How would Mao Tse-Tung have handled a crisis like the 1989 Tienanmen square protests

[Seleucus]

Wade-Giles is literally worse than Hitler.

It's more of a pet peeve and annoyance that I'm exaggerating for dramatic effect.

But Wade-Giles is kind of utterly ridiculous. It's essentially the Chinglish of Chinese - a variant of your language produced by well-meaning foreigners that sounds childish and utterly ridiculous. And it's also specifically tailored to the needs of foreigners rather than the people who actually use the language regularly on a daily basis. Except that colonial dynamics meant that Wade-Giles ended up adopted as the official romanization.

 

[Epstein]

It's more of a pet peeve and annoyance that I'm exaggerating for dramatic effect.

But Wade-Giles is kind of utterly ridiculous. It's essentially the Chinglish of Chinese - a variant of your language produced by well-meaning foreigners that sounds childish and utterly ridiculous. And it's also specifically tailored to the needs of foreigners rather than the people who actually use the language regularly on a daily basis. Except that colonial dynamics meant that Wade-Giles ended up adopted as the official romanization.

I was agreeing with you.

It's most apparent with names. No idea how they managed to mangle Zhang Xueliang into 'Chang Hsueh-liang'.

 

[Seleucus]

I was agreeing with you.

It's most apparent with names. No idea how they managed to mangle Zhang Xueliang into 'Chang Hsueh-liang'.

The internet makes it difficult to tell sarcasm from snarkiness from seriousness.


It's like the one decent thing that Mao did. (Okay, slight exaggeration.) How can you be a pro-Mao tankie, and still use Wade-Giles?

Unless you're just trying to be edgy for the sake of edginess, I suppose. It's like being a pro-Stalin tankie who supports lobotomizing people (context: Ironically, the totalitarian Stalinist USSR banned lobotomies in 1950 due to moral/ethical considerations, while the West awarded a Nobel Prize for it in 1949 and performed them right to left up until they faded out in the 1970s. It's still legal in the U.S. to perform one today, 65 years after the Stalinists banned it for being unethical.)

 

[oreocruncher]

The internet makes it difficult to tell sarcasm from snarkiness from seriousness.


It's like the one decent thing that Mao did. (Okay, slight exaggeration.) How can you be a pro-Mao tankie, and still use Wade-Giles?

Unless you're just trying to be edgy for the sake of edginess, I suppose. It's like being a pro-Stalin tankie who supports lobotomizing people (context: Ironically, the totalitarian Stalinist USSR banned lobotomies in 1950 due to moral/ethical considerations, while the West awarded a Nobel Prize for it in 1949 and performed them right to left up until they faded out in the 1970s. It's still legal in the U.S. to perform one today, 65 years after the Stalinists banned it for being unethical.)

Wade-Giles is sucky...Pinyin feels more intuitive to me when pronouncing Chinese...
Not to mention the fact that "CH" and "CH'" are different sounds...but they ignore the '....

 

[Napoleon IV]

Seriously, what do the two people who think Mao would have been more receptive think? Since they are in the clear minority they should explain why they have this position.

 

[black angel]

Seriously, what do the two people who think Mao would have been more receptive think? Since they are in the clear minority they should explain why they have this position.

if I was to guess, they were taking the piss

 

[mlp]

I'll play the devil's advocate and say that Mao can support them, although it depends on two things:
1. what the students want
2. how comfortable Mao is with his TTL political position
Tiananmen Square 1989, if left to flourish, would lead to another student uprising that has no clear goal. They were even joined by the local farmers, I believe - considering that, it would be hard for them to set a single, unified front against the government. The general chaos, however, can be used by Mao for his own ambitions. And this has precedents.

 

[Alex1guy]

Come to think of it, if he was alive, he'd be 96. Would he even be in power as more than a figurehead?

 

[black angel]

Come to think of it, if he was alive, he'd be 96. Would he even be in power as more than a figurehead?

depends on his health, at the end of his life, Mao was blind and sick, that together with the fall out of the Cultural Revolution and Mao's need to purge Lin Biao's network, and his basically murder of Zhou Enlai (turned the once totally loyal Zhou against Mao) forced him to basically bow down to the reformers, they weren't ready to fight to the death with him, and he basically sold out his wife and Gang of Four to Deng Xiaoping and his, any ways it seems likely that Mao even in his dying days was plotting his way back to total control, Mao was never totally king like Stalin, his fellows at the top of the party could, when the stars were alined stop him, and Mao had fallen before, after the Korean War and Little Leap Forward, after the Great Leap Forward, and at the end of his life, after the Cultural Revolution

keeping Mao alive and in any kind of power means he'll claw his way back, crush the enemy

so if Mao in 1989 is anything close to healthy, sane and able to talk even, he'll be in control, maybe at a low ebb but the old fox would be still in the game.

 

[GeneralInTheShell]

We are talking about a man who openly stated that it would be good for the Chinese people if the US nuked them during the Korean War as they would rally harder to defeat the US. The man placed no value on human life, had he survived to see any analogue to the Tienamen square protests he would have brutally put them down. That being said, the Chinese economy would have been in such bad shape by then, you might actually see the army revolt against his lunacy.

 

[black angel]

We are talking about a man who openly stated that it would be good for the Chinese people if the US nuked them during the Korean War as they would rally harder to defeat the US. The man placed no value on human life, had he survived to see any analogue to the Tienamen square protests he would have brutally put them down. That being said, the Chinese economy would have been in such bad shape by then, you might actually see the army revolt against his lunacy.

they didn't when he took down Lin Biao, and removed the Army from all major posts they'd taken as a result of the Cultural Revolution, in the 1970s, and North Korea's military didn't revolt in the 1990s when the country was starving to death

 

[Karelian]

Mao would indeed be nearly a hundred years old by then, so I doubt he could have still been the one calling the shots. And just like previous posters have pointed out, the rise of a liberal student movement was a direct result of a very deliberate change of course away from Maoist politics.

 

[Mario]

He would be close of 100 y.o. so neither of two: if he considers that this is a huge portest against him, his heart or brain would stop life at this very moment, because he was too megalomaniac to swallow that.

 

[Pio2013]

How would Mao react to Tienanmen square crisis?

Lets put it simple: Remember the famous photo of the protester stopping the tank?

Well... imagine the tank doesnt stop.

 

[black angel]

Mao would indeed be nearly a hundred years old by then, so I doubt he could have still been the one calling the shots.

in OTL Deng Xiaoping become leader when he was 77, and ruled till he was 88, and was a major player till his death at the age of 92, as long as Mao is in his right mind, and can speak he'll be playing for keeps.

I mean we can talk about a Mao who was senile or who had a stroke, but assuming he's just old but relatively healthy (for a 96 year old) then, well be scared.