Yes, we have lost many war during those period, our self-confidence/ego is much stunned, even devastated. We called it the century of humiliation.
Many foreign nations ganged up on us, robbed us of our property by forcing us to sign treaty and lecturing us on so-called "international law". Most of us are ignorant of the west. We have to accept what the westerner or those who went to the west told us as the truth.
Only after much suffering later that we learned it is more about "knife" as you put it than about law.
It is obvious that we are technologically and therefore our "knife" is inferior. Therefore we have to learn and adapt to the new realities. We have to try new things and find a way to protect ourselves.
You see, gone are the days when westerner can sit on their moral high horse to lecture us and expect us to just take their word for it and dutifully obey.
We have learnt from our painful and humiliating history delivered by the West+Japan, we have a much bigger "knife" now.
Thanks to Mao.
If your understanding on how the CCP won the civil war over KMT is by "knife" alone, then I would say your understanding would fall on the simplistic side.
KMT is no saint, nor is all the dictators that American support. There are millions that suffered under them as well.
You should re-read all those things that you wrote, and reflect on what America did during those years. American is not much less a knife-wielder than the Soviet camp.
What the woman did is just stating historical fact as she see it.
KMT did screwed up, and looking at the history of all the democratic developing countries including India today, who can say for certain that she is definitely wrong.
You have completely misunderstood the law and knife analogy. No surprises there.
The analogy was meant to be that Marxism has never been democratically chosen by a people and communism, which is the political expression of Marxism, have never been successful at competing against the democracy-capitalism duo for the prosperity of a people over the long run.
Marxism-communism = Fail.
Democracy-capitalism = Success.
Over and over, in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, the communists have used the knife to make Marxism politically dominant and continues to use the knife, in thuggish ways, to keep Marxism in power.
I was not talking about Mao vs Chiang but about Mao and the Chinese communists using the force against the Chinese people. Some nominally democratic-capitalist countries may and have failed. But in contrast against those 'some',
ALL of the Marxist-communist countries have failed. If this world have never been exposed to democracy and capitalism, then you have credible arguments for what Mao did.
Neither Taiwan nor South Korea were paragons of democracy, but at least they have mechanisms, no matter how much pretense they claimed to be democratic while acted like thugs, that eventually steered the countries away from dictatorships. All four countries: China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, were essentially created or re-created post WW II. But while they were nominally dictatorships in the beginning, look at Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea today. They sped past your China. In the decades since all four of you Asian countries came to be, your China continued to be thuggish while the other three became law abiding countries.
The law and knife analogy was about the people, as in how ideas are presented to them or imposed upon them, not about parties going against each other. But you go on cheering how much of a thug China can be in Asia. The other Asian countries are preparing for the day when China either back down or be put down.
It was ?
For example, why does not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs release a statement, citing China's concern of state violation of human rights in the US, in light of the mass riots in the state of Missouri?
Because the Ministry know that your China is a hundred times worse.
