Mao offered to give away 10 million Chinese women to the U.S.

[Revy]

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hyMhwroFlOgzPE61X3P0AVEmxCHA



WASHINGTON (AFP) — Chinese leader Mao Zedong proposed sending 10 million Chinese women to the United States, in talks with top envoy Henry Kissinger in 1973, according to documents released Tuesday.


The powerful chairman of the Chinese Communist Party said he believed such emigration could kickstart bilateral trade but could also "harm" the United States with a population explosion similar to China, according to documents released Tuesday by the State Department on US-China ties between 1973 to 1976.


In a long conversation that stretched way past midnight at Mao's residence on February 17, 1973, the cigar-chomping Chinese leader referred to the dismal trade between the two countries, saying China was a "very poor country" and "what we have in excess is women."


He first suggested sending "thousands" of women but as an afterthought proposed "10 million," drawing laughter at the meeting, also attended by Chinese premier Zhou Enlai.



Kissinger, who was President Richard Nixon's national security advisor at that time, told Mao that the United States had no "quotas" or "tariffs" for Chinese women, drawing more laughter.


Kissinger then tried to highlight to Mao the threat posed by the Soviet Union and other global concerns as he moved to lay the groundwork for restoring diplomatic ties a year after Nixon's historic visit to China.
But Mao dragged the talks back to the topic of Chinese women.


"Let them go to your place. They will create disasters. That way you can lessen our burdens," Mao said.


"Do you want our Chinese women? We can give you ten million," he said.

Kissinger noted that Mao was "improving his offer."


Mao continued, "By doing so we can let them flood your country with disaster and therefore impair your interests. In our country we have too many women, and they have a way of doing things.

"They give birth to children and our children are too many."

A shrewd diplomat, Kissinger seemed to turn the tables on Mao, replying, "It is such a novel proposition, we will have to study it."

The two leaders then spoke briefly about the threat posed by the Soviet Union, with Mao saying he hoped Moscow would attack China and be defeated.

But Mao again lamented, "We have so many women in our country that don?t know how to fight.


The assistant Chinese foreign minister, Wang Haijung, who was at the meeting, then cautioned Mao that if the minutes of the conversation were made public, "it would incur the public wrath."


Kissinger agreed with Mao that the minutes be scrapped.


But when Kissinger joked that he would raise the issue at his next press conference, Mao said, "I?m not afraid of anything.


"Anyway, God has sent me an invitation," said the Chinese leader, who coughed badly during the talks.


Mao died in September 1976. US-China diplomatic relations were restored in 1979.http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kraywelkcX1qzcauto1_400.jpg


So much for "women hold up half the sky". I know many people will just say it is propaganda, though. I'm not taking it as automatically true, but given Mao said other ridiculous things that can actually be verified in his own published statements (" We shouldn’t read too many books. We should read Marxist books, but not too many of them either. It will be enough to read a dozen or so. If we read too many, we can move towards our opposites, become bookworms, dogmatists, revisionists. (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_14.htm)") it wouldn't surprise me.

[Ocean Seal]

Well obviously if its unsourced and about Mao it's true.
I guess we have to re-edit his schedule.

8:00 Breakfast
9:00 DEATH
10:00 DEATH
11:00 DEATH
12:00 Lunch
1:00 DEATH
2:00 DEATH
3:00 Tea
4:00 DEATH
5:00 DEATH
6:00 DEATH
7:00 Say reactionary things which could be used against me
8:00 Dinner
9:00 DEATH
10:00 DEATH
11:00 DEATH
12:00 Bedtime with dreams about DEATH

[Ismail]

One thing Enver Hoxha was shocked to hear when he made his first (and last) visit to China in 1956 was that, in Mao's words, "Stalin made mistakes. He made mistakes towards us, for example, in 1927. He made mistakes towards the Yugoslav comrades, too... it is necessary to make mistakes,' he said. 'The party cannot be educated without learning from mistakes. This has great significance.'" (The Khrushchevites, p. 243.) Of course this mentality later justified Mao rehabilitating Deng Xiaoping among others, as well as to downgrade revisionist lines to mere "mistakes" when Mao felt it convenient.

[Sun at Eight]

That mentality is also the only one that will get us to socialism and perhaps to communism. Enver does not come off better from that exchange, although at least in this case I'm sure there was a portrait of Lenin in a prominent position.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Well obviously if its unsourced and about Mao it's true.
I guess we have to re-edit his schedule.

8:00 Breakfast
9:00 DEATH
10:00 DEATH
11:00 DEATH
12:00 Lunch
1:00 DEATH
2:00 DEATH
3:00 Tea
4:00 DEATH
5:00 DEATH
6:00 DEATH
7:00 Say reactionary things which could be used against me
8:00 Dinner
9:00 DEATH
10:00 DEATH
11:00 DEATH
12:00 Bedtime with dreams about DEATH

*shrug* I actually don't think that the report is very hard to believe.

[Queercommie Girl]

One thing Enver Hoxha was shocked to hear when he made his first (and last) visit to China in 1956 was that, in Mao's words, "Stalin made mistakes. He made mistakes towards us, for example, in 1927. He made mistakes towards the Yugoslav comrades, too... it is necessary to make mistakes,' he said. 'The party cannot be educated without learning from mistakes. This has great significance.'" (The Khrushchevites, p. 243.) Of course this mentality later justified Mao rehabilitating Deng Xiaoping among others, as well as to downgrade revisionist lines to mere "mistakes" when Mao felt it convenient.

"Tell me one person who has never made a mistake, and I will show you a fool." - Rosa Luxemburg

[Ismail]

"Tell me one person who has never made a mistake, and I will show you a fool." - Rosa LuxemburgThe point wasn't that Enver Hoxha was a perfect human being who made no mistakes ever at any point in his life's work. Here's the full thing (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/1976/khruschevites/09.htm):

Mao Zedong received us during an interval between sessions of the congress in one of the adjoining rooms. This was the first time that we met him. When we entered the reception room, he stood up, bowed a little, held out his hand, and thus, without shifting from the spot, waited to give his hand and a smile to each of us in turn. We sat down.

Mao began to speak. After saying that they were very happy to have friends from distant Albania, he said a few words about our people, describing them as a valiant and heroic people.

“We have great admiration for your people,” he said among other things, “because you have been liberated much longer than we.”

Immediately after this he asked me:

“How are things between you and Yugoslavia?”

“Cold,” I replied, and immediately noticed that he expressed open surprise. “Apparently he is not well acquainted with our situation with the Yugoslavs,” I thought, therefore I decided to explain something from the long history of the relations of our Party and country with the Yugoslav party and state. I gave him a brief outline, dwelling on some of the key moments of the anti-Albanian and anti-Marxist activity of the Yugoslav leadership, expecting some reaction from him. But I noticed that Mao only expressed surprise and from time to time looked at the other Chinese comrades.

“On this question,” said Mao, “you Albanians have not made mistakes towards the Yugoslavs, and neither have the Yugoslav comrades made mistakes towards you. The Information Bureau has made great mistakes here.”

“Although we did not take part in the Information Bureau,” I replied, “we have supported its well-known analyses and stands towards the activity of the Yugoslav leadership and have always considered them to be correct. Our longstanding relations with the Yugoslav leadership have convinced us that the line and stands of the Yugoslavs have not been and are not Marxist Leninist. Tito is an incorrigible renegade.”

Without waiting to hear the end of the translation of what I said, Mao asked me:

“What is your opinion of Stalin?”

I said that our Party had always considered Stalin a leader of very great, all-round merits, a loyal disciple of Lenin and continuer of his work, a . . .

He interrupted me: “Have you published the report which Comrade Khrushchev delivered in the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union?”

“No,” I replied. “We have not done and never will do such a thing.”

“You Albanian comrades have acted very correctly and the line of your Party is right,” he said. “We, too, have acted as you have done. As long as the Soviet leadership does not publish this report officially, there is no reason for us to act as some have done.”

After a pause, he continued:

“Stalin made mistakes. He made mistakes towards us, for example, in 1927. He made mistakes towards the Yugoslav comrades, too.”

Then he continued calmly in a low voice:

“One cannot advance without mistakes.” And he asked me: “Has your Party made mistakes?”

“We cannot say that there have been no mistakes,” I told him, “but the main thing is that we struggle to make as few mistakes as possible or none at all, and, when mistakes are discovered, we struggle to eliminate them immediately.”

I was too “hasty”. The great philosopher was getting at something else:

“It is necessary to make mistakes,” he said. “The party cannot be educated without learning from mistakes. This has great significance.”

We encountered this method of “education” of Mao Zedong’s materialized everywhere. During the days we were at the congress, a Chinese comrade told us:

“A terrible fear has existed amongst us. People tried to avoid making mistakes, because they were afraid of being expelled from the party. However, with the correct policy of Chairman Mao, that fear has now disappeared, and initiative and drive in creative work has increased among the party people.

“You see that comrade who is speaking?” he said. “He is Li Lisan, one of the founders of our Communist Party. During his life he has made grave mistakes, not just once, but three times on end. There were comrades who wanted to expel this old man from the party, but on the insistence of Chairman Mao, he remains a member of the Central Committee of the party, and now he works in the Central Committee apparatus.”

Meanwhile Li Lisan was making a new “self-criticism” before the 8th Congress.

“I have made mistakes,” he said, “but the party has helped me. Comrades,” he continued, “I ask you to help me still because I might make mistakes again. . .”

But let us return to the meeting with Mao Zedong. After he philosophised about the “great significance of making mistakes”, I seized the opportunity to add to what I had previously said about the Yugoslavs and spoke about the work of the Belgrade revisionists through their agents to organize the plot in the Party Conference of Tirana of April 1956.

“In our opinion,” I said, “they are incorrigible.”

Mao’s reply, in the Chinese style, was a phrase out of context:

“You have a correct Marxist-Leninist line.”

The time had come for us to leave. We thanked him for the invitation, for receiving us and for the aid given us by the People’s Republic of China.

“There is no need to thank us,” interrupted Mao, “first, because the aid we have given you is very little,” and he closed one finger. “Second,” he continued, closing the other finger, “we are members of the great family of the socialist camp, which has the Soviet Union at the head, and it is just the same as passing something from one hand to the other, parts of the same body.”

We thanked him once again and stood up. We had several photographs taken together, shook hands again and departed.The point was that revisionism was being excused by calling it a "mistake" or "mistakes." In his diaries (Reflections on China) Hoxha goes into more detail on this subject. In his diaries Hoxha noted that Deng Xiaoping was a rightist and a clear revisionist, yet suddenly one day it was discovered that Deng merely made "mistakes" and was brought back from political hell by Mao. Similar things happened under Khrushchev.

[Old Mole]

One thing Enver Hoxha was shocked to hear when he made his first (and last) visit to China in 1956 was that, in Mao's words, "Stalin made mistakes. He made mistakes towards us, for example, in 1927. He made mistakes towards the Yugoslav comrades, too... it is necessary to make mistakes,' he said. 'The party cannot be educated without learning from mistakes. This has great significance.'" (The Khrushchevites, p. 243.) Of course this mentality later justified Mao rehabilitating Deng Xiaoping among others, as well as to downgrade revisionist lines to mere "mistakes" when Mao felt it convenient.
What!!!!??? Did he say great leader Stalin was capable of making MISTAKES!!!! To even insinuate this... What a REVISIONIST PIG, thinking Stalin, like inferior human being like trotskyites and workers, were able to make MISTAKES maybe even sometimes propose BAD POLITICS. Surely this is an unexcusable affront to Marxism-Leninism: criticism.

[Zealot]

It was obviously a joke, referring to the massive size of the Chinese population which doubled during his time

[Ismail]

What!!!!??? Did he say great leader Stalin was capable of making MISTAKES!!!! To even insinuate this... What a REVISIONIST PIG, thinking Stalin, like inferior human being like trotskyites and workers, were able to make MISTAKES maybe even sometimes propose BAD POLITICS. Surely this is an unexcusable affront to Marxism-Leninism: criticism.Yeah, glorious Mao, correcting the hundred billion "mistakes" Stalin made in order to advance the mighty banner of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. :rolleyes:

Again the point wasn't if Stalin made "mistakes" or not, as I pointed out in my last post.

Bill Bland, one of the main pro-Hoxha guys until his death in 2001, said in a 1994 interview (http://ml-review.ca/aml/CommunistLeague/Bland-MemorialInterview.htm) that:

You could always say that Stalin could have done more, could have done this, could have shot this person beforehand. But I would be unwilling to criticise Stalin at all, because I feel that Stalin stands head and shoulders above all of us, all existing communists as far as his line was concerned... I don't think we have anything to criticise Stalin for, of course one could point out mistakes that Stalin made, but Stalin being a living person and not a divinely inspired person, must have made some mistakes, but I can't find any. I have read the whole of his works and I can find nothing today even after all this hindsight that is available to us now, there is nothing he said, definitely said, that is inaccurate now. Therefore I think Stalin was a model, as Lenin was, for a correct Marxist-Leninist way of life.

[Queercommie Girl]

[/URL]
[URL="http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_14.htm"]We shouldn’t read too many books. We should read Marxist books, but not too many of them either. It will be enough to read a dozen or so. If we read too many, we can move towards our opposites, become bookworms, dogmatists, revisionists. (http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hyMhwroFlOgzPE61X3P0AVEmxCHA)


Um. I think there is actually some wisdom in this. RevLeft has its own share of dogmatists and sectarians who put abstract dogmas before real-life activism and realpolitik. It's why the revolutionary left is not going anywhere except creating hundreds of little dogmatic and sectarian ultra-left sects that have no real political power.

Political power comes from the barrel of a gun, not the pages of a book.

That said, being Chinese, one thing I'm critical of Mao for is his anti-Confucian stance, which is related to his anti-intellectual stance in general to some extent. The founder of the CCP and Chinese Trotskyist leader Chen Duxiu actually has a more balanced evaluation of Confucianism. (See his article Confucius and China)

(Confucianism is similar to Judaism in the sense that both are very "bookish" traditions)

[RED DAVE]

We shouldn’t read too many books. We should read Marxist books, but not too many of them either. It will be enough to read a dozen or so. If we read too many, we can move towards our opposites, become bookworms, dogmatists, revisionists. (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_14.htm)
Um. I think there is actually some wisdom in this.You would.


RevLeft has its own share of dogmatists and sectarians who put abstract dogmas before real-life activism and realpolitik. It's why the revolutionary left is not going anywhere except creating hundreds of little dogmatic and sectarian ultra-left sects that have no real political power.Uhh, how about the fact that the working class has been in retreat all over the world for about 35 years, or doesn't that have anything to do with it?


Political power comes from the barrel of a gun, not the pages of a book.Probably the most misunderstood notion on the Left. Please do not employ its wisdom on your next picket line.

RED DAVE

[Ismail]

Political power comes from the barrel of a gun, not the pages of a book.What motivates the gun to begin with? What encourages people to take up arms? It isn't the gun in itself.

The fixation on "the gun" produces Maoist China, where the "Red Guards" became the center of most political activities, and the DPRK, where the Army has attained the rank of society's "vanguard." Hoxha by contrast abolished Army ranks and always stressed that the Army was subordinate at all times to the Party, and that the former always takes orders from the latter.

As Hoxha pointed out in October 1976, "At the 'crucial moments' for the Communist Party of China, Mao Tsetung did not rely on the party, but on the army, the intelligentsia and the students. At these 'crucial moments' the workers and the peasants have either been under the control of counterrevolutionaries or have stood aside... At the time when Mao was shouting, 'Power grows out of the barrel of a gun', reaction was seizing this power." (Reflections on China Vol. II, p. 284.)

[The_Outernationalist]

He first suggested sending "thousands" of women but as an afterthought proposed "10 million," drawing laughter at the meeting, also attended by Chinese premier Zhou Enlai.



Kissinger, who was President Richard Nixon's national security advisor at that time, told Mao that the United States had no "quotas" or "tariffs" for Chinese women, drawing more laughter.

It's quite obvious that Mao just cracked a non-PC joke, but a joke nonetheless, even if in a bit of poor taste.

[The_Outernationalist]

Here's the BBC's take on it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7243500.stm


The Chinese leader smoked cigars and the two men talked and joked into the early hours of the morning.


The remark provoked laughter and was clearly meant as a joke, but Mao went on to complain that Chinese women were giving birth to too many children (a very serious concern for a relatively fledgling, overpopulated nation

But just so this issue can be laid to rest and this thread can be closed:


Mao later apologised to a female interpreter and he and Mr Kissinger agreed to remove his comments about women from the records.

Also, why is this raising eyebrows now, if this "story" was released almost 3 years ago? Also of note, notice how the US media sources don't mention the fact that Mao apologized, nor the fact that it was intended as a joke.

[ZeroNowhere]

Also, why is this raising Eyebrows now, if this "story" was released almost 3 years ago?
Probably because of the racist frogs of the Agence France-Presse.