Well, the funny thing about that is that Chinese state has actually done that. Or Mao did, anyway.
See, Mao feared that the government was going to follow the same reformist path as the USSR, so he issued a series of declarations saying that the government had been infiltrated by bourgeois elements, that the people of China had a “right to rebel,” and finally calling on them to “Bombard the Headquarters.”
These declarations created a period of violence and disorder known as the Cultural Revolution, where independent, student-led militias known as Red Guards formed and started fighting whoever they suspected of being counter-revolutionary. With no command structure, they often wound up fighting each other, when they weren’t committing atrocities.
Ironically, all this did was discredit this approach and convince a lot of people of the necessity of the reforms they were meant to prevent, and of the central government.
Of course, there were another time in Chinese history where China lacked a strong central government. After the fall of the Qing, there was no central government at all. This is generally referred to as the warlord period, and it sucked so bad that the communists and nationalists put aside their differences to try to end it. Unfortunately, China remained largely decentralized, which allowed the much smaller but more centralized nation of Japan to invade and kill tens of millions of people.
If you don’t read theory/study history, it’s easy to just rail against authority and centralization from an idealist perspective, but if you actually study China’s history and conditions, you’ll find reasons for every path they’ve chosen.
They largely were. If you disagree it would be extremely interesting to get your analysis of each major turning point in modern Chinese history (from the fall of the Qing through the cultural revolution and the modern reform period) and explain what the better choices that should have been made are given the material conditions and constraints of the times.
Well, the funny thing about that is that Chinese state has actually done that. Or Mao did, anyway.
See, Mao feared that the government was going to follow the same reformist path as the USSR, so he issued a series of declarations saying that the government had been infiltrated by bourgeois elements, that the people of China had a “right to rebel,” and finally calling on them to “Bombard the Headquarters.”
These declarations created a period of violence and disorder known as the Cultural Revolution, where independent, student-led militias known as Red Guards formed and started fighting whoever they suspected of being counter-revolutionary. With no command structure, they often wound up fighting each other, when they weren’t committing atrocities.
Ironically, all this did was discredit this approach and convince a lot of people of the necessity of the reforms they were meant to prevent, and of the central government.
Of course, there were another time in Chinese history where China lacked a strong central government. After the fall of the Qing, there was no central government at all. This is generally referred to as the warlord period, and it sucked so bad that the communists and nationalists put aside their differences to try to end it. Unfortunately, China remained largely decentralized, which allowed the much smaller but more centralized nation of Japan to invade and kill tens of millions of people.
If you don’t read theory/study history, it’s easy to just rail against authority and centralization from an idealist perspective, but if you actually study China’s history and conditions, you’ll find reasons for every path they’ve chosen.
You are talking as if the choices made are the only reasonable ones regarding the things that previously happened.
They largely were. If you disagree it would be extremely interesting to get your analysis of each major turning point in modern Chinese history (from the fall of the Qing through the cultural revolution and the modern reform period) and explain what the better choices that should have been made are given the material conditions and constraints of the times.
Yes?