I’m not a huge fan of the RFA and I rarely, if ever, link to it but this piece written by Bao Tong is an interesting take on the events of the pivotal 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Party Congress. Bao Tong’s account departs from the triumphalist narrative of Deng Xiaoping kicking open the doors of reform and launching the country on a trajectory of modernization and development. According to Bao Tong’s version, reform was not on Deng’s original agenda, rather what made this moment truly special was the way in which the rank-and-file members of the Central Committee, following the lead of Hu Yaobang and Chen Yun, upset the apple cart.
We were looking ahead to modernization. But after Chen Yun and Hu Yaobang caused trouble, the members of the Party Central Committee kicked up a fuss en masse, overturning Hua and Deng’s planned framework. Pretty soon, everyone had turned their attention to talking about the past, and then the debates came thick and fast. What were they talking about? They were talking about the Cultural Revolution, the Lushan meeting, the unresolved “political cases,” and Mao Zedong.
From the point of view of Chairman Hua and vice-chairman Deng,
Today is Veterans Day in the United States. Woodrow Wilson declared November 11, 1919 as Armistice Day to mark the one-year anniversary of the end of hostilities in World War I. It was made a legal holiday in 1938, and in 1954 the holiday was renamed Veterans Day and expanded to honor all of those who had served their country.
On this date in 1844, the Qing government reversed a long-standing ban on the propagation of Catholicism in the empire, allowing missionaries to work in the five treaty ports opened after the first Opium War.
In 1851, Wang Maoyin (1798-1865), an imperial censor and an official at the board of finance, requested the throne change the imperial examination system to include more practical topics such as military affairs and technology. He was worried about the steady encroachment of the foreign powers on Qing sovereignty. Wang would later ask the trhone to make the 《海国图志》”A Gazeteer of the Maritime Countries,” a history/atlas of foreign countries published by the official Wei Yuan 魏源 (1794-1856), required reading for all officials, princes, and Manchu banner troops. His requests went unheeded and during the next decade the Qing would suffer a stunning set of military defeats both by the foreign powers
Whether or not our Google culture is making us smarter, dumber, or somewhere in between, I do get a fair bit of traffic from Google searches. Many of them a bit random, but a few are questions plugged into search engines like messages in electronic bottles floating in the Internet sea hoping for a bit of information and enlightenment. I dare not suggest that either information nor enlightenment are available in seller’s quantities from this little hobby of mine, but some of the questions do get me thinking.
Today a user followed this query to the Granite Studio: “How do Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong continue to influence Taiwan and China today?”
It’s obviously a complicated question, but it does recall a comment a Beijing acquaintance of mine made the first time we went to the old South Bar Street to take in the spectacle of a Sanlitun Saturday night:
“This is what all of China would like if Chiang Kai-shek had won the war.”
But didn’t he?
If the ghosts of Mao and Chiang somehow reconciled over shots of baijiu in the afterlife, and then wandered around Beijing on a rainy afternoon O-Minus 55 days, what would they be
In 1901, following the Boxer debacle, Empress Dowager Cixi and the Qing court felt compelled to offer new reforms to shore up the crumbling dynasty. On January 29, she issued an edict that called on all Qing officials to advise the court on the best course for reform. In particular, she wanted ideas on how to overhaul government institutions, education, military organization, and the financial system. (Like the basketball team that has trouble with defense, free throws, dribbling, passing, and shooting but other than that, they’re great.) She needed a plan. She actually had a plan three years earlier whenKang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and Tan Sitong advised the emperor during the 100 Days Reforms, but she didn’t like that plan so she called for the deaths of Kang and Liang, actually managed to execute Tan, and locked the emperor away in the Summer Palace on a small island (瀛臺 Yingtai) in an imperial garden west of the palace. Ironically, the new plan greatly resembled the old plan, but by the time she got around to agreeing to it, it was too late to save the dynasty anyway. Ladies and gentleman, the Norv Turner of de facto monarchs.
Today is the
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