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Is China Communist? Pop Quiz of Modern China 101

LOL nice one

I agree with you on some points that China today is not a text book communist regime, but you are ignoring the fact that the government itself declares itself communist. I suppose you could call the government "Reformist Communist"? but what for? Im not sure what you are trying to achieve by saying that China is not communist, do you not like communism?
Well, that is because the party started out as a true communist party almost 90 year ago. Over the course its color has charged. As David Brooks put it "When you talk to Americans, you find that they have all these weird notions about Chinese communism. You try to tell them that China isn’t a communist country anymore. It’s got a different system: meritocratic paternalism. You joke: Imagine the Ivy League taking over the shell of the Communist Party and deciding not to change the name. Imagine the Harvard Alumni Association with an army."The Dictatorship of Talent

Communism like democracy it only sounds good in theory to certain people, but in reality it will never work because the flaws of human being.


China has had to take on board capitalism to keep up with the world.
I strongly disagree with two points you made earlier by saying democracy is weak and invented capitalism.
Capitalism was the invention of mass production and modern manufacturing techniques. Sure Capitalism may have some drawbacks, but it pushed invention, technology, competition and transparency further in the last 100 years than ever before. And I dont get how you say democracy is weak.

Those two points that you disagree are not my original points at all.
1.Democracy needs capitalism to survive, but not vice versa.
2.Democracy for the mass is not efficient for the society.
You can read more from my post about this here
Indian democracy loses to Chinese efficiency - by 160 votes

What is weak about having the power to criticize and remove the head of stat if i disagree with their policies? I can understand the Chinese people having pride in their country just like everybody else, but mate what if one day you didnt like who was running the show? If the government of a communism country is doing a poor job running the country, how do get to change the government without violence?
Just ask yourself how many people actually truly understand the complexities of many of the government policies. There are people better suited for keeping the government policies in check. Don't be naive to think that in China there is no oppositions in politics even there is only one party. How many people hate Bush during his terms, but he still got to serve his full 8 years in the oval office, didn't he? Then what happened, people just choose someone who had no experience of governing and can only do lip services. When China changed from Mao's type of isolated idealistic communist regime to a open capitalist society, was there any violence? It is just the name of the party that did not change.
 
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1.Democracy needs capitalism to survive, but not vice versa.
Wrong...If a society is democratic, capitalism will thrive, in other words, democracy is CONDUCIVE to capitalism, but does not need capitalism. On the other hand, because competition is vital to capitalism, it need a political foundation that encourages competition, and that is democracy, in other words, capitalism need democracy to survive.

2.Democracy for the mass is not efficient for the society.
Wrong again...The masses, aka 'the people', need democracy if their voices are to be heard in government. It is in the METHODOLOGY of political competition and representation that can be either beneficial or detrimental to society.

Let us take parliamentary government for example. In many parliamentary governments, the people is represented through proportional representation. This is where political parties are given seats in parliament provided each party meet a minimum percentage of believers among the population. This minimum percentage figure is called a 'threshold'. For example...Say there is %30 Democratic Party members, %40 Republican Party members, %20 Independent Party, %5 Aryan White Power Party, %2 Black Panthers Party, %2 Communist Party and finally %1 Anarchist Party.

If the threshold is set at 0 then parliament will have all parties represented. If the threshold is set at %20, meaning there has to be from among the population at least %20 of the people who claim party affiliation, then parliament will have Democratic, Republican and Independent. Too high a threshold and you can have not a very representative government. Political power too concentrated and minorities could be disenfranchised. Too low a threshold and you can have an inefficient government where every issue must be debated by every party and could be so compromised that policies are ineffective.

Setting the threshold is a fine balancing act and is the mark of a functional democracy because the society is attempting to gauge the political diversity of the people. If the Sex and Love Party demand representation and the threshold is set to 0, one has to wonder if the SnL Party have any relevance to society, other than what goes on in people's bedrooms. So the threshold could never be set to 0. Society has to determine if a political viewpoint can be of a benefit and how many from among the people claim belief before this political viewpoint is allowed to be in government.

The US does not have proportional representation but goes by what is called 'first past the post' electoral process. That is a different issue for now.

So in defense of a single-party government in China, the argument that democracy for 'the masses' is not efficient is utterly absurd. Western democracies have been doing it just fine for the last 50yrs, some even longer.

Don't be naive to think that in China there is no oppositions in politics even there is only one party.
Who is the naive one here? Do you really think that running down people with tanks in public squares qualify as 'political debate'? Political oppositions exists only when they are allowed to speak publicly, not behind closed doors and in whispers.

How many people hate Bush during his terms, but he still got to serve his full 8 years in the oval office, didn't he?
Yes...But were Bush's political oppositions silenced in any way? This is an absurd comparison.
 
Wrong...If a society is democratic, capitalism will thrive, in other words, democracy is CONDUCIVE to capitalism, but does not need capitalism. On the other hand, because competition is vital to capitalism, it need a political foundation that encourages competition, and that is democracy, in other words, capitalism need democracy to survive.
"Well, maybe we’ve been a bit naive. It’s true that democracy needs capitalism. Try to come up with the name of a single democracy in the world that doesn’t have a capitalist economy. For democracy to function there must be centers of power outside of government. Capitalism decentralizes economic power, and thereby provides the private ground in which democracy can take root.

But China shows that the reverse may not be true -- capitalism doesn’t need democracy. Capitalism’s wide diffusion of economic power offers enough incentive for investors to take risks with their money. But, as China shows, capitalism doesn’t necessarily provide enough protection for individuals to take risks with their opinions. "
China: Capitalism Doesn't Require Democracy

Wrong again...The masses, aka 'the people', need democracy if their voices are to be heard in government. It is in the METHODOLOGY of political competition and representation that can be either beneficial or detrimental to society.

Let us take parliamentary government for example. In many parliamentary governments, the people is represented through proportional representation. This is where political parties are given seats in parliament provided each party meet a minimum percentage of believers among the population. This minimum percentage figure is called a 'threshold'. For example...Say there is %30 Democratic Party members, %40 Republican Party members, %20 Independent Party, %5 Aryan White Power Party, %2 Black Panthers Party, %2 Communist Party and finally %1 Anarchist Party.

If the threshold is set at 0 then parliament will have all parties represented. If the threshold is set at %20, meaning there has to be from among the population at least %20 of the people who claim party affiliation, then parliament will have Democratic, Republican and Independent. Too high a threshold and you can have not a very representative government. Political power too concentrated and minorities could be disenfranchised. Too low a threshold and you can have an inefficient government where every issue must be debated by every party and could be so compromised that policies are ineffective.

Setting the threshold is a fine balancing act and is the mark of a functional democracy because the society is attempting to gauge the political diversity of the people. If the Sex and Love Party demand representation and the threshold is set to 0, one has to wonder if the SnL Party have any relevance to society, other than what goes on in people's bedrooms. So the threshold could never be set to 0. Society has to determine if a political viewpoint can be of a benefit and how many from among the people claim belief before this political viewpoint is allowed to be in government.

The US does not have proportional representation but goes by what is called 'first past the post' electoral process. That is a different issue for now.

So in defense of a single-party government in China, the argument that democracy for 'the masses' is not efficient is utterly absurd. Western democracies have been doing it just fine for the last 50yrs, some even longer.

Who is the naive one here? Do you really think that running down people with tanks in public squares qualify as 'political debate'? Political oppositions exists only when they are allowed to speak publicly, not behind closed doors and in whispers.

Yes...But were Bush's political oppositions silenced in any way? This is an absurd comparison.

So you just assume that people's voice are all ignored in China, and there is no any form of representation of the people at all in China. Then there is no need for discussion here.

political debate should be done by people who at least understand politics, not mobs.

As for efficiency is concerned here.
The real competition lurking behind the upcoming Olympic games is between democratic capitalism and authoritarian capitalism.

For years American policy toward China assumed that trade and economic growth would generate a large Chinese middle class, and this middle class would demand democratic reforms. We were right on the first part. ... But we were wrong about the democracy part. We thought capitalism and democracy went hand in glove. They don't. Economic reforms are well underway in China. Individual Chinese can own property and invest, trade and buy almost whatever they want. Private enterprise is in, collectives are out. But when it comes to civil and political rights, China today is where it was almost two decades ago at the time of Tiananmen Square.

Authoritarian capitalism works wonders if all you care about is getting ahead economically... Never before in history have so many people gained economic ground so fast as in China over the last two decades. But if you're someone with a grievance, or you want to criticize those in power, or you're a Tibetan or ethnic minority, or you happen to like clean air, you're out of luck.

Democratic capitalism should win in the end because it responds far better to what people want -- not only as consumers but also as citizens. Yet right now the outcome of the competition doesn't seem so clear. The Chinese economy is booming while we're in deep trouble. Eighty percent of Chinese are optimistic about the future but only 20 percent of Americans say this nation is on the right track. And most Americans tell pollsters they don't trust politicians and believe our government is run by big corporations and the rich.

In terms of this large underlying competition, think of our upcoming presidential election is our own Olympic games. It will showcase to the world whether, and how well, democratic capitalism still works.
The Real Competition Behind the Olympic Games, Robert Reich

Also see if you can answer some of my questions in this thread about the efficiency. Indian democracy loses to Chinese efficiency - by 160 votes


Yes...But were Bush's political oppositions silenced in any way? This is an absurd comparison.
The oppositions is not being silent seem to be irrelevant on whether Bush got what he wanted or not.
 
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Well, maybe we’ve been a bit naive. It’s true that democracy needs capitalism. Try to come up with the name of a single democracy in the world that doesn’t have a capitalist economy. For democracy to function there must be centers of power outside of government. Capitalism decentralizes economic power, and thereby provides the private ground in which democracy can take root.
Wrong.

The definition of conducive is:
tending to promote or assist <an atmosphere conducive to education>
If a people decided upon themselves, without coercion of any kind, to eschew capitalist behaviors among each other, that still does not close the doors for capitalism to exist should anyone chose to make a profit from his assets. Capitalist behaviors are simply ignored, not banned. The most important thing for a democracy to come to existence, let alone thrive long enough for the people to exercise their capitalist behavior, is the FREEDOM to access diverse ideas and to distribute them. It is called 'freedom of expression', may be you have heard of it? Economic system arises only when there is political stability and note I said SYSTEM, not prosperity. That political stability can come from two main sources: Either from an authoritarian regime where the state owns and controls everything. Or that there is a tacit understanding between individuals to exercise self-restraints when dealing with each other. For the former, laws are designed to be maximally intrusive, even proactive. The latter, laws are designed to be reactive, to punish only when there is a violation of the social contract that everyone agreed upon the moment they decided to form that society. If there is political competition then naturally there will be economic competition. Different political ideas run parallel with different business models. Capitalism rises sooner and thrives more with a democratic society than with an authoritative one.

You confused being conducive to a thing with having a need for that same thing.

But China shows that the reverse may not be true -- capitalism doesn’t need democracy. Capitalism’s wide diffusion of economic power offers enough incentive for investors to take risks with their money. But, as China shows, capitalism doesn’t necessarily provide enough protection for individuals to take risks with their opinions. "
Reich is wrong. And I do not care if he was Clinton's SecLab or that he is now a professor.

Politics is about interpersonal dynamics between individuals possessing free will and the mental ability to recognize their beings. Politics exists between friends, husbands and wives, parents and children, and between citizens and their government. They argue on what to have for dinner and more important issues such as national defense. That means there is no such thing as a democratic regime as the word regime imply a state. There is only a democratic society whose members elect a governing regime that naturally would reflect the democratic nature of the people. But there is such a thing as an authoritative regime by virtue that the state in theory owns and controls everything, including the citizens themselves, the state gives the country its nature.

At the very least, Reich is wrong in his interpretation of the relationship between democratic and capitalist practices. China's version of capitalism is allowed, in other words, the state that own and control everything simply allow the people to exercise their nature on a portion of state properties. And what the state giveth, the state can taketh away. Under a communist regime, capitalism is underground. It exist but does not flourish and when ideas are suppressed, innovations do not come to be. People are too worried about what the state might do to them before they can afford the intellectual energies to 'think outside the box' as the cliche goes.

This version of capitalism is unnatural and shallow.

So you just assume that people's voice are all ignored in China, and there is no any form of representation of the people at all in China. Then there is no need for discussion here.
China's government cannot tolerate people performs breathing exercises in public. China's government create its own Catholic bishop. Wny? China's government listen to the people just enough to give the facade that it listen to the people. Where is a fucntional political opposition party to the current one?

political debate should be done by people who at least understand politics, not mobs.
Your dismissal of the sentiments of the people marked you in my eyes as a ready made communist.

Even in chaotic Africa, there is a certain level of order where people listen and obey an elder, a tribal and/or religious leader, or even a government. It is man's NATURE that when we decide to create a society, we suppress some measure of our selfishness for the greater societal good, for survival if needed. We channel our raw desires into a REPRESENTATIVE in whom we endow with the authority to speak and act in our behalf and despite our selfishness if needed. Show me a single anarchist society. It is people like YOU who are derisive of 'the mob' who decided for themselves that they know more about politics and governance and ended up creating an authoritative regime for your own benefits.

Also see if you can answer some of my questions in this thread about the efficiency. Indian democracy loses to Chinese efficiency - by 160 votes
Not interested.

The oppositions is not being silent seem to be irrelevant on whether Bush got what he wanted or not.
The oppositions not being silenced is what distinguished a democratic society from an authoritative one. You have much to learn about democracy.
 
@Gambit
Since you think that you have more insight and probably more credentials and experiences than Robert Reich about politics, and conveniently ignore the facts that the Chinese economy is booming while US is in deep trouble. Eighty percent of Chinese are optimistic about the future but only 20 percent of Americans say this nation is on the right track.

Then what can I say more to convince you, right?


Not interested.
Why not? I really want to see how you present the largest democracy in the world to convince people in China that they should get rid of its authoritarian government.

Capitalism rises sooner and thrives more with a democratic society than with an authoritative one.
That I do agree, but since China already got a functional capitalism, why should I complain?

This version of capitalism is unnatural and shallow.
I guess you are against plastic surgery and genetic engineering as well, right? While we are on this, what about theory of evolution and social Darwinism?

China's government cannot tolerate people performs breathing exercises in public. China's government create its own Catholic bishop. Why? China's government listen to the people just enough to give the facade that it listen to the people. Where is a fucntional political opposition party to the current one?
Funny that is same the impression I got from those democratic societies as well.

Could be there different fractions exist within the party?

As for Catholic church is concerned. Why would any sane people want to listen to someone that is thousands miles away, and don't have any idea about. BTW is the bishops democratic elected? I don't want to be dragged into a religious debate here, but if it is up to me, Catholicism and Christianity should be banned all together. There are more people being killed in the name of their big boss up there that doesn't even exist than the worst tyrants in the world. Yes, I am an atheist here.

The oppositions not being silenced is what distinguished a democratic society from an authoritative one. You have much to learn about democracy.
Then democratic society is just all about noises instead of functionalities. Three words for you, efficiency, efficiency, efficiency.
 
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@Gambit
Since you think that you have more insight and probably more credentials and experiences than Robert Reich about politics, and conveniently ignore the facts that the Chinese economy is booming while US is in deep trouble. Eighty percent of Chinese are optimistic about the future but only 20 percent of Americans say this nation is on the right track.

Then what can I say more to convince you, right?
What does that prove? That China somehow is more innovative at capitalism than US? Got news for you...China today is little more different than pre-Depression US when at that time the US was the world's manufacturing center due to:

- Immigration policies that gave the country a large labor pool.
- The beginning of large scale industrialization.

Before the US was the world's manufacturing target in the first quarter of the 20th century, Great Britain was so in the last half of 19th century.

It is not that difficult to see why the differences are minimal. The change from a communist style 'economic system', a joke of an 'economic system' if there ever was one, to a capitalist economy, a more natural system since it appeals to man's basic instincts, is the equivalent of introducing a large labor pool into the economy. And instead of large scale machine related industrialization, we have information management and exploitation, of which the Internet have a preeminent role. At the turn of the 20th century, pre-Depression, every country, while on their own learning curves, made plenty of mistakes, costly or otherwise. Whereas China today is the beneficiary of others' modernization in their own countries and then exported those innovations, including lessons learned from their own errors, worldwide. Labor, physical or intellectual, can be valuated and China today is taking advantage of the low labor cost, no different than Western capitalists would outside China, to jump start China's economy after over 50yrs of misguided ideological beliefs and monumental screw-ups.

This goes back to my point that BEFORE economic birth, stability, growth and finally prosperity can happen, political stability must be established. That stability can come from any form of government, either through the democratic government or under an authoritarian regime, but political stability must be established. My neighbors and I must feel we are secured in own domains before we are willing to leave the confines of our homes to extend credit and conduct sales to each other. So when Robert Reich said this, from your commondreams source...
It’s true that democracy needs capitalism. Try to come up with the name of a single democracy in the world that doesn’t have a capitalist economy. For democracy to function there must be centers of power outside of government. Capitalism decentralizes economic power, and thereby provides the private ground in which democracy can take root.

But China shows that the reverse may not be true -- capitalism doesn’t need democracy.
Reich is obviously wrong. He made a classic logic mistake -- That correlation equal causation. There is a difference between a hidden capitalism, a grudgingly tolerated one, and one that arose out of man's natural predisposition to socialize, to exchange ideas and to profit. The last is called a vibrant capitalism and democratic societies have never had a need to create one by fiat, like China have done, when there was a COMMAND change of an economic system but no equally dramatic change in the political foundation. A democratic society is one that not only tolerate but ENCOURAGES diversity of opinions and ideas. So if man is already predisposed to socialize, to exchange ideas and to profit, what for a need for any democratic regime to -- by fiat -- allow anyone to act according to his natural instincts? The most the democratic regime should do is make laws to limit actions of capitalism from entering excesses that could create harms but that is another issue. Going by Reich's argument and his usage of China as an example, one can say that capitalism needs despotic tyrants, not democracy, and ONLY through despots could capitalism go from birth, stability, growth and finally to prosperity.

Why not? I really want to see how you present the largest democracy in the world to convince people in China that they should get rid of its authoritarian government.
Give me a break...I have no need to use India as a prop to defend my views.

That I do agree, but since China already got a functional capitalism, why should I complain?
If you are willing sacrifice political independence for wealth, you have no cause to complaint. You should be willing to support the government's brutal methods of suppressing political dissents. More than willing since these political dissents can threaten your ability to create wealth for yourself.

I guess you are against plastic surgery and genetic engineering as well, right? While we are on this, what about theory of evolution and social Darwinism?
So what if I am? How does my distaste for siliconed boobs on bleached blond women negate my argument that China's version of capitalism is artificial and shallow?

Funny that is same the impression I got from those democratic societies as well.

Could be there different fractions exist within the party?
The difference is that in democratics societies, fractions are ALLOWED to form their own organizations. I guess the 'allowance' part is difficult for you to understand?

As for Catholic church is concerned. Why would any sane people want to listen to someone that is thousands miles away, and don't have any idea about. BTW is the bishops democratic elected? I don't want to be dragged into a religious debate here, but if it is up to me, Catholicism and Christianity should be banned all together. There are more people being killed in the name of their big boss up there that doesn't even exist than the worst tyrants in the world. Yes, I am an atheist here.
You are avoiding the issue, which is not surprising to me. The point here is that the current government in China is afraid of dissenting opinions, especially when those opinions cannot be either suppressed or compromised somehow. So unless the government stop its intrusions into people's religious beliefs, your implication...
So you just assume that people's voice are all ignored in China, and there is no any form of representation of the people at all in China.
...That somehow the people's voices do matter is utterly absurd.

Then democratic society is just all about noises instead of functionalities. Three words for you, efficiency, efficiency, efficiency.
If efficiency is all that mattered, then an authoritarian regime should be the most efficient of all in ALL things. And yet we have seen that since the creation of the communist world, headed by the Soviet Union, this world have lagged behind the democratic West in terms of science, technology, cultural items such as the arts, and in economics. Guess who collapsed and who forced to commit radical changes?
 
...
The Soviet Union was the ideological head of the communist monster. If the world needed to see an Asian face of this monster, Mao Tse-tung was that face. When I said that Mao imposed Chinese-style land reform in North Viet Nam, I did not meant that Mao was personally involved, only that because Mao was the Asian representative of communism, his words and means of implementing whatever policies are laws and to disobey is to invite certain death. Ho Chi Minh was sufficiently cowed not only by his fear of Mao but also of Stalin. China ran amok in North Viet Nam and everyone knew it.

Contrary to what you believe, I think land reform is very important and necessary. And I hail the success thus brought forth by this great endeavor on the development of human equality and abolishment of excessive exploitation.

South Vietnam under Diem had been notorious for its repression and cruelty. To support such an infamous dynasty with the precious lives of American boys and girls has been a central controversy of Vietnam War. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made a speech at Manhattan's Riverside Church on April 1967.

Excerpt:
&#8220;Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the NLF, that strangely anonymous group we call VC or communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem, and charge them with violence while we pour new weapons of death into their land?&#8221;

Bad SV landlords under the deceptive, ruthless, and anti-human dictatorship of Diam conducted atrocity, cruelty, and corruption under the pretext of against VC. This sort of human scum must be purged relentlessly by force from the earth! And their land must be shared among the poor.

Thus said, no one doubts that some mistake may have happened and VC should apologize/compensate for that.

Wrong...NKR relied upon China for fuel and food. China needed NKR as a buffer against SKR, JPN and by extension the US. China could near literally pull the plug on NKR and defuse the current military tension in short order.

What a laughable and absurd assertion! Obviously you haven&#8217;t paid even a reasonable amount of attention to Mrs. Clinton and her people as well as DC think tanks talk about what would happen if the &#8220;plug&#8221; were to be pulled. You lack of NE Asia knowledge is abysmally appalling.

The Soviets needed an Asian face and China was the enforcer.

Again show your lack of knowledge: Soviet already split with China during V. War.

The famines in China, the Ukraine, North Viet Nam and Chile were caused by implementations of communism, not by natural disasters or flawed economic policies. North Viet Nam's land was fertile and the people experts and productive. The communists in a few years nearly destroyed generations worth of such knowledge. The Soviets exported Lysenkoism, so named after Trofim Lysenko, a mix of political ideology and science whose policies ended in nothing but disasters.

You haven&#8217;t refuted in any sense of my statement:
India and many other countries never have prevalent communist rule, but famine is still perpetual, whereas in &#8220;communist&#8221; China, famine has long gone and it actual export some grain product.

In addition, with respect to China, hope you&#8217;ll be able to read beyond just Western propaganda publications. Study of science enlightens us that to be wise one must listen to and study about the story of both sides even you may emotionally not like the other side. It is not a religion.

Then who is the most qualified? Are you saying that the victim of a crime cannot pass a moral judgement upon what was thrown upon him? A black slave in mid-1800s America cannot call his and other blacks' condition 'immoral'? This is not a legal judgment but a moral condemnation. When, after reunification and the Vietnamese communists went on a killing spree, the world saw an exodus from Viet Nam called 'the boat people'. If you are not happy with America and the US government, what could you do? Renounce your US citizenship? Move to Europe? How perilous would that journey be? When you have a group of people willing to risk their lives in shark infested waters instead of remaining with their own countrymen, that is a moral vote of no confidence in the highest.

If you ever heard or participated a juror selection you shouldn&#8217;t be that surprised to hear what I said. On other hand, making comments is your freedom to express your opinion.

Vietnam &#8220;boat people&#8221; has a complex background. Since US decided to abandon Vietnam, even before VC entered the south, people started to flee for fear of the arrival of war enemy. Thus, it is a total ridicule to just complain NC. Perhaps US should also be complained by not able to shore-up Diem Dynasty. :lol: Later, NC imposed labor camp and expelled ethnic Chinese and their own SV people.

Prey tell, what standard communist theory says expelling of people can realize communism? Come on! This action is sheer anti-communism activities!
You must understand VC authorities were trying to achieve their own interest under the cloak of communism by conducting such atrocity. :tdown:

Sorry...But you cannot have it both ways. First...You disqualify victims of communism as emotionally biased whose moral acumen are irrevocably damaged. Now you denounce critics of communism as nothing more petty conspirators.

No sorry, but by failing to provide new origins and proofs, you didn&#8217;t refute any my statement other than your slogan shouting. In addition, in general, any system has its victims. Show me one that has none.

Show me a single communist country that have been economically prosperous, culturally diverse and scientifically innovative as democratic-capitalist ones. Communism set China back at least 50yrs of human progress. It baffles me to see any Chinese willing to subject China's rich history to this evil ideology and by making excuses for the current regime.

Obviously your eyes are blinded with vicious hatred against an &#8211;ism that you know nothing of.

China boasts 56 ethnics, far more diverse than that of democratic Japan/Skorea/&#8230;. China&#8217;s gross GDP will certainly pass that of democratic Japan. Being seriously damaged by containment and invasion of democratic countries, China is temporarily lagging behind in Science and technologies, but is already there in some fields and will be there in most of fields in near future.

Just one more addition, Cuba is far ahead in social medi-care system than US. And Nkorea has 100&#37; literacy, better than most democratic countries in this aspect.

I am glad there stands an undeniable fact that people of &#8220;communist&#8221; China have forsaken hundred years of humiliation marked by invasion of western and eastern powers, and internal corruption, chronicle feudalism and morbid ineptitude that hampered human development for more than 100 years, and have made China one of the strongest countries in the East Asia and perhaps in the world in near future. They have been moving China forward, on a bumpy road, in the fastest speed that the history of the world has never witnessed before.

These achievements have been hailed by many conscience people as well as UN as &#8220;miracle&#8221;, but are surely and understandably a big confusion to a group of people: how dare a country ruled by Goddamned communist thugs do such good stuff? :rofl:

More interesting to me personally, the grandeur achievements of China hint an interesting exploration in the development of humanity: could there be a newer and better way for Asian poor countries other than those trumpeted tritely over the past hundred years leading to a new height of mankind?
 
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.... And yet we have seen that since the creation of the communist world, headed by the Soviet Union, this world have lagged behind the democratic West in terms of science, technology, cultural items such as the arts, and in economics. Guess who collapsed and who forced to commit radical changes?

:rofl:

Can you please, please tell us all that before the creation of communism, Russia and China were more advanced than Western powers! :lol:

BTW, just a textbook hint: Soviet didn't create communism.
 
Contrary to what you believe, I think land reform is very important and necessary. And I hail the success thus brought forth by this great endeavor on the development of human equality and abolishment of excessive exploitation.
Do not 'contrary' to what I believe but by all means go 'contrary' to what historians, even communist ones, believe...

Ho Chi Minh Biography
A land reform campaign from 1954 to 1956 was a major failure. Modeled on land redistribution plans developed by Chinese Communists, the reforms were very unpopular among Vietnamese peasants, some five thousand of whom were killed by Ho's government in its determination to make the plan work.
Forced land reforms have had a history of failures, even to this day. What good is land redistribution when people are forced into collective farms and those farms are managed by incompetents? Why do you think famines came to be despite the fact that the people themselves are expert farmers and that the land is fertile? Talk about being an 'armchair communist'.

South Vietnam under Diem had been notorious for its repression and cruelty. To support such an infamous dynasty with the precious lives of American boys and girls has been a central controversy of Vietnam War. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made a speech at Manhattan's Riverside Church on April 1967.

Excerpt:
“Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the NLF, that strangely anonymous group we call VC or communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem, and charge them with violence while we pour new weapons of death into their land?”
The US permitted? King should have stuck to civil rights issues in the US. His understanding of the Vietnam War was shallow, just like yours.

The Diem regime was no paragon of democratic values, but life under communist North Viet Nam was far worse. Can you find any quotes from King where he explain why was there a constant flow of North-South refugees but not vice versa? Can you explain why King never criticize the Soviets and Red China to the extent he did to the US? If the US somehow was powerful enough to 'permit' Diem to rule South Viet Nam the way he did, then the Soviets and Red China went beyond 'permit' and actually instructed the Viet Minh on how to be oppressive and far more cruel. King's stature as a respected civil rights leader did not endow him with any extraordinary insights about SE Asia. The Vietnam War was nothing more than a convenient rhetorical club King held over American society's head. There were just as many South Vietnamese who were equally anti-communist as King was about racism. Can you find any quotes from King where he can explain why is that?

Bad SV landlords under the deceptive, ruthless, and anti-human dictatorship of Diam conducted atrocity, cruelty, and corruption under the pretext of against VC. This sort of human scum must be purged relentlessly by force from the earth! And their land must be shared among the poor.

Thus said, no one doubts that some mistake may have happened and VC should apologize/compensate for that.
What a laugh...This revealed more about you than about any insights on the Vietnam War. If there were communist atrocities they were merely 'some mistake' and that the communists should just apologize and make recompense. Never mind that you provided no explanation on who managed to compelled the communists who were in power at the time to pay up and with what. But if it was non-communists who violated the slightest democratic principle, then they are 'ruthless', 'anti-human', 'scum' and all sorts of hyperboles. Got news for you, pal...The economy in South Vietnam surpassed that of North Vietnam even though both were heavily supported by their respective sponsors.

What a laughable and absurd assertion! Obviously you haven’t paid even a reasonable amount of attention to Mrs. Clinton and her people as well as DC think tanks talk about what would happen if the “plug” were to be pulled. You lack of NE Asia knowledge is abysmally appalling.
No...It is YOUR knowledge of Asian affairs, particularly the China-NKR relationship that is 'abysmally appalling'. No one can deny that it was China who temporarily shut off fuel delivery to NKR back in...

China debates its bond with North Korea - Los Angeles Times
U.S. officials say China twice cut off oil supplies to North Korea, in 2003 and 2006-'07, to ratchet up pressure. It also cooperated by scrutinizing bank accounts when the U.S. Treasury went after Macao-based Banco Delta Asia in 2007 in reaction to North Korea's improper use of the international banking system.

http://www.wsichina.org/cs4_3.pdf
China’s reaction began to change, however, with the continuous string of reports regarding the imminent tests that were published in June of 2006. For the first time, the Chinese premier openly demanded North Korea to halt its erroneous action. On June 28, 2006, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao openly called on North Korea to stop the test launch in an attempt to avoid Chinese domestic alarm at growing tensions in the Sino-DPRK relationship.

2
This reaction was unprecedented as China’s senior leaders had never officially demanded anything of the DPRK, even when it withdrew from the nuclear Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or reopened its 5-megawatt graphite reactor or when it declared possession of nuclear weapons in February 2005.
China is attemptimg to portray herself as a 'responsible' global power, especially when it is no secret to anyone that like the US who have and the once USSR who had subordinate allies, China is the dominant partner in this relationship. The Bush Administration's refusal to conduct face-to-face talks with NKR gave China cause to consider the possibility that the US could either: Manage to create a regional agreement with Japan and SKR to militarily disable NKR's nuclear facilities. Or as one Chinese US 'expert' feared that the US might unilaterally, like Iraq, attack NKR's nuclear facilities and leave China to clean up the mess, which would mean Chinese military involvement straight into NKRean territory. Neither options were palatable. The result from that first intervention was that China's image as such a 'responsible' power improved %100. Today...China still cannot afford to be seen as NKR's bi-atches just because Kim perceive the new US administration as weak on foreign affairs.

Again show your lack of knowledge: Soviet already split with China during V. War.
You must be delusional. I am %99.999 certain that you either are too young to remember the Vietnam War or that you were borned after 1975. But here you are debating the Vietnam War against a Viet refugee who had memories of the war itself. And I bet you have nothing more than wikipedia to support your arguments. Just as you did not understand me when I said Mao 'imposed' land reforms into North Viet Nam and interpreted my comment to mean Mao had a personal hand in it, now you have a false understanding that somehow the Soviets had to micromanage China when it comes to Asian communist expansionist plans. Nothing could be more wrong. Both the Soviets and Red China were ideological soulmates despite whatever differences they may have regarding communist politics. When both North and South Vietnam applied for full UN memberships, both the Soviets and China were in complete agreements to use their veto powers against SVN. That is just one of the many examples of unity the Soviets and China can bring to face if there is such a need.

You haven’t refuted in any sense of my statement:
India and many other countries never have prevalent communist rule, but famine is still perpetual, whereas in “communist” China, famine has long gone and it actual export some grain product.
Give me a break...China does not need to have widespread famine in order to have hunger caused by state incompetencies in managing the economy in general and agriculture in particular. Former China Premier Zhao Ziyang, who became a political prisoner after the Tiananmen Massacre for his role, admitted that for decades state demanded quotas meant that farmers usually go hungry after they shipped off their crops. Post Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee allowed grain imports, those quotas were lowered and rural areas became prosperous because the farmers were permitted to sell excess once they kept enough for themselves and for the next season. This goes back to my point that communists are incompetents when it comes to economics and famines cause by them are of greater moral tragedies than what nature wrought. History refuted you well enough, even communist Chinese history did.

In addition, with respect to China, hope you’ll be able to read beyond just Western propaganda publications. Study of science enlightens us that to be wise one must listen to and study about the story of both sides even you may emotionally not like the other side. It is not a religion.
Nothing but tripe here.

If you ever heard or participated a juror selection you shouldn’t be that surprised to hear what I said.
I once served as a juror on a 2nd degree murder case in Tampa, Florida, while serving in the USAF at MacDill AFB. I probably have a better understanding of laws and moralities than you do.

On other hand, making comments is your freedom to express your opinion.
That is correct. Opinions more often than not contain moral judgements and so far the world has seen enough of communism to say that it is an outright evil ideology.

Vietnam “boat people” has a complex background. Since US decided to abandon Vietnam, even before VC entered the south, people started to flee for fear of the arrival of war enemy. Thus, it is a total ridicule to just complain NC. Perhaps US should also be complained by not able to shore-up Diem Dynasty. :lol: Later, NC imposed labor camp and expelled ethnic Chinese and their own SV people.
The VC 'entered' the South? And you have the gall to tell me I am ignorant of Asian affairs? The VC was the guerrilla branch of the NVA and it was the NVA who 'entered' the South. Given this gross ignorance despite the availability of wikipedia, I see no need to educate you on the facts about the Vietnamese 'boat people'.

Prey tell, what standard communist theory says expelling of people can realize communism? Come on! This action is sheer anti-communism activities!
You must understand VC authorities were trying to achieve their own interest under the cloak of communism by conducting such atrocity. :tdown:
Easy...There is no need to have any specific instructions or even general ideas. All any die-hard communist have to do is accuse a person of being an 'enemy of the people' or being 'counter-revolutionary' and that would be enough to justify any atrocity...I mean to use your words 'some mistake'. This is a treasure.

No sorry, but by failing to provide new origins and proofs, you didn’t refute any my statement other than your slogan shouting. In addition, in general, any system has its victims. Show me one that has none.
From what I have seen so far, such as atrocities dismissed as 'some mistake', it is YOU who are more adept at sloganeering and propaganda spewing than I.

Obviously your eyes are blinded with vicious hatred against an –ism that you know nothing of.

China boasts 56 ethnics, far more diverse than that of democratic Japan/Skorea/…. China’s gross GDP will certainly pass that of democratic Japan. Being seriously damaged by containment and invasion of democratic countries, China is temporarily lagging behind in Science and technologies, but is already there in some fields and will be there in most of fields in near future.
If it does happen, it is as certain as the sky is blue that communist ideas about economics and the human nature have NOTHING to do with such success. It is typical of 'armchair communist' like yourself to blame 'Western imperialism' when it was Western military powers that liberated the Chinese from Imperial Japan. Plus the fact that the US never had any colonial interests in Asia. It was the Europeans who had colonial interests in China before WW II. But once the war was over there are no possible excuses. Japan was bombed nearly back to the Stone Age and later occupied by foreign powers, and yet in one generation the Japanese, on a few islands with next to nothing in terms of natural resources, surpassed geographically massive China in just about every human endeavors.

A 'nation' is a people with a common heritage.

A 'country' is geographical locale that may or may not have defined borders.

A 'state' is a political entity that rule over both.

China is no stranger to earthquake and was the first to have a rudimentary seismograph back in 2nd AD invented by Chang Heng. De la Hautefeuille finally made one by 1848. A 1400yrs gap between China and the West. China's knowledge of superior metallurgy was made possible by the double-acting bellows, which provides continuous air to forges which produces greater heat, back in 4th BC. The device finally made it to Europe sometime in the 1700 where J.N. de la Hire adapted it to pump air and fluids. All this time the Europeans have been using single action bellows which move air only in one direction. I can bring up dozens of such examples.

If any 'nation' that should have a vicious hatred against an -ism that set them back for fifty years in a 'country' as naturally wealthy and intellectually fertile as historical 'China', it should be the Chinese who should hate the 'state' that adopted such an -ism.

Just one more addition, Cuba is far ahead in social medi-care system than US. And Nkorea has 100% literacy, better than most democratic countries in this aspect.
Yah...The world seen plenty of American 'boat people' floating in rickety homemade rafts going to Cuba for the free health care and education.

I am glad there stands an undeniable fact that people of “communist” China have forsaken hundred years of humiliation marked by invasion of western and eastern powers, and internal corruption, chronicle feudalism and morbid ineptitude that hampered human development for more than 100 years, and have made China one of the strongest countries in the East Asia and perhaps in the world in near future. They have been moving China forward, on a bumpy road, in the fastest speed that the history of the world has never witnessed before.

These achievements have been hailed by many conscience people as well as UN as “miracle”, but are surely and understandably a big confusion to a group of people: how dare a country ruled by Goddamned communist thugs do such good stuff? :rofl:

More interesting to me personally, the grandeur achievements of China hint an interesting exploration in the development of humanity: could there be a newer and better way for Asian poor countries other than those trumpeted tritely over the past hundred years leading to a new height of mankind?
The 'confusion' is only in YOUR mind, not anyone else who have been living under a free market system. This is sheer sloganeering here.

Can you please, please tell us all that before the creation of communism, Russia and China were more advanced than Western powers!

BTW, just a textbook hint: Soviet didn't create communism.
Who are YOU to give me any hint when it is YOU who continually mixed up the communist forces in the Vietnam War?

:lol:
 
Do not 'contrary' to what I believe but by all means go 'contrary' to what historians, even communist ones, believe...

Ho Chi Minh Biography
Forced land reforms have had a history of failures, even to this day. What good is land redistribution when people are forced into collective farms and those farms are managed by incompetents? Why do you think famines came to be despite the fact that the people themselves are expert farmers and that the land is fertile? Talk about being an 'armchair communist'.

...
:lol:

You post covers too many topics. Let&#8217;s talk about land reform first.

Your quote and comments reflect a typical propagandist mentality as it only reveals some truth but conceals the more complete one.

Land reforms (also agrarian reform, though that can have a broader meaning) is an often-controversial alteration in the societal arrangements whereby government administers possession and use of land. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed real estate property redistribution, generally of agricultural land, or be part of an even more revolutionary program that may include forcible removal of an existing government that is seen to oppose such reforms.

Land reform - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For China case:
&#183; China has been through a series of land reforms:
o In the 1940s, the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, funded with American money, with the support of the national government, carried out land reform and community action programs in several provinces.
o The thorough land reform launched by the Communist Party of China in 1946, three years before the foundation of the People's Republic of China (PRC), won the party millions of supporters among the poor and middle peasantry. The land and other property of landlords were expropriated and redistributed so that each household in a rural village would have a comparable holding. This agrarian revolution was made famous in the West by William Hinton's book Fanshen. By the time land reform was completed, at least a million landlords and members of their families had been publicly executed or beaten to death by enraged peasants.[20][21]
o In the mid-1950s, a second land reform during the Great Leap Forward compelled individual farmers to join collectives, which, in turn, were grouped into People's Communes with centrally controlled property rights and an egalitarian principle of distribution. This policy was generally a failure in terms of production. [2] The PRC reversed this policy in 1962 through the proclamation of the Sixty Articles. As a result, the ownership of the basic means of production was divided over three levels with collective land ownership vested in the production team (see also Ho [2001]).
o A third land reform beginning in the late 1970s re-introduced family-based contract system called the Household Responsibility System, which had enormous initial success, followed by a period of relative stagnation. Chen, Wang, and Davis [1998] suggest that the later stagnation was due, in part, to a system of periodic redistribution that encouraged over-exploitation rather than capital investment in future productivity. [3]. However, although land use rights were returned to individual farmers, collective land ownership was left undefined after the disbandment of the People's Communes.
o Since 1998 China is in the midst of drafting the new Property Law which is the first piece of national legislation that will define the land ownership structure in China for years to come. The Property Law forms the basis for China's future land policy of establishing a system of freehold, rather than of private ownership (see also Ho, [2005]).

No doubt that there were failures, but they are corrected. The land reform has had a positive impact on China in general as hailed by East and West. Talking about &#8220;a million landlords and members of their families had been publicly executed or beaten to death by enraged peasants&#8221; in today&#8217;s view, it is a result of a mixture of lawlessness, feudal hatred, peasants reaction to landlord earlier brutality, etc. That is a reflection of ground reality in old China with vast poor and uneducated folks.

For Vietnam case:

&#183; Vietnam: In the years after World War II, even before the formal division of Vietnam, land reform was initiated in North Vietnam. This land reform (1953-1956) redistributed land to more than 2 million poor peasants, but at a cost of from tens[24] to hundreds of thousands of lives[25] and was one of the main reason for the mass exodus of 1 million people from the North to the South in 1954. The probable democide for this four year period then totals 283,000 North Vietnamese.[26] South Vietnam made several further attempts in the post-Diem years, the most ambitious being the Land to the Tiller program instituted in 1970 by President Nguyen Van Thieu. This limited individuals to 15 hectares, compensated the owners of expropriated tracts, and extended legal title to peasants who in areas under control of the South Vietnamese government to whom had land had previously been distributed by the Viet Cong. Mark Moyar [1996] asserts that while it was effectively implemented only in some parts of the country, "In the Mekong Delta and the provinces around Saigon, the program worked extremely well... It reduced the percentage of total cropland cultivated by tenants from sixty percent to ten percent in three years." [4]

My note was particularly for land reform in SV: &#8220; Bad SV landlords under the deceptive,&#8230;&#8221;, which seems to be a success.

In North, Mr. Ho perhaps was not wise enough to learn from their Chinese master what should/shouldn't be done. :lol:

Again, don&#8217;t be blinded with hatred. We&#8217;re talking about facts. Peevishness won't help.

The fact is either in SV or China, the land reform has problems, but in general they are good for the vast oppressed poor, and, of course, very bad for the landlords.

BTW, a simple wiki is far better than your one sided quote.

BTW again, which land reform has no element of enforcement?
 
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...
The US permitted? King should have stuck to civil rights issues in the US. His understanding of the Vietnam War was shallow, just like yours.

The Diem regime was no paragon of democratic values, but life under communist North Viet Nam was far worse. Can you find any quotes from King where he explain why was there a constant flow of North-South refugees but not vice versa? Can you explain why King never criticize the Soviets and Red China to the extent he did to the US? If the US somehow was powerful enough to 'permit' Diem to rule South Viet Nam the way he did, then the Soviets and Red China went beyond 'permit' and actually instructed the Viet Minh on how to be oppressive and far more cruel. King's stature as a respected civil rights leader did not endow him with any extraordinary insights about SE Asia. The Vietnam War was nothing more than a convenient rhetorical club King held over American society's head. There were just as many South Vietnamese who were equally anti-communist as King was about racism. Can you find any quotes from King where he can explain why is that?

...

This is about human rights and Mr. King and whether he is allowed to voice his objections to the War.

&#8220;Can you explain why King never criticize the Soviets and Red China to the extent he did to the US?&#8221;
It's so simple: supporting an anti-human regime and invade other country is a violation of human rights, which China didn&#8217;t do that, nor did Soviet Union. Can you tell me why great democratic Nixon yielded and paid homage to atrocious communist China to barging for ending the war if the war is that glorious?

Vietnam war is indeed having its historical background. In essence, it is nevertheless nothing but a piece on grand chessboard of cold war manipulated by great players.

Vietnam war is arguably the biggest violation of human rights in this world under the pretext of preventing Communism domino effect, which itself is fake and imaginary!

We have plenty field pictures to testify the brutality of the war and violation of human rights from both sides. I don&#8217;t think you want or will be able to deny. I personally chatted with a Vietnam War veteran whose one foot was blown off by a mine. I may know less than you in some aspect, but I perhaps know more in other aspects.

Excerpt:
In 1961 and 1962, the Kennedy administration authorized the use of chemicals to destroy rice crops. Between 1961 and 1967, the U.S. Air Force sprayed 20 million U.S. gallons (75 700 000 L) of concentrated herbicides over 6 million acres (24 000 km2) of crops and trees, affecting an estimated 13&#37; of South Vietnam's land. In 1965, 42% of all herbicide was sprayed over food crops. Another purpose of herbicide use was to drive civilian populations into RVN-controlled areas.[212]
As of 2006, the Vietnamese government estimates that there are over 4,000,000 victims of dioxin poisoning in Vietnam, although the United States government denies any conclusive scientific links between Agent Orange and the Vietnamese victims of dioxin poisoning. In some areas of southern Vietnam dioxin levels remain at over 100 times the accepted international standard.[213]
The U.S. Veterans Administration has listed prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, multiple myeloma, type II diabetes, Hodgkin&#8217;s disease, non-Hodgkin&#8217;s lymphoma, soft tissue sarcoma, chloracne, porphyria cutanea tarda, peripheral neuropathy, and spina bifida in children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange. Although there has been much discussion over whether the use of these defoliants constituted a violation of the laws of war, the defoliants were not considered weapons, since exposure to them did not lead to immediate death or incapacitation.

Vietnam War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In addition, anybody is entitled to and should be allowed to question human rights violation regardless how deep or shallow he/she understand the war, how old or young he/she is.

Tell us why you are not interested in asking civil right abuse of an invader? Have you ever asked anything about human rights abuse against those heroic students of Kent State University, Ohio, who perished under the gun simply because they voiced their view against the war? Have you questioned the usage of Agent Orange that devastated your homeland and made your brothers&#8217; offspring defective and deformed? Where is your voice for human rights?

Please don&#8217;t tell us you don&#8217;t know My Lai Massacre. Please don't tell us you never heard of this: Vietnam War Crimes Working Group Files - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Your advocacy of democracy is obviously fake, feudal and laughable to the least.

Back to the Vietnam War.

Why the communist eventually win the war? Because common Vietnamese do not want foreigners to be on their land, preferring to being oppressed by communists with various atrocious cruelty, if you will. It is not that US is not militarily powerful enough, rather the will of great Vietnamese is stronger and the whole war is a non-sense to many common Americans, perhaps except you.

The greatness of democracy or any good system is not denial of fact, but rather to have voices of difference heard, to have wrong-doings corrected.
 
You post covers too many topics. Let’s talk about land reform first.

Your quote and comments reflect a typical propagandist mentality as it only reveals some truth but conceals the more complete one.
Land reforms (also agrarian reform, though that can have a broader meaning) is an often-controversial alteration in the societal arrangements whereby government administers possession and use of land. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed real estate property redistribution, generally of agricultural land, or be part of an even more revolutionary program that may include forcible removal of an existing government that is seen to oppose such reforms.

Land reform - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
No...I reveal the most important truth that as far as communism goes, even your wiki source has it...
This definition is somewhat complicated by the issue of state-owned collective farms. In various times and places, land reform has encompassed the transfer of land from ownership — even peasant ownership in smallholdings — to government-owned collective farms; it has also, in other times and places, referred to the exact opposite: division of government-owned collective farms into smallholdings. The common characteristic of all land reforms is modification or replacement of existing institutional arrangements governing possession and use of land.
The issue here is not land reform at large but WHO is doing the deed, and for now the 'who' are China and Viet Nam. The results of land reform followed by mass application of collective farming policies managed by incompetents are hunger and famine. That is not propaganda but the truth.

For China case:
· China has been through a series of land reforms:
o In the 1940s, the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, funded with American money, with the support of the national government, carried out land reform and community action programs in several provinces.
o The thorough land reform launched by the Communist Party of China in 1946, three years before the foundation of the People's Republic of China (PRC), won the party millions of supporters among the poor and middle peasantry. The land and other property of landlords were expropriated and redistributed so that each household in a rural village would have a comparable holding. This agrarian revolution was made famous in the West by William Hinton's book Fanshen. By the time land reform was completed, at least a million landlords and members of their families had been publicly executed or beaten to death by enraged peasants.[20][21]
o In the mid-1950s, a second land reform during the Great Leap Forward compelled individual farmers to join collectives, which, in turn, were grouped into People's Communes with centrally controlled property rights and an egalitarian principle of distribution. This policy was generally a failure in terms of production. [2] The PRC reversed this policy in 1962 through the proclamation of the Sixty Articles. As a result, the ownership of the basic means of production was divided over three levels with collective land ownership vested in the production team (see also Ho [2001]).
o A third land reform beginning in the late 1970s re-introduced family-based contract system called the Household Responsibility System, which had enormous initial success, followed by a period of relative stagnation. Chen, Wang, and Davis [1998] suggest that the later stagnation was due, in part, to a system of periodic redistribution that encouraged over-exploitation rather than capital investment in future productivity. [3]. However, although land use rights were returned to individual farmers, collective land ownership was left undefined after the disbandment of the People's Communes.
o Since 1998 China is in the midst of drafting the new Property Law which is the first piece of national legislation that will define the land ownership structure in China for years to come. The Property Law forms the basis for China's future land policy of establishing a system of freehold, rather than of private ownership (see also Ho, [2005]).
Did every Chinese peasant received a plot of land? I hope you are not so foolish to believe and reply 'Yes'. For every productive farmer, there are scores of non-farmers who relied on the farmer for their lives. Now take those who are experts at farming, lump them into the 'brutal landlords' category and throw them into prisons and give their lands to those who either barely know what to do or does not know at all. The result is that millions ended up starving on fertile but non-productive lands and some ended up boiling their youngest child to feed the family. That is the legacy of the Chinese communist land reform program.

No doubt that there were failures, but they are corrected. The land reform has had a positive impact on China in general as hailed by East and West. Talking about “a million landlords and members of their families had been publicly executed or beaten to death by enraged peasants” in today’s view, it is a result of a mixture of lawlessness, feudal hatred, peasants reaction to landlord earlier brutality, etc. That is a reflection of ground reality in old China with vast poor and uneducated folks.
The reason that a typical 'armchair communist' like yourself can so easily dismiss the horrific results of communism is that you are living under the corrective actions of non-communist beliefs. You wear the label or espouse beliefs or defend communist atrocities more out of seeing communism as a fashion statement than as a core belief.

For Vietnam case:
· Vietnam: In the years after World War II, even before the formal division of Vietnam, land reform was initiated in North Vietnam. This land reform (1953-1956) redistributed land to more than 2 million poor peasants, but at a cost of from tens[24] to hundreds of thousands of lives[25] and was one of the main reason for the mass exodus of 1 million people from the North to the South in 1954. The probable democide for this four year period then totals 283,000 North Vietnamese.[26] South Vietnam made several further attempts in the post-Diem years, the most ambitious being the Land to the Tiller program instituted in 1970 by President Nguyen Van Thieu. This limited individuals to 15 hectares, compensated the owners of expropriated tracts, and extended legal title to peasants who in areas under control of the South Vietnamese government to whom had land had previously been distributed by the Viet Cong. Mark Moyar [1996] asserts that while it was effectively implemented only in some parts of the country, "In the Mekong Delta and the provinces around Saigon, the program worked extremely well... It reduced the percentage of total cropland cultivated by tenants from sixty percent to ten percent in three years." [4]

My note was particularly for land reform in SV: “ Bad SV landlords under the deceptive,…”, which seems to be a success.
Unlike the communists who engaged in crass class warfare and encouraged people to act upon their baser instincts, Thieu's land reform program was limited in scope, forbid existing landlords from further abuse of their positions, froze rents and used government lands. Thieu restrained the army from further involvement with the landlords once the program was executed as corrupt elements inside the army have done in the past. In short, Thieu's land reform program was far more fair and non-destructive than what China and North Viet Nam experienced. Further proof that no communist should ever be allowed to touch an abacus, let alone an electronic calculator, lest he deluded himself into believing he knows anything about economics.

In North, Mr. Ho perhaps was not wise enough to learn from their Chinese master what should/shouldn't be done.
:lol:
Good joke...But it was worse than ignorance for Ho. He knew what happened in China but was cowed by both Mao and Stalin into accepting a smaller version of China's Great Leap Forward.

Again, don’t be blinded with hatred. We’re talking about facts. Peevishness won't help.

The fact is either in SV or China, the land reform has problems, but in general they are good for the vast oppressed poor, and, of course, very bad for the landlords.

BTW, a simple wiki is far better than your one sided quote.

BTW again, which land reform has no element of enforcement?
Me 'peevish'? Your arguments felled apart one by one and by facts that you cannot deny, only whitewashed as 'some mistake'.

This is about human rights and Mr. King and whether he is allowed to voice his objections to the War.
Of course he was so entitled. But how does being entitled make one's opinion valid? It does not.

It's so simple: supporting an anti-human regime and invade other country is a violation of human rights, which China didn’t do that, nor did Soviet Union. Can you tell me why great democratic Nixon yielded and paid homage to atrocious communist China to barging for ending the war if the war is that glorious?
And communism is not an anti-human regime? Who erected the Berlin Wall? I once toured East Berlin when it existed. The difference between the two Berlins was like night and day with East Berlin being the lesser. No propaganda here, just facts. Chinese troops were in North Viet Nam, as far back as the mid-50s when the Viet Minh was fighting the French. Nixon? He did what he felt necessary to somehow withdraw the US from Viet Nam. But in way does that nullify the truth that the communists in Viet Nam were far worse in terms of inhumanity.

Vietnam war is indeed having its historical background. In essence, it is nevertheless nothing but a piece on grand chessboard of cold war manipulated by great players.

Vietnam war is arguably the biggest violation of human rights in this world under the pretext of preventing Communism domino effect, which itself is fake and imaginary!
Wrong...Communism IS the greatest violation of human rights seen within the last one hundred years. The communist 'domino effect' did not occurred because after Viet Nam, even the communists realized that while the US withdrew, the costs for them in supporting the Vietnamese communists, in the country and in the UN, was too great. But communist Viet Nam then invaded Cambodia and Laos, so what make you think that such a 'domino theory' was not possible? And guess what happened in Cambodia? Does the phrase 'The Killing Fields' ring any bell? That was AFTER the Vietnam War ended. But hey...That was not any violation of human rights but merely part of 'some mistake'. Every communist regime was a monster and in 1979, Viet Nam realized that its fellow communist monster, the Khmer Rouge, had to be destroyed so Viet Nam invaded Cambodia to install another communist monster regime. Neither the Soviets nor China did much to stop the petty fighting between the Asian communists. For the Soviets, the bigger prize to maintain and defend was Europe. You see the US and Canada did much fighting?

We have plenty field pictures to testify the brutality of the war and violation of human rights from both sides. I don’t think you want or will be able to deny. I personally chatted with a Vietnam War veteran whose one foot was blown off by a mine. I may know less than you in some aspect, but I perhaps know more in other aspects.
You think that trotting out a conversation with a Vietnam War vet, dubious at best, is a valid justification for your support of communism? How about a conversation with an anti-communist Viet -- Me -- for a change? But of course, since I do not share your love for what is proven to be an evil ideology, my arguments can only categorize as 'propaganda' while what you spout as the truth.

Excerpt:
In 1961 and 1962, the Kennedy administration authorized the use of chemicals to destroy rice crops. Between 1961 and 1967, the U.S. Air Force sprayed 20 million U.S. gallons (75 700 000 L) of concentrated herbicides over 6 million acres (24 000 km2) of crops and trees, affecting an estimated 13% of South Vietnam's land. In 1965, 42% of all herbicide was sprayed over food crops. Another purpose of herbicide use was to drive civilian populations into RVN-controlled areas.[212]
As of 2006, the Vietnamese government estimates that there are over 4,000,000 victims of dioxin poisoning in Vietnam, although the United States government denies any conclusive scientific links between Agent Orange and the Vietnamese victims of dioxin poisoning. In some areas of southern Vietnam dioxin levels remain at over 100 times the accepted international standard.[213]
The U.S. Veterans Administration has listed prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, multiple myeloma, type II diabetes, Hodgkin’s disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, soft tissue sarcoma, chloracne, porphyria cutanea tarda, peripheral neuropathy, and spina bifida in children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange. Although there has been much discussion over whether the use of these defoliants constituted a violation of the laws of war, the defoliants were not considered weapons, since exposure to them did not lead to immediate death or incapacitation.

Vietnam War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In addition, anybody is entitled to and should be allowed to question human rights violation regardless how deep or shallow he/she understand the war, how old or young he/she is.
Of course you so entitled. But in no way does that mean your opinions are any more valid than mine, especially when your knowledge about the Vietnam War have proven to be, in your words, 'abysmally appalling'.

Tell us why you are not interested in asking civil right abuse of an invader? Have you ever asked anything about human rights abuse against those heroic students of Kent State University, Ohio, who perished under the gun simply because they voiced their view against the war? Have you questioned the usage of Agent Orange that devastated your homeland and made your brothers’ offspring defective and deformed? Where is your voice for human rights?

Please don’t tell us you don’t know My Lai Massacre. Please don't tell us you never heard of this: Vietnam War Crimes Working Group Files - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I know more about the My Lai Massacre than you do and I am willing to bet that you did not know that it was an American officer that stopped the killings.

American tactics and conducts in Viet Nam may not have been kind or productive and even atrocious at times. But in no way was the US in Viet Nam out of hatred for the Vietnamese.

Whereas with the communists, we have plenty of atrocities committed that escaped media attention. One of them is this...

Hue Massacre

Read it and learn something new.

Your advocacy of democracy is obviously fake, feudal and laughable to the least.
How in the world is my belief in democracy is 'fake' and 'feudal'. I am beginning to think you do not know what these words really mean.

Back to the Vietnam War.

Why the communist eventually win the war? Because common Vietnamese do not want foreigners to be on their land, preferring to being oppressed by communists with various atrocious cruelty, if you will. It is not that US is not militarily powerful enough, rather the will of great Vietnamese is stronger and the whole war is a non-sense to many common Americans, perhaps except you.
This is indeed another sign of your knowledge about the Vietnam War that, in your own words, 'abysmally appalling'.

Why did the communists won? Not because of this obvious regurgitation of pure unadulterated propaganda from you -- the will of great Vietnamese is stronger. The truth -- The communists won because the US ceased material support for the South Vietnamese.

Here is where I further expose your gross ignorance and keep in mind that this is a publicly available forum...

Under the policy called 'Vietnamization' of the war, and you can look it up easily enough, the US largely withdrew its ground combat troops by the early 1970s with only the USAF the remaining active major US combatant. In 1972, the NVA conducted what is called 'The Easter Offensive' and was defeated by South Vietnamese forces, supported by US air power. The 1968 Tet Offensive was a military disaster for the NVA and the 1972 Easter Offensive was different in the respect that the NVA was defeated by ARVN forces.

If you charge the US to be an 'invader' in Viet Nam, you must explain to the readers as to which Viet Nam did the US 'invaded' and why. There are two distinct political entities in Viet Nam -- North and South. Each had its own currency, government, economic system and foreing policies. So which Viet Nam did the US invaded and for what reasons? Oil? Colonialism? Or how about mere rhetorics from 'armchair communists' like yourself.

South Viet Nam held on from 1972 to 1975. Three years of successful resistance against communism until the US abandoned its ally. So it can be argued that the South Vietnamese had a 'great will' to resist communism? Your argument that the Vietnamese PREFERRED to be oppressed by communismm and suffered inhuman atrocities is insulting to anyone with any degree of human decency given the bloody records of communism. As you said this -- Because common Vietnamese do not want foreigners to be on their land -- then why did the Viet Minh allowed the Chinese to run North Viet Nam's land reform program to the deaths of tens of thousands of Vietnamese peasants? Even Ho was afraid of the Chinese as recalled by Colonel Bui Tin, the NVA's chief propagandist in his memoir...

Amazon.com: Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel: Bui Tin: Books

Go back to page five and read what I excerpted from the book again and see how ridiculous your argument really is.

The greatness of democracy or any good system is not denial of fact, but rather to have voices of difference heard, to have wrong-doings corrected.
That is correct. Too bad communism does not fall into this category of great beliefs for mankind.

But as interesting and as fun as it is to expose as ignorant another pop Vietnam War 'expert' like yourself, the point of this debate is whether or not China can still rightly be called a 'communist' state. The answer is 'Yes', that China is still a communist state regardless of the fact that China's economy have many capitalist functions. China still has a one-party rule political system and has a PLANNED market system, not a free market one. The subtle difference is often masked by those capitalist functions and results and even the name -- Five Year Plan -- should be the obvious clue as to the true nature and source of China's economic foundation. Each 'Five Year Plan' would make adjustments, macro and micro, on the particular industry, be it agriculture or construction, based upon the results from the previous 'Five Year Plan'. Under a truly free market economy, the market dictate wages, prices and profits. With China, the government can with absolute impunity, exert total controls over those three most important elements of capitalism.
 
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The issue here is not land reform at large but WHO is doing the deed, and for now the 'who' are China and Viet Nam. The results of land reform followed by mass application of collective farming policies managed by incompetents are hunger and famine. That is not propaganda but the truth...

I agree that the improper land reform had something to do with famine, but to assert that land reform by communists is the only cause of famine is absurd. You can&#8217;t expailn without land reform by communists (China and Vietnam in particular in you context), the following 20th century&#8217;s big famines: Bengal famines in 1942&#8211;1945, Biafran famine in the 1960s, Ethiopian famine of 1983&#8211;85, famines in China in 1928 and 1942.

In addition, how do you explain my earlier question to you, which you seem never answer, and I now ask you the 3rd time:
India and many other countries never have prevalent communist rule, but famine is still perpetual, whereas in &#8220;communist&#8221; China, famine has long gone and it actual export some grain product.
Remember that current China lives in a place that has been land reformed by The Chinese communists.

Famines ingeneral happens in the areas where the people are poor and the agricultural technologies are backward and political situations are volatile. Precisely in those places that oppressions are ferocious against the poor, and communism ideas are easy to spread.

BTW, I&#8217;m now 100&#37; sure you know absolutely nothing of communism, as you rediculously equal communism to murder, famine, massacre, genocide, &#8220;boat people&#8221;&#8230; :lol: How shallow your knowledge is! I agree however that many self-proclaimed &#8220;communism&#8221; practioners only use the slogan to serve their own interest. They are no holy cows as E. and W. Germany and S. and N. Korea have shown.

Please read this to see what communism is before blahblah. Thanks! THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

BTW again, I&#8217;m no communist, which I have proclaimed numerous times earlier, but you are perhaps too new here to know that. :woot:
 
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I know more about the My Lai Massacre than you do and I am willing to bet that you did not know that it was an American officer that stopped the killings....

Yeah, you're right. Chinese communists stopped the Tiananmen massacre. :lol::rofl:

"Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America--not on the battlefields of Vietnam." - Marshall McLuhan, 1975

"Above all, Vietnam was a war that asked everything of a few and nothing of most in America." - Myra MacPherson, 1984

"Saigon was an addicted city, and we were the drug: the corruption of children, the mutilation of young men, the prostitution of women, the humiliation of the old, the division of the family, the division of the country--it had all been done in our name. . . . The French city . . . had represented the opium stage of the addiction. With the Americans had begun the heroin phase." - James Fenton, 1985

"I was proud of the youths who opposed the war in Vietnam because they were my babies." - Benjamin Spock, 1988
 
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I highly recommend Jasper Becker's book, Hungry Ghosts, for anyone who is interested in seeing how power hungry leaders could be, even when their own people must resort to cannibalism to survive.

Amazon.com: Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine: Jasper Becker: Books

this is a perfect example of how Americans are deeply influenced by the daily bombardment of "manipulated truth" from their "free media".
In US, you can find thousands of books like the one written by Jasper Becker, mostly a collection of stories by desperate immigrant trying to make a living in US (through selling cheap stories of how bad their countries of origins are).
There's a mutual benefit:the new immigrant get a starting fund in the deteriorating social economical environment, the publisher also make a lot of money by creating this perfect illusion to feed Americans' fetish for the evilness, ferocity,bloodiness and the dark side of human being. Most of the author did not even bother to verify or carry out some serious investigations on the authentication of the accusations or the sources of the information. Some "exaggeration"are often added just to make the story more bloody and gruesome (hence more money made)
 
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