A 1950 Chinese propaganda poster showing a caricature of Douglas MacArthur committing wartime atrocities as a US plane bombs a Chinese factory in the background. Used with permission from the Stefan Landsberger/Chinese Posters collection.
Today is the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, a war which six decades later is still surrounded in controversy. For decades, the Party line in the PRC was the same one that is alive and well and living in Pyongyang today: The American Imperialists, with the help of their lackeys in the right-wing militarist government in Seoul, invaded the North. As Tania Branigan reports from Dandong for The Guardian, it’s a belief that dies hard, especially because many Chinese living along the PRC/DPRK border personally witnessed bombing raids by American planes during the war.
But times are changing. For example, yesterday the Global Times English-language edition published an op-ed calling for PRC archives to be opened up for further study of the Korean War and Chinese involvement in the conflict. Chinese academia is not (quite) as bound and gagged by the Party as it once was, and many scholars accept the idea that it was the North who commenced aggressions against the
During the 1920s the CCP operated from within the KMT party apparatus. Part of this was the doings of the Comintern, but it also made sense from a party development point of view. The KMT gave the CCP cover to grow as a party, and many once and future CCP leaders — people with names like ‘Mao’ and ‘Zhou’ — cut their political teeth working for the KMT. When Chiang Kai-shek began his Northern Expedition to reunite the country, the CCP softened up the ground for him by entering cities along the route and spreading propaganda, organizing general strikes, and generally agitation in advance of the KMT army. It’s a story most people know.
It was idyllic and peaceful on the outside. Kind of like Tiger and Elin.
Like Tiger though, Chiang enjoyed occasionally sleazing it up. But instead of banging cocktail waitresses two at a time, Chiang liked to mix with his boys from the Shanghai underworld, a group that included the notorious criminal boss ‘Big Eared’ Du Yuesheng.
Chiang was also about as a jumpy as a coked-up hamster in a bathtub full of cats. It wasn’t likely he was going to keep the Communists around even a
If the British takeover of Hong Kong was the moral equivalent of three guys kicking in the back door and at gunpoint turning your suburban home into a crack house, then the Portuguese in Macau were more like a couple of shady dudes who wanted to rent out your old tool shed, hoped you’d forget they were there, and when you reminded them that it was time to pay up and that you’d strongly prefer they NOT set up a craps game on your property or pimp out your children they decided to stiff you on the rent and declare squatters’ rights in your backyard.
On the evening of December 19, 1999, the flag of Portugal was lowered for the final time in Macau and at midnight on December 20, the tiny former colony officially became a part of the People’s Republic of China…more or less.
I say more or less because, unlike its glitzy neighbor Hong Kong, the nature of Macau’s sovereignty and even its status as a “colony” has frequently been open to debate and interpretation.
The Portuguese first showed up in the early 16th century, using the waters around the peninsula and islands as an anchorage and
December 16 is an interesting day for Tang history. On this date in 705, Empress Wu Zetian died in Luoyang at the age of 82 sui. Founder of her own dynasty, the Zhou, and a strong wielder of personal power throughout the latter half of the 7th century, Wu Zetian is one of the more complicated figures in Chinese history. Variously labeled a despot, a usurper, and power-hungry bitch who had no problems with stepping on or over her own children to get what she wanted, other historians regard her time in power as one of great prosperity, equal perhaps even to the reigns of Tang Taizong and Tang Xuanzong. Frankly, I think the negative aspects of her rise to power have been a bit overstated, traditional Chinese histories tend to be unkind to women who seize power, and the late 7th century was a time when society became more complex, trade expanded, and culture flourished. So….maybe she doesn’t completely deserve the rap she gets.
Of course fifty years later the Tang Dynasty faced a different kind of crisis, when An Lushan, a Tang general of Sogdian/Central Asian ancestry, launched a rebellion against the dynasty on December 16, 705. Those
Today is the birthday of Zhu Yunwen, the second emperor of the Ming dynasty, born December 5, 1377. The first son of the first son of the Ming dynastic founder Zhu Yuanzhang (Ming Taizu/The Hongwu Emperor), Zhu Yunwen took the throne following the death of his grandfather in 1398. Not that everybody was happy about the arrangement. Zhu Yuanzhang had decreed that imperial succession would automatically fall to the first son of the emperor or, as in the case of Zhu Yunwen, if the first son was no longer living then the crown would pass to the first son of the first son.
As might be expected, ancestral injunctions notwithstanding, Zhu Yunwen’s ascension to the throne as the Jianwen Emperor at the tender age of 21 was going to cause some grumbling in the ranks, particularly from Zhu Yuanzhang’s fourth son, Zhu Di (1360-1424). Zhu Di was a capable general and had been charged with commanding the Ming northern defenses around Beijing and generally keeping an eye on those pesky Mongols. (Apparently, Zhu Yuanzhang didn’t get the memo from CCP propaganda HQ that the Mongols and the Ming were really part of one united family – either that, or he
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