While today is the anniversary of the tsunami it’s also the anniversary of another tragic event. Mao Zedong was born 112 years ago today:

Outside the country, many Chinese around the world say Mao gave China back its dignity. Yun Shi, 31, who grew up in Shangdong province and now lives in California, recalls the poet, hero and liberator who rescued the Chinese from a "century of humiliation" - the 100 years of foreign domination following the Opium Wars. In founding the people’s republic in 1949, "[Mao] annoucned in Tiananmen Square that the Chinese have stood up," Shi said.

China did not ’stand up’ with Mao’s declaration. Mao kept China in a starved fetal state for decades. It did not begin to learn how to crawl until Deng Xiaoping took the reins :

Those who inhabited China’s vast countryside can truly appreciate Deng Xiaoping’s greatness. In countless villages lived four-fifths of the hundreds of millions of Chinese, most of them in abject poverty. An entire family might share a single pair of trousers. If lucky, they might live in a small thatched roof hut with a hole at the top to let out the smoke from the open hearth fire. Peasants transported their ducks and geese to markets along rivers and ancient canals; there were few roads. This was not the Middle Ages, but China, circa 1976, the year Mao Zedong died. The country was in the depths, its people depressed and devoid of hope for their lives.

By changing the way peasants live, Deng recast China, and in many ways altered the world we live in. He did this through the simple expedient of giving the land Mao had originally confiscated from the landlord class back to the peasants. Through the contract responsibility system, farmers were free to grow any crops they wished, so long as they delivered a specified amount of staple crops to the central government. Soon money was beginning to course through the system. Two-story brick houses rose where thatched huts used to be. Some 200 million Chinese - more people than all of Indonesia - escaped destitution.

AsiaPundit won’t write more, it would be redundant in light of an essay posted elsewhere. Visit Simon now.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia, mao zedong