Posted by
Michael on Monday, September 18, 2006 12:10:10 AM
I was a little surprised to find a large portion of Aljazeera's
website devoted to the Chinese leader,
Mao Zedong. Most of what I've
seen on their english site centers around Arab politics, though Chinese
politics really does affect everyone in the world.
One of the feature articles showcases
Sidney Rittenberg, the only American to join the Chinese Communist Party.
As you can see from the layout of the site, Mao isn't being treated with rough criticism. Take this article called "Mao 'the protector of the poor'":
Standing
in the white clouds before a radiant sun, Chairman Mao looks down with
a paternal smile on happy peasants working the fertile land.
For Wang, Mao is the father of modern China.
"I
remember Chairman Mao looked after the poor," she says. "Before
liberation we couldn't find food, but afterwards Mao made sure the poor
people could eat. There were no beggars in Mao's time."
And from Aljazeera's
Q&A on the Dear Leader:
Many see him as a visionary and patriot who allowed China
to become independent of what they see as foreign humiliation and put
the nation on its rightful path to becoming a world power.
Others,
particularly among the younger urban generation, view Mao as an
historical figure of little relevance to the consumerist China of today.
Many
older Chinese, however, irrespective of their views on the man himself,
look back on Mao's time as more egalitarian and less corrupt than China today.