Monday, June 29, 2009

The Mao Zedong?



Fascinating; the a href="http://features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/06/22/chinese-want-mao-to-project-power-on-high-seas/"unscientific popular choice/a for the name of China's first aircraft carrier is span style="font-style:italic;"Mao Zedong/span:br /blockquoteBut which was the runaway favorite in two polls conducted earlier this month? Mao Zedong.br /br /He may have been a monster to you and me. The number of Chinese who died as a result of his policies runs into the tens of millions. But to many, if not most people here, Mao remains – for all his faults, even when they are admitted – the father of the nation; his memory is endowed with supernatural powers.br /br /Indeed, his name alone “has deterrent force,” believe some of the respondents, according to the International Herald Leader, a daily paper owned by the official Xinhua news agency, which commissioned one of the polls.br /br /But there could be a drawback. “Aircraft carriers are used in battle, and they could get damaged,” the Herald Leader points out. “If that happened to a carrier named Mao Zedong, it might hurt ordinary people’s feelings.”/blockquotebr /In such a naming scheme, would Mao be followed by Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping? Then maybe Chen Yun and Yang Shangkun? Would an aircraft carrier serve as the ultimate redemption for Liu Shaoqi or (less likely) Lin Biao? Or is Mao singular enough that you could name the rest after cities or provinces? A note of caution to the Chinese; you start out by giving an aircraft carrier the name of a a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Franklin_D._Roosevelt_(CV-42)"legendary leader/a, and you end up with the Carl Vinson and the John C. Stennis. br /br /a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/InformationDissemination/~3/ev-1ySvgnmw/mao-for-power-projection.html"Via Galrahn./adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-2841034461145100124?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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