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Better Red Than Dead: Chinese Professor Fired After Criticizing Mao In Commentary

130px-Mao_Zedong_portraitimagesThe Chinese communist regime reminded the world of its unwavering fear of independent thought and analysis for any kind. The latest victim is Deng Xiaochao, 62, an art professor at Shandong Jianzhu University in central China who was fired for a commentary that criticizing Chairman Mao Zedong. Of course, Mao has been dead for 40 years and he was a brutal, moronic dictator. However, this is this 123rd birthday and various people in China still revere a man who killed millions directly in the cultural revolution or indirectly through idiotic policies of centralized planning and controls. One of the best things that ever happened to China was the passing of Mao on September 9, 1976 but many still believe the decades of propaganda on the founder of Communist China,

Even in the highly censored and controlled environment of China, Deng probably thought that some criticism of Mao would be allowed. He was wrong as he found out after the posting of his Weibo commentary on Mao’s birthday. Without stating so directly, Deng eluded to the well-accepted (outside of China) historical fact that Mao triggered a famine that led to 3 million deaths and killed another 2 million in his blood-soaked Cultural Revolution.

Even though the commentary was deleted, leftists demanded the head of Deng. Deng was dismissed from his post as counsellor of the provincial government. In a truly Big Brother moment, the university’s party committee then posted a statement saying Deng would no longer teach or be allowed to organise social events on campus. All for eluding to well-accepted historical facts. The university party committee denounced Deng for making “false remarks” — that is true statements not approved by the Communist Party. These are academics who enforce an official account where truth is false and academics who refuse to utter falsehoods are silenced.

Deng however has proven that there remain real intellectuals in China despite the massacre by Mao and the years of coerced adherence to official history. He is also are reminder to all of us in teaching just how lucky we are to be in a country where we can pursue the truth in our writings without fear or sanction.

26 thoughts on “Better Red Than Dead: Chinese Professor Fired After Criticizing Mao In Commentary”

    1. David Benson – if you read the constitution of the old Soviet Union, a Soviet citizen had rights left and right. It was just never enforced.

  2. This is what happens when the representatives of the controlling government of China have been calling in too many orders of Sum Yung Gai.

  3. “The Chinese communist regime reminded the world of its unwavering fear of independent thought and analysis for any kind.”

    And yet, a surprising number of academics in the US admire socialism and communism as the truly humane form of government. I often hear support of both among my academic acquaintance.

    Every time a government gains absolute control over the people, and the collective outweighs individual rights, it becomes abusive. And yet many academics feel that if only they were in charge, they would do it differently. They want to force their “best ideas” on others through the force of government, and punish those who disagree. We see this in the attacks on those who disagree with part or all of ACC, the attacks on pizza parlors in little rural towns who remark that they would not hypothetically cater a gay wedding, the ad hominem against anyone who isn’t Liberal…Instead of proclaiming they have this great idea and convincing as many of it as they can, they move directly to force and attack on dissenters. That’s the leap too far. Communist China, The Soviet Union, and North Korea demonstrated what happened when that method, the imposition of ideas through the force of government with no dissension allowed, was applied on a national level.

    That is how a socialist did surprisingly well, and had to be brought down by cheating, in this past election.

    2. Bernie Sanders would fit right in the middle of the Norwegian Conservative Party according to a member thereof.

  4. “…Trump threatens to continue the same tactics that have not worked for 55 years? ”

    How do you mean? The effect of the embargo has been that, without a Sugar Daddy, Cuba can’t survive.

    And yes I use sugar and Cuba in the same sentence advisedly.

  5. “Prof. Turley: Replace “leftists” in your post with “authoritarians,” and you may have something here…”

    Scratch a leftist and an authoritarian bleeds.

    Same thing.

  6. So what is the difference between a still Communist China where we have made the Communist Party wealthy by allowing them into the WTO and still Communist Cuba where Trump threatens to continue the same tactics that have not worked for 55 years?

    The corporate owned government of the US is nothing more than hypocrisy gone wild. Our foreign policy is to charge the US taxpayer to make the world safe to send their jobs overseas.

  7. Prof. Turley: Replace “leftists” in your post with “authoritarians,” and you may have something here.

    I would imagine the US over the past decade and a half has slaughtered just as many, and then there’s always the couple of unnecessary bombs dropped on civilian populations in Japan, and the constant intervention on foreign soil in the name of capitalism since the Mexican-American War up through the rape of the Middle East resulting in 9/11/2001 and the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts we’re still fighting.

    But it’s always great to see you so fervently against leftists for all intents including crimes against humanity.

    Have a great day!

    1. “Bake me a cake, cake b***h!”

      A lesbian couple in Canada demanded that a devout Christian make them wedding rings. He did. Then they demanded that he do it for free because his beliefs offended them.

      Here’s an extremely biased story about it:

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/19/lesbian-wedding-rings-jewelry-store-_n_7307780.html

      The media is constitutionally incapable of reporting fairly on issues that touch on Christian morality.

      “Shudder! Those judgemental Christians, who think they’re better than everyone else.”

      That’s not what is going on. They aren’t judging anyone else, just the condition of their own soul. They just don’t want to be forced into participating in activities that opens them to the risk of hell. It would be nice if the authoritarian leftists would leave them alone, but the last thing authoritarian leftists (and there are no other kind) can stand is someone holding an opinion other than their own.

      I’m a big fan of leaving people alone. That includes, SHOCKA! Muslims. As long as they leave me alone. It also includes people who want to discriminate against me. In a lot of the world it’s legal to discriminate. But only America, it seems, had Jim Crow laws. The people who put Jim Crow laws into place understood full well that unless they made discrimination a requirement, a lot of people just wouldn’t. If for no other reason than to make money. There was money to be made catering to black folk. Can’t have any of that. Similarly, I’ve been denied entry because of my ethnicity in a large swath of the globe more times than I can count. And it never bothered me. Because if someone doesn’t want me in the place, I don’t want to be there. And I could find a place down the road that “takes my kind.”

      1. See the links I provide below. Leftist and authoritarian are orthogonal concepts.

  8. Prof.Deng is very lucky China did not jail him like North Korea would have, or worse. China is trying to act more like the ‘new’ thinking of the West.
    And with Google (Alphabet) and Facebook, we have promised to meet them half way.

  9. Most of the young people here:

    Don’t know nuthin bout history…
    Don’t know bout geo gra phy.

    Don’t know that one and one is two…

    Its a wonderful world that we …..

    1. Most maybe. But there are enough who know plenty of math, history, geography, etc., to serve the needs of the armed forces. Fun fact: the Navy is bringing back the sextant.

      http://www.naval-technology.com/news/newsus-navy-reintroduces-celestial-navigation-to-counter-cyber-attacks-4695720

      Yes, math will be involved.

      I clumsily tried to point this out on another thread, but I also had been commenting on the torture of the young man in Chicago, and I got my wires crossed. Not every 18 year old is stellar. Not every one of them can be salvaged. Some, when you get them, are too far gone. But if you work at it, you can turn a surprising number of them around.

      No, I wasn’t really great at it. I knew a food services officer who was. If you had a problem child you just couldn’t reach, he’d say, “Give that Sailor tom me.” And we’d do it, not because we wanted to wash our hands of the Sailor. Because for the Sailor’s sake. That man could work miracles. Inside of three months he could turn that Sailor into Sailor of the Month.

  10. If it makes you feel any better, most of the young people don’t know about the Cultural Revolution and the old ones will not talk about it.

  11. In the epic movie ‘The Shoes of the Fisherman,’ Anthony Quinn plays a Polish priest from the Russian gulags, who is specially released so he can go to the Vatican. Shortly after arriving Quinn is appointed as a Cardinal and almost immediately thereafter the Pope dies and the Colllege of Cardinals sees that God has chosen to deliver this new Cardinal from out of bondage in the gulags to become Pope as famine has stricken China.

    There is a young priest at the Vatican who befriends Quinn virtually on Quinn’s arrival and as fate would have it, this young priest holds views that are possibly contrary to Rome’s interest. As the panel begins to examine these views, the Chair ask the young priest how he wishes them to view him? Is he speaking as a philosopher, a teacher, an advocate for social justice, or as a priest, noting that a philosopher can express certain views without harm, but if it is a Catholic priest who is advocating these same views, it could be a far different matter. Upon conclusion of the examination, the priest is advised that he is to be silenced and to submit to medical treatment, whereupon he suffers a stroke and dies.

    My point is that just as a Roman Catholic priest is not free to express views a layperson could express without incident, perhaps the Chinese Communist party concluded that Professor Deng be held to a higher standard than a layman regarding the holding and publishing of views adverse to the late Chairman Mao.

    And if the late Admiral Byrd had not been discussing his fleet’s being assaulted by UFOs that originated under the continent of Antartica, he might not have been mentally committed in the Bethesda Navel Hospital upon returning from Operation Highjump, where he ultimately passed away.

    1. There really is no such thing as a layperson in the PRC. The communists allow their people a certain amount of freedom. Especially in terms of entrepreneurship. But not when it comes to politics,

      I suppose that’s how the former communist countries, to distinguish them from the still communist countries like the DPRK and Cuba (although the DPRK and Cuba do out of necessity allow small scale levels of capitalist enterprise; there are farmer’s markets in the DPRK and you can, no kidding, free lance as a clown in Cuba), differ from the third world countries. In the PRC you can have your mansion, you can have your Bentley, but you can’t have a political opinion. In Haiti you can’t have any of that. Haitians aren’t stupid. If the political strongman notices you’re getting too far ahead financially, he’ll steal what you’ve made. That doesn’t have to happen too many times before people figure out it just doesn’t pay to attract that kind of attention.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3337cj4sJQ

      The result is, obviously, poverty.

  12. Leftists??

    Rather, Defenders of the Orthodoxy. Otherwise called Conservatives.

  14. Do you see the hypocrisy in the article here and then the fact that you moderate out words like Mao?

  15. Everything in moderation, including moderation. Send the comments over to China for moderation. They specialize in censorship. If I say a nasty word like Mao then I am sorry but you should in all decency publish it.

  16. etter dead than Red. We do not vilify the astardBay enough in this country. He is just a thing of the past. We do not even call the place “Red China” anymore. We buy all of our products from them. We are chumps. We let thousands of their citizens come over here and buy up mansions in Frisco and LA. Trump needs to build a Wall.

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