wit…

[deleted]

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#134

Post by H8crilA »

WeylandYutani wrote: post #114
H8crilA wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. He just meant that old people find it hard to learn to speak Mandarin, even if they can read the Chinese script (which is the same for all Chinese languages). He likely saw this as a major obstacle to his vision of a grand, unified China. He's also responsible for the simplified Chinese script, which was introduced everywhere but in Hong Kong and Taiwan. They are still very mutually intelligible, from wha…

That's the dilemma with the CCP. They are a murderous regime but they also made China into a powerful centralised state that can meet as equals with any Western country. They've always been the real nationalists.

China has been a unified empire before Europeans traded seashells with each other (I'm exaggerating here a bit). It is about 10 times older than the United States or Russia in its current post-mongolian iteration.

China being weak was unusual in the history of civilizations.

While I am firmly in the western camp, not recognizing reality is foolish.

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#135

Post by malermeister »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #131
WeylandYutani wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny thing is that things started to go bad for Mao when he suddenly started to have ideals. Luckily Xiaoping entered the chat and the rest is Chinese history. (I have always liked the Chinese for their pragmatism. Americans are too far up their own ass).

> Luckily Xiaoping entered the chat and the rest is Chinese history. I think Deng Xiaoping is a direct result of these developments during the Mao years. Things would have been very different for China, without the rapprochement with the west. Without friendly terms with the west they would have to maintain an enormously big army. Think of a China today that is more like North Korea.

So basically Russia in 2023?

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#136

Post by [deleted] »

WeylandYutani wrote: post #114
H8crilA wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. He just meant that old people find it hard to learn to speak Mandarin, even if they can read the Chinese script (which is the same for all Chinese languages). He likely saw this as a major obstacle to his vision of a grand, unified China. He's also responsible for the simplified Chinese script, which was introduced everywhere but in Hong Kong and Taiwan. They are still very mutually intelligible, from wha…

That's the dilemma with the CCP. They are a murderous regime but they also made China into a powerful centralised state that can meet as equals with any Western country. They've always been the real nationalists.

[deleted]

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#137

Post by gattilorenz »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #80
tumanian wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont have the source at hand, but soviets also preffered republicans to the left, since they could always make a dral with republicans while the lwft was too ideological.

Depends on what do you mean by the ‘left’ bolsheviks often viewed social-democratic and (to a lesser extent) liberal parties as their greatest threats. They were all appealing to the same demographics but were diametrically opposed on certain core points (democracy, free speech, political oppression etc.) making any real cooperation impossible. The Weimar republic was a great example of that, the liberal/socialist go…

> Stalin had no issue working with Hitler

To be honest, the other european powers (France, but especially the UK) also had a big trust issue with Stalin, and provably had a big role in making the unthinkable (the communist-nazi alliance) happen.

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#139

Post by tjoff »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #131
WeylandYutani wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny thing is that things started to go bad for Mao when he suddenly started to have ideals. Luckily Xiaoping entered the chat and the rest is Chinese history. (I have always liked the Chinese for their pragmatism. Americans are too far up their own ass).

> Luckily Xiaoping entered the chat and the rest is Chinese history. I think Deng Xiaoping is a direct result of these developments during the Mao years. Things would have been very different for China, without the rapprochement with the west. Without friendly terms with the west they would have to maintain an enormously big army. Think of a China today that is more like North Korea.

> Without friendly terms with the west they would have to maintain an enormously big army.

They don't?

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#140

Post by Lio »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #53
CamperBob2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sino-Soviet split came to mind when listening to Xi swear to be Putin's BFF and blood brother forever. Is Putin really stupid enough to fall for that? He will be polishing Xi's boots with his tongue soon enough.

Depends on what Xi is planning over Taiwan, that is where things get complicated. They are all trying to build alliances for that contingency.

It also depends on if Xi is planning to take Primorsky Krai from Russia in the future or not.

When Russia celebrated its 160 year anniversary of taking Vladivostok from China, there were descenting voices in Beijing calling to reverse another so called "humiliation".

Countries are allied until they are not.

Putin signed a treaty to protect Ukraine, it didn't stop him from attacking them in 2014 or escalating that again last year.

Post reply on HN