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...China's past 60 years can be divided into roughly two halves. First came the period of ceaseless revolution, with all the widespread turmoil and suffering it perpetrated. Then the time of gradual reform, which has brought greater prosperity and freedom than China has ever known but which is still characterized by grave corruption and terrible injustice under a stern authoritarianism. Today China is many things, often contradictory: rich and poor, open and closed, liberated and oppressed, confident and insecure. But it decidedly isn't Marxist - or even Maoist. (See pictures of modern Shanghai...
...Because the CCP now gains its legitimacy almost solely from the material wealth it has created and is communist only in name, it has to recast the past to justify the present. Thus, in Founding, class struggle is hardly depicted or mentioned. Mao not only needs a capitalist to provide him with a cigarette; he and his cohorts admit they are ignorant about economics, which they acknowledge is essential to running the country. The message: Mao was great at consolidating the nation under the communist banner, but he was clueless about development; it's today's CCP that made...
...further boosting its authority. Taiwan figures too. Mao tries to persuade Li Jishen, an influential southern China figure aligned with the KMT, to join the communist government. Li confesses to Mao that he is responsible for the deaths of many communist cadres. Mao's reply: Let's forget the past and begin a new future. That's directed at Taipei - part of Beijing's ongoing charm offensive toward Taiwan, once relentlessly denounced as a renegade province...
...Irish] Free State in 1922. Files from that previous period show that intelligence was incredibly confused, and poorly coordinated with local police. What happens in the 1970s? Exactly the same thing. It's a nearly perfect example of the old adage that those who do not understand past mistakes are doomed to repeat them...
Perhaps. But just as the Tories looked set to bury the old ghosts of their past, a new alliance in Europe has raised fresh questions about the party's stance on equality. Celebrities including actor Patrick Stewart and comedian Stephen Fry signed an open letter to Cameron on the eve of Conference Pride, challenging the Conservatives' decision to join the right-wing Polish Law and Justice Party in a new grouping in the European Parliament. "Your new Polish allies oppose gay marriage and adoption," read the letter, which demanded that Cameron call upon the Polish party "either to change their...