From Mark Steyn’s America Alone:
As for the allegedly inevitable superpower of the coming century, if China ever does achieve that status, it will be because the People’s Republic learned more from British Hong Kong than Hong Kong ever did from the Little Red Book. Sir John Cowperthwaite, the colony’s transformative financial secretary in the sixties, can stake a better claim as the father of modern China than Chairman Mao, and, if Beijing weren’t so twitchy about these things, his would be the face they’d plaster over all the banners in Tiananmen Square.
Fingers crossed. If Mao’s hateful visage comes down, I’ll visit China despite the pollution. After all, how could a little bad air be as as noxious as the adoration of the most murderous tyrant of the 20th century?
READER COMMENTS
John Fast
Oct 8 2008 at 8:23pm
I don’t care if Mao’s visage comes down as long as his vision comes down, because that’s even more hateful.
If only China becomes capitalist and free, I wouldn’t mind if his image is on every wall. In fact, I’d love to have his fat grin and buttock-like face up there to witness his dream of tyranny being trampled in the dirt.
bartman
Oct 8 2008 at 11:30pm
Slowly, little by little, Mao’s place in the cultural vernacular is being officially diminished in China. His policies have long since been flushed.
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