China's role in WW2

My point I suppose is that both Chiang and Mao were willing to sacrifice an unlimited number of countrymen to fulfill their vision of a modern China.

The Western powers backed Chiang who's political base was beset by corruption and lack of will. The end result was that China was not ready for democracy and Mao prevailed.

I imagine that sometime in the future the Chinese will have to come to grips with the era of genocide that followed

huh? sorry, what do you mean by "come to grips with the era of genocide that followed"?

The death toll of Mao's visionary land reforms, leaps forward, political purges, re-education programs and wayward cultural revolutions has "been exceeded only once," says Mao biographer Philip Short, and that was "by all the dead in the Second World War." Though the actual number of Mao's victims remains incalculable, the tally may exceed 60 million.

Such horrors assume an additional pallor when considering the brutal Chinese occupation of Tibet, involving the deaths of 800,000 Tibetans, and noting China's official sponsorship of Pol Pot, the communist tyrant who killed off one-third of the Cambodian population.

Things move closer to home on the realization that, without Mao's support for comrade Kim Il Sung's plans to attack the South, there would not have been a Korean War. When Kim later encountered a crusty Douglas MacArthur, Mao was obliged to intervene, explaining his game plan to Stalin in 1951: "After we have consumed hundreds of thousands of American lives in a few years, the Americans will be forced to retreat, and the Korean problem will be settled."

Mao followed too closely with Stalin, I guess. That whole genocide thing was a mistake, a horrible mistake that nobody likes to admit......

If you have ever written some poems of Mao (honestly he is really a great one), you will find out that he would be an ideal monarch. He had great ambitions. He thought he was greater than any other emperor of the history due to his great confidence and emtional well-being. He had great skills in military affairs, the revolution affairs, that was why "his empire" could ever evolve from a tiny spot of the map to the whole country----the whole process took 21 years.

It is not only the intent that matters, but also how the action is to be carried out. Mao I think was a good revolutionist, but economically, his programs were disasters. The Cultural Revolution also showed his greed and how he used the Chinese people. Many scholars and teachers were targeted during that horrible period by the red guards.

In the term of againsting the Japanese invader, Chiang definitely failed, he should consider the national interest before the power (According to the Taiwanese books, during the 1937, all major cities in China had march and protests every day requiring Chiang to stop attacking the red army and go to against the Japanese). I guess that's why at end of the war though Chiang has a 5 million strong army, still managed to lose the civil war to the Communist red army (the number was 20 thousands at the end of the war), and fled to Taiwan with only 2 million left.
I really think Chiang is the disaster to the Chinese. On one hand he failed to recognise the real situtation during the war, even when the Japanese invaded, he still insisted to fight the civil war before againsting the Japanese. On the other hand, at the end of the war, with the moderation of the US, Mao and Chiang met up in Chungking to try to sort out the future Chinese political status, he wouldn't give up any chance of griping power, he ordered Mao to give up the leadership of the red army and asked him to agree to put the red army into the KMT army which was under his control; and he didn't agree to construct a dual-parties state system which the US suggested, in other word Chinese democratic future ended up with Chiang and Mao's meeting. Then the civil war began again, and immediately Mao's communist lost it strong hold Xi'an and fled to Manchuria to reconstruct the communist army and finally defeated the KMT army. Chiang ended up as a loser and fled to Taiwan with only 2 million army personnels left, and caused the hostility between the strait even until now. I would say having holding the power under Chiang and Mao's hands, were the biggest disasters to the Chinese nation.

Good post destiny x

anyone know that the KMT told away so many gold bars from china when they leave the mainland?

or how about the rape of nanking that Japan so "kindly and with good intent" committed on China?

*yeah yeah *

I agree with what you say JB, except that shot to death...I think she actually killed herself, is that what you mean? She was pretty depressed. In process of writing her fourth book. Survived by her husband and her young son.