"Mao left a China that was badly broken, and it would take an enormous effort to fix it. The devastation and backwardness that he left in his wake prompted his successors to rethink the nation’s trajectory—indeed, it was a historic opportunity. When they finally seized this opportunity, they rejected Mao’s core ideas and even the antipathy to market mechanisms and private enterprise at the core of the Soviet economic system that had been sacrosanct in China since the 1950s. When the dust finally cleared, the new model would be the export-oriented developmental states of East Asia, whose features would be grafted onto the stock of a rebuilt and revitalized Communist Party. A reform of this magnitude could only gain traction if leaders were forced to admit that something in China had gone seriously wrong. This was not the legacy that Mao had hoped to leave. It was in fact the opposite of what he intended."
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Anti-fascistsPoets from ChinaGeneral Secretaries and Chairmen of the Communist Party of ChinaAnti-imperialistsNon-fiction authors from China
Original Language: English
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Sources
Andrew G. Walder, China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed (2015), p. 14
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong
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Mao Zedong
1893 – 1976
chinesischer Revolutionär
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