China DOS Union

I've never watched any TV dramas at all, not once. No time.

The following is quoted from 李小龙 on 2003-5-30 10:17:50:


Definitely influenced by the domestic TV drama <>.

Actually 70% of this series is fictional. It completely deifies Kangxi and Xiaozhuang.

But I still quite like watching it.

Wrong, it's not because of the TV drama, but because the historical Emperor Kangxi really was a man of both literary and military talent. He was not only a great emperor of his generation, but also an outstanding scholar. He was broad and learned, with extremely wide-ranging interests. He even created a mathematical theorem; exactly what it was, I've forgotten. In addition, Kangxi was very proficient in literature, history, medicine, astronomy, and geography. Back then the Qing dynasty even had an observatory, didn't it? Even Mao Zedong couldn't compare.
As for some of the other outstanding emperors, most of them were founders of dynasties, basically men from military backgrounds. The reason they could hold onto the realm was entirely because of the prestige they established while conquering it. In terms of overall ability to govern the state, none of them matched Kangxi.
To be exact, Kangxi encountered just about every problem an emperor ought to face, and he solved them all very well.

Nice

The great Emperor Kangxi really is very good!! I personally support him too~

As for Kangxi and Li Shimin, I think the following points need to be made.

Li Shimin created the flourishing age of Zhenguan, whose legacy has lasted for ages. Even now many overseas Chinese call themselves Tang people. Isn't there even such a thing as Chinatown? Even Japan's national dress was "imported" from the Li Tang during that time. In that age, Chang'an was crowded with foreigners, and they had all come to our Great Tang seeking learning. This shows Li Shimin was by no means the sort to shut the country off and act arrogantly in self-admiration. Though it's not elegant to say so, the Japanese in fact only acknowledge the Han and Tang as China, and what came after they call Shina.

As for the Kangxi emperor you mentioned, he merely did what a ruler was supposed to do. At most he was just "internally sagely and externally kingly." I'll take the recovery of Taiwan as an example in detail.
By the time of Kangxi in the Great Qing, it still couldn't be counted as having destroyed our Great Ming. So attacking Taiwan was only for the sake of destroying Ming. It's just that Shunzhi died young; otherwise he too would have attacked Taiwan. Because Ming and Qing could not coexist. Either you thrive, or I perish. Besides, there really isn't much to say about attacking Taiwan. Kangxi used the mainland against a single corner; it would have been strange not to win. And the cost of the coastal evacuation and sea ban that lasted for years, plus the millions of refugees it produced, together with the cost of rebuilding the mess that Taiwan was after the war, were enough to make Kangxi regret it deeply.

Also, when evaluating a wise ruler, you must look even more at their influence on later generations. Because the Great Qing still adopted a policy of closed-country isolation during the flourishing age of Kangxi and Qianlong, later generations became blindly arrogant and self-deluding, distancing themselves from the fruits of the European and American Industrial Revolution. This caused an unforgivable regret for all ages.


One last point: Kangxi was the emperor of the Manchu Eight Banners, so he cannot be counted as the legitimate orthodox ruler of our Chinese nation.

If Mao Zedong can also count as an "emperor," then I'd give him a vote too.

He started out from the peasantry, and in just a little over twenty years he destroyed the Republic of China. Although in the middle of it all the Japanese disrupted the situation and tied down the great majority of the Nationalist army. But after defeating the Japanese devils, the superiority and inferiority of the Nationalist and Communist forces was still plain to see. And at the time the Kuomintang had unquestionably become the legitimate representative of the Chinese government, and was also an ally in the anti-fascist coalition. Its international standing was steadily on the rise.

The situation at the time was this: the Americans openly gave Chiang Kai-shek guns, artillery, airplanes, tanks, and loans. The Soviets secretly cast flirtatious glances at Chiang Kai-shek's government. The international community all hoped Chiang Kai-shek would unify all of China;
As for Mao Zedong's Red Army, though it already numbered more than a million, it still had only millet and rifles, and in terms of international backing it had only two fellow hard-luck brothers, Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam and Kim Il-sung of Korea. As for Stalin of the Soviet Union, he had already realized back during the Soviet base-area period that Mao Zedong was not easy to deal with. Letting him come to power would inevitably affect his absolute monopolistic rule south of Siberia. So although the Soviet Union at the time made no clear public statement, in reality it did not support Mao Zedong.

Mao Zedong was not Song Jiang, and Chiang Kai-shek was not Xiang Yu. A "negotiated surrender" or dividing rule by the Yangtze was impossible with those two. Both sides knew perfectly well that war was inevitable. They only both wanted to shift responsibility for the civil war onto the other side. So there was the Chongqing negotiations between the Kuomintang and the Communists.

To this day I still admire Mao Zedong's courage in going to that meeting single-handedly. Although Zhou Enlai had already planted hidden pieces among the Nationalists' upper ranks, who could know what Chiang Kai-shek was really thinking at the time? According to historical materials, a Nationalist spy planted in the CCP said that after Mao received the invitation, he hesitated quite a lot, then held a meeting to discuss it. Including Zhou Enlai, all the top leadership thought the trip was full of danger and likely disaster. So Chiang Kai-shek was certain Mao would not come. Who would have expected Mao to suddenly change his mind in the final few hours and catch Chiang Kai-shek completely off guard. After Mao boarded the special plane, the reply telegram also arrived in Chongqing. After reading it, Chiang Kai-shek cursed, "娘西匹, they're all a bunch of useless fools!"

Since the Chongqing negotiations themselves were just a pretense, talking and not talking amounted to the same thing. After that, the Kuomintang-Communist civil war broke out.

If the many battles of the former Red Army reflected Mao Zedong's military talent, then the Kuomintang-Communist civil war fully showed his outstanding talent in employing people. Every general he picked won brilliant victories. After the three major campaigns, Chiang Kai-shek's overall position was lost, and he had no choice but to step down.

As for the Korean War after the founding of the state, the merits and faults were about half and half. Its merit was that it made America and the world see the Chinese differently after the "queue-haired swine." The White House had no choice but to readjust its China strategy. It turned Chiang Kai-shek, who had still been shouting before the war about "counterattacking the mainland," into a true isolated man. But its fault was also obvious: the UN resolution judged it an aggressive war. That made the smaller neighboring countries all feel endangered. It also brought about a large-scale anti-communist wave in international society. And America seized the chance to throw out the "China threat theory." For a period, this severely damaged the Republic's diplomacy.

As for the wars against India and Vietnam, they basically counted as successful. Considering China's national conditions at the time, poor and blank in every way, being able to achieve such results was enough to make people look at it with new respect.

And then there was the land revolution. This was Mao Zedong's own creation. Because he knew that in China only the peasants could accomplish great things. And peasants all know that "food is the god of the people." So first the contradiction between the peasant class and the Communist Party had to be resolved before other great things could be done.

Also, people like Peng Dehuai, who didn't know to withdraw after achieving merit, have actually been rare in history. Mao Zedong remembered his merit in founding the state and protected him many times. But then he wrote that ten-thousand-word letter and made Mao Zedong furious. You have to understand, there is only one Li Shimin in the world, and he died five hundred years earlier. Since then there has never again been a minister like Wei Zheng.

At first, the Cultural Revolution was actually aimed at dealing with the Liu-Deng faction. It's just that later Jiang Qing made it spiral completely out of control, so they simply learned from Stalin and carried out a full-party purge. This was only a necessary measure and really not something worth criticizing so much. What new leader doesn't first purge a batch of old ministers after coming to power?
Finally, on the matter of heirs, Mao Zedong was also much wiser than Chiang Kai-shek.

In short, long live Chairman Mao, long live, long long live!

This isn't the place to evaluate history, but I used to like the things you like now very much (for example military affairs, politics, history, though now I'm no longer interested), so I'll say a few more words.

The reason the Kangxi era isn't as famous as the Han and Tang eras is not because of personal ability, but because of the changes of the times and of history. A person's lifespan is only a few decades, while a historical stage lasts hundreds or even thousands of years. China is an ancient civilization. By the time history developed to the Han and Tang periods, it was precisely the most prosperous era in Chinese history. That doesn't mean it was the achievement of some one emperor or some one dynasty, but the effort of several generations or even dozens of generations. Liu Bang, Emperor Wu of Han, Tang Taizong, Wu Zetian, and Tang Minghuang merely played especially prominent roles. But what was Japan like at that time? Where was the West, did it even have civilization? So naturally, in that era, the Chinese nation was the most outstanding nation. But as history developed, the West and Japan kept rising while China declined more and more. This is not the problem of one ruler or several rulers, but the natural law of development of the entire feudal society (as the times developed, the feudal system had already become the greatest obstacle to social progress). By the Ming dynasty, tiny wokou pirates were already stirring up trouble so badly that we could not live in peace. By the Qing dynasty, only in the Kangxi period was the only equal treaty with the Western powers signed. In my view, even if Li Shimin had been alive then, could he alone have turned the Qing dynasty into the Han-Tang era? The same applies if we use the present as an example. Can any one person immediately make our country as strong as America? Was it Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping? It still has to be done step by step over several generations or dozens of generations. And all the while you have to make sure no saboteur appears. Even so, reaching the glory of the Han and Tang periods would still be impossible.

Kangxi allowed foreigners to serve as officials, which shows he was not closed off at all. It's just that everything has its historical environment. Kangxi did make some mistakes, for example some literary inquisitions, but those cases were rare. It was only because he wanted to consolidate the Manchus' position; after all, as you said, the Manchus were not the legitimate orthodox Chinese line. It's just like Li Shimin killing his brother and younger brother and forcing his father to abdicate. There's no logic to it.

Kangxi's charisma influenced several generations. Among them, Qianlong especially admired this grandfather of his, and that is why there was the flourishing age of Kangxi and Qianlong. Frankly speaking, if not for Kangxi and Qianlong, feudal society might have ended in the early Qing period. It was Kangxi who let feudal society live another two hundred years.

As for the Taiwan issue, it should count as one of Kangxi's great achievements. Not only that, it is also the best point of reference for us now. Actually, our present situation is very similar to Kangxi's time, except they solved it and we still haven't. Hehe. ... I wonder what DD thinks of that.

By the way, about the TV drama Kangxi Dadi, it mainly evaluates Kangxi from the angle of the person. What it depicts more is Kangxi's inner psychological world when facing political struggles: unbearable pain when facing internal factional struggles, boundless joy when facing victory in war. What left the deepest impression on me was one line he said when he recovered Taiwan: "At this moment I feel how happy it is to be emperor." On this point, it was mainly that Chen Daoming acted well. But the TV drama did not fully reflect Kangxi's great achievements.

One last thing: you have ethnic prejudice, and that's not good.

yiyesong, I'm really not that interested in politics, but I do hope the two sides of the strait can continue getting along under the current situation, because whether it's unification or separation, war is bound to happen, and I think that's something nobody wants to see, right~

I choose Genghis Khan!

Hehe, let's stop here! Discussing these topics is completely meaningless. Better leave the arguing to politicians and historians.

That's right, everyone should stop discussing political issues~