re: #194 Decatur Deb

Sounds like Deng’s opponents (like Mao) believed the “bamboo of revolution
should be watered…”

Chinese politics aren’t quite as complicated as, say, Israeli politics, because there’s only one Party, but they’re absolutely baffling. As a Westerner, one assumes that if the Red Chinese hate a group and view it as a threat to power, then that group is probably OK or at the very least not half as bad as the Reds claim. And then you talk to a mainlander who hates the Reds, and he says “ooh, those falun gong guys are as bad as the taiping tianguo cults - they should be outlawed and the US should deport their leaders for trial in China” and you sorta scratch your head.

My boss’s father was a general under Chiang during the civil war, and hers is a leading family in Taiwan ROC, and she’s passionate about Chinese politics, and even quotes Deng Xiaoping as an authority on a par with Sun Yat-sen. The head spins and the mind boggles.