Paper: Thirst for Oil, Feet of Clay

External threats, oddly enough, have several attractive characteristics for nation-states. In particular, external threats allow nation-states to mobilize easily at the sub-state level. During the Cold War, the United States faced an existential crisis from the threat posed by the Soviet Union. In the twenty years since the close of the Cold War, however, the United States has yet to face an existential external threat, rather, it faces a larger amount of insidious sub-state-level problems, one of which is the problem of energy consumption.

Theoretically, there is nothing wrong with the high level of energy consumption enjoyed by the citizens of the United States. If humanity possessed workable nuclear fusion reactors or some other MacGuffinish limitless clean energy source, then the need to conserve energy would vanish. However, with currently implemented technology, the world’s energy supply has hard limits. Complicating matters, the level of energy consumption serves as a rough indicator of the standard of living of a country, and if we go by the level of energy consumption, then the citizens of the United States are very prosperous indeed. Of course, the correlation between high energy consumption and high standard of living is by no means direct: the law of decreasing returns holds true for energy consumption just as it does for most other economic processes. To give a simple example, if one were to base standard of living strictly on the amount of energy used, then a worker who drives 30 minutes per day to work would be considered more prosperous than a worker who rides a bicycle 30 minutes per day to work; however, other factors beyond simple energy consumption affect the overall calculation of the well-being of the two commuters. Moreover, ancillary problems produced by high levels of energy consumption in the United States cause negative repercussions through the international system. Thus the United States must face the problems of how to eliminate or deal with these negative effects.

The main problems stemming from the US’ energy consumption can be divided into problems of energy sources and those of energy use. The problem of energy sources is a complex one, which can be be thought of using the different levels of analysis of the international system. At the systemic level, the current reliance of the world upon oil produced by various petro-states promotes an international system which causes strife in the Middle East, causes competition between states for hydrocarbon resources, and requires a world policeman. Furthermore, if greenhouse gases are produced without containment, the effects of climate change are extremely adverse. At the state level, the United States’ high level of energy consumption links it in alliances to rentier states, compromises the US’ efforts to promote civil rights and democracy around the world, and places the US economy in danger from price shocks. The issue of consumption of energy links also to health problems in the United States, particularly in the areas of food security as well as obesity, which are both public health hazards that the United States confronts now and will continue to confront in the future.

Currently, much of the energy used by the United States comes from fossil fuel sources, reliance on which produces many consequences for the United States’ role in the international system and on its relationship with other nations. In particular, one cannot discuss international energy issues without touching on the issues of oil, the premier strategic commodity in the world today. The United States depends on oil to run its infrastructure and its armed forces. The critical nature of oil for all aspects of life in the United States and other developed nations means that areas containing oil have a huge strategic importance. The crucial nature of oil has therefore caused the United States to set aside principles of democracy and human rights promotion when it becomes necessary to deal with repressive states to acquire oil. In fact, the United States’ strategic requirement for oil means that it will never be free to follow a true Wilsonian international policy of democracy and civil rights promotion internationally. Instead, the United States has allied itself with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, carries out drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and entangles itself in oil geopolitics throughout the Middle East, Latin America, and the former Soviet Union. Additionally, the fact that oil must be shipped around the world means that the United States must maintain a network of bases around the world to house ships, planes, and troops responsible for the safety of oil shipments and oil production. Moreover, another factor supporting the United States’ efforts around the world is a network of extraordinary renditioning of individuals who are deemed hostile to the United States, a system which has questionable legality and violates the ideals of liberty and freedom that the founders of the United States held. While a significant portion of United States citizens would most likely wish to end extraordinary renditioning if made aware of it, the fact if its invisibility during normal daily life means that individuals generally do not feel the necessity for its elimination. In fact, sub-state-level factors such as energy consumption and energy demand are at the root of much of the United States’ forward military presence around the world.

A second issue brought on by the United States’ high level of energy use is the emission of anthropogenic climate change gases. Currently, the world’s atmosphere contains over 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide. Higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can lead to warming of the global climate, which leads to many dangers to the people of the United States, including higher levels of intense weather, desertification, Klassifikation of oceans, and rising ocean levels. All of these environmental problems have strong potential to create difficulties for food production, as well as having the ability to disrupt life when natural disasters occur.
A final issue that pertains to the United States’ high level of energy use is the health risks which are caused by a sedentary lifestyle which automobile use and low food prices which cheap energy entails. A sedentary lifestyle often leads to obesity, which in turn leads to both health risks and health care costs.

Naturally, there are possibilities for other mitigating behaviors which would eliminate all or some of the adverse effects caused by the US’ high levels of energy consumption. For example, the United States can use its armies to safeguard energy, and research better technologies so that our forces abroad will not be harmed by hostile actors. The United States can also research systems that will allow carbon dioxide to be buried in the ground, thereby lowering the amount of greenhouse gases in the air. Finally, the government can implement subsidies for individuals who receive good health checks at the doctors’ office, thereby countering the effects of sedentary life on public health in the United States. However, a disconnect separates these ideas from practical implementation. Hence, while the United States may wish, on the one hand, to find methods to mitigate the effects brought on by its high overconsumption of energy, it may also wish to find ways to address the root cause of that high energy use, which is fundamentally an issue of price: current energy prices in the United States and in the rest of the world do not fully reflect the externality cost of the emissions that they produce. Until the present, the United States has used international action to preserve this system; however, it may be more efficient in terms of lives saved and economics to examine the alternative of lowering energy use.

The United States has three main mechanisms that it can use to lower energy use: more efficiency and higher prices. We can think of energy-use efficiency measures in several different ways. First of all, the United States has energy standards, which can be raised system-wide for various energy-using systems in order to decrease energy use. Chief among these standards are CAFE standards, which regulate various firms’ automobile fleet fuel efficiency. Secondly, systems configuration can be adjusted in order to decrease energy use, either through adjustment of zoning or through improving public transportation. Examples of reconfiguration include automobile commuter lanes and mixed-use zoning. Overall, efficiency has the potential to drop energy use by a significant amount. Alternately, the United States can mobilize markets to decrease national energy use, either by placing a tax on goods or on oil. In essence, such financial incentives enlist the help of the market to decrease energy use. However, such measures also can have strong inflationary consequences,which were demonstrated during the oil crises of the 1970s. Due to the inflationary effects of higher energy prices, governments often avoid increasing such prices if the governments lack a framework for translating higher energy prices into economic growth. One method to prevent such shocks that is often discussed is a global market for carbon, which would create a worldwide price for emissions, thereby capping energy carbon emissions at a certain level. Such a mechanism would allow for a more gradual rise in prices, thereby averting inflationary shocks to the United States’ economy.

One other question worth asking is the question of how the current need to decrease energy consumption relates to the implementation of high modernistic ideas. Generally, high modernist thought takes technological progress as a panacea. However, the magic bullet for the world’s energy problems has proved elusive. The threats caused by such problems, on the other hand, are concrete physical reality, so the United States should use methods that are currently available to overcome energy threats. A brief list of such methods includes better efficiency standards for buildings and vehicles, higher coal and oil prices, substitution of carbon-neutral energy sources for oil and coal, and a readjustment of infrastructure to phase out reliance on coal and oil in all phases of life as well as the gradual replacement of the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine with cleaner technology.

Much of the burden for the implementation of measures to decrease energy consumption in the United States lies on the government. The task which the government faces is how to convince voters that less energy consumption actually represents a better deal for the United States as a whole. Currently, the United States Senate is debating an energy bill that would take a decisive first step towards dealing with the problem. If and when the bill passes, it would begin to chip away at the problem of the United States’ high domestic energy consumption, and the United States would thereby gain greater flexibility in promotion of democracy and freedom around the world.

The China Panda Rising Trade Dumping RMB Dragon Threat

In this essay, I am going to discuss several different issues of China’s rise. China’s rise has been discussed at quite great length at this point, and I am convinced that like bread dough that has been properly prepared with yeast and then placed in an oven, China WILL rise. I use this horrible hyperbole of a simile not because I bet a friend $5 that I would, but moreso because actually it is an apt description of a concrete and observable process that is governed by chemistry and physics, just as economic growth in China is an empirically observable phenomenon that can be explained by an economic theory that every Masters econ student learns in their intermediate macroeconomics course. Here, I refer to none other than the Solow Growth Model, which states that the income of poorer countries will tend to converge with the income of rich countries in the long run, given of course that markets are free, education and freedom of information is equal in the two countries, that the Chairman of the New York Fed has played a bad game of squash before grumbling an announcement of new higher interest rates whilst at the same time the Chairman of the People’s Bank of China has won at Mahjong the night before cheerily giving his normal pronouncement that ‘China is not manipulating its currency AND it will never yield to foreign pressure on its currency’. Regardless of whether or not China will eventually yield to hot money pressure on their currency and shift the two podes of its monetary trinity from fixed exchange rate and manageable monetary policy to free capital flows and manageable monetary policy, at very least the Chinese Renminbi Yuan has strengthened from 8.11 at its de-pegging from the dollar on July 19th, 2005 to around 6.7 at the time of this writing, a change of about 17% or about 1/6th of its original value in 5 years’ time. This is probably too slow, but then, the Chairman of the People’s Bank has been consistent with his policy. Please ignore the rest of this paragraph as I will use it mainly to address various things about rising bread and East Asian nations that do NOT threaten the United States of America, Wilsonian positions on unlawful jailing of individuals in violation of their human rights, Hamiltonian concerns with free trade when it works in favor of a nation or protectionism when it doesn’t, Jeffersonian wishes to be left alone on one’s farm to read and hunt, and Jacksonian wishes to be left alone on one’s farm to read and hunt and to kill anyone who comes onto the property(these last four with apologies to Walter Russell Mead of the Council of Foreign Relations). Instead I want to talk about values--- but not in the sense of ‘the American Values of Life Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness’. Instead I want to talk about a different value revered by the founders of our nation: the Puritan value of thrift. In normal everyday life, this value translates into trying to get the most value for the lowest price. If you go into Bradlees, and then you remember that the shirt you see being sold there for 30 dollars is being sold down the street at Zayre’s for 25 dollars, then you would shop at Zayre’s and not Bradlees, right?
Wrong! Wal-Mart put both those stores and dozens more lumbering reptilian tetrapods of the last Cretaceous retail period like them out of business years ago by selling that same shirt for 5 dollars by sourcing it wherever it was cheapest to produce. For a time, the placeholder ‘wherever it’s cheapest’ pointed to China, but that time had its golden age from 1978 to 2005 and is now over, with the buck passed to places such as Bangladesh and Vietnam, leaving certain Congressional horsemen with nary a post to hitch their Autumnal hobby horses to, unless of course Vietnam is now keeping the value of the Vietnamese đồng artificially low in order to keep Vietnamese hobby-horse posts unfairly competitive against American-produced posts. Whilst thoroughbred racing may be the sport of kings and hobby- horse equestrianism the business of Senators, beating dead horses is a pastime that every citizen of the free world may indulge in after finishing his quotidian labors. However, honorable reader, while the horse that raced under the handle ‘The China Rising Threat’ is deader than Black Beauty, there are still a few colts out in the paddock that might be contenders in the next Asian Regional Threat Sweepstakes being organized jointly between China and the United States.

I consider both the possibilities of China playing the role of the Soviet Union in a new cold war or splintering apart as the USSR did after the cold war as extraneous to discussion of the possible threats to the United States by a strong or a weak China. The relationship between the United States and the USSR had its own unique characteristics and has little bearing on the relationship between the United States. George Kennan’s Long Telegram outlined the precepts of the USSR’s relationship with the rest of the world: inevitable conflict between communism and capitalism, subversion of Marxists worldwide to the USSR’s goals, paranoid xenophobia that did not serve the Russian people, and a skewed view of reality produced by flawed Soviet information gathering systems. On the other hand, China uses a soft-power approach towards its neighbors, dominating them through trade and business issues rather than through directly applied force. If we were to adapt the concepts of the US-USSR relationship to the US-China relationship, we could produce a paradigm that includes a possible conflict between ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ and Capitalism.

The former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping introduced the concept of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’, a type of socialist market economy. In China, the state owns all or parts of large companies in the nation’s economy, but does not exercise command and control over the economy except under extenuating circumstances. However, while China’s present economy is relatively free compared to the conditions which prevailed during the time of Mao Zedong, the state does interfere with impunity in areas which it considers strategically important, which include not only industrial and military sectors, but also in media and book publishing. At the same time, the PRC government buys the compliance of the national populace by enforcing order, handing out jobs and promoting economic development, which substitute in the near term for free speech, freedom of movement, and democratic elections. For its part, the United States-China relationship has evolved from a cold war alliance into a engaged trading partnership, while the United States also overtly professes Wilsonian commitment to supporting human rights and freedom of religion in China. Various PRC government long range plans have described plans for greater democracy in the future, but only after the entire country has reached a certain level of economic prosperity, which is not expected to happen until after 2020 if there are no untoward problems with China’s economic development in the meantime. An untoward problem would cause social unrest that would cause China to change its economic development and increasing level of engagement with the world economy. The occurrence of such an economic collapse might cause a weakened Chinese state to collapse into a reactionary nationalism, or even into warlordism. In a sense, the problem that occupies the minds of some people these days is not that China would transform into the USSR, but rather that China would somehow transmute itself into a proto-fascist-Germany analogue, which would then goose-step its way to a full-fledged fascist Germany analogue. This vision of China would hold expansionist ambitions and prefer bellicose means to do so. However, as China already possesses ample open space in its western regions and northwestern regions, and no easily accessible neighboring countries to invade, we need to consider what benefit China would gain by diverging from its current model of use of trade and other types of non-physical means to control its neighbors which it currently using successfully to develop its economy. Certainly, one possible real danger in the event of a bellicose and fascistic China would be a war over Taiwan. If the use of force does not work out on balance, then we should reflect on whether the threat of an expansionist China has any credibility, as International Relations experts David Lampton and Michael Mandelbaum have notably done in their respective works ‘The Three Faces of Chinese Power‘ and ‘The Ideas That Conquered the World.’

Additionally, we should also note the demographic trend of the aging population in China, likely a stabilizing factor as younger generations will need to work to support a relatively higher number of parents and grandparents - although the demographic skew between males and females might destabilize the country somewhat due to the presence of extra unmarried males in society.

On the other hand, the threat of nuclear proliferation by a weakened China seems to be a more plausible one. In particular, a weakened Chinese state would signal the advent of greater corruption and stronger political-criminal nexuses, which are problems presently recognized by the PRC central government. In particular, a strong political-criminal nexus might be more willing to trade in nuclear materials to buyers in the Muslim world, Burma, or North Korea. As always, the United States will need to be vigilant, and any breakdown or breakup of the Chinese state, as happened to the USSR, will require the United States and other nations around the world to secure China’s nuclear arsenal, which at least is much smaller than that of the former USSR due to the late Chairman Mao’s demurral to participate in nuclear arms race with the United States and the USSR during the Cold War.

Currently, the government of the People’s Republic of China maintains a frostily cordial alliance with the United States, with the Beijing consensus providing the overall blueprint of China’s foreign affairs. In the medium term, I am confident that this alliance will continue; however, there are several things which independently I find innocuous but which overall do not seem to be entirely wholesome developments. These developments include Chinese cyber-warfare, a possible encroachment of the Chinese diaspora, and, finally, dramatic climactic change. The first one I mention because it is a phenomenon that deserves note: China’s government has developed and is developing the means to use computers disrupt the Command, Control, and Communications infrastructures of other countries. Moreover China-based computer hackers have attacked various parts of the US government, including Congress and the military. Naturally, the US should oppose this behavior by all overt and electronic means possible, and develop effective countermeasures.
Secondly, it is the policy of PRC’s government to covertly use its nationals abroad as a part of its information-gathering and propaganda systems. Although China is by no means the only country in the world to engage in such practices to a greater or lesser extent, China definitely engages in the practice with a bit more efficacy due to the relatively large number of emigrants which have left China. Again, the United States must be diligent in counterespionage tactics; however, the presence of Chinese agents around the world is not a new phenomenon, in fact the CIA has been conducting counterespionage work against the PRC since the time of the cold war.

Finally I would like to talk about climate change. China and the United States are the worlds #1 and #2 emitters of greenhouse gases, respectively. The possibility that all of the effects of global climate change will not be prevented could cause extremely drastic changes in the world’s food-production capacity. Especially in the short-term, the possibility of famines or refugees from flooding and storms will be high, both in the United States and in China. With more of its population centers located at or close to sea level, and high dependence on its major rivers for water supplies, China will be particularly hard hit by any major climate changes. Inasmuch as changes in sea level or famines caused by desertification could claim the lives of tens of millions of Chinese as well as other people around the world and create millions more refugees, the issues of preventing and mitigating climate change may well be the most important problems confronting the United States and a strong China.

Paper: Long Live the Great Leader Chairman Mao?

60-40?
50-50?
70-30?
These are the common percentages used to describe Chairman Mao Zedong’s overall effect on the People’s Republic of China, with the first number representing the positive effects that Mao had, and the latter percentage representing the detrimental consequences of Mao’s actions on China. Mao frontloaded his heroic actions: most of the positive deeds he performed were in the revolutionary period leading up to the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949. Post-liberation, Mao trod an ever-darker path which ended by leaving him in a state of quasi-imperial senility. Due to the state control over information in the PRC, the overall domestic impression of Chairman Mao remains positive. However, the numbers assessing Mao’s legacy provide more than simple commentary on the character of the departed Chairman. By extension, the assessment of Chairman Mao’s legacy also provides a good indicator of the current sentiment on the overall legitimacy of Communist Party Rule in China.

Deng Xiaoping said that Chairman Mao’s portrait would hang above Tiananmen forever. Forever is a long time: what, if anything, differentiates Mao from any of the line-starting emperors who founded dynasties, emperors whose memories, too, were venerated for only as long as their own dynasty lasted? Why is Mao looked on as more than just an emperor in Communist clothes, an instigator of cargo cult reforms, or a scheming lecher? In my own mind, I have thought all of these things of Mao, and many more.

If I were to count on two hands the factors that led to my low appraisal of Chairman Mao’s performance as leader of the People’s Republic of China, I would proceed by saying that on the one hand, Mao caused the Great Leap Forward, and on the other hand he caused the Cultural Revolution. In the face of the death and destruction caused these two follies, any positive appraisal of Mao’s effect on China must pause and take a breath.

We can start by thinking about the Great Leap Forward, which was the nation’s attempt to catapault its economic development through a series of high-modernist reforms to the agricultural and industrial sectors. Led by Mao, the nation’s cadres organized the agrarian resources of China to export wheat in exchange for imports of technology. The idea was simple: in the words of erstwhile head of state Liu Shaoqi, “Hard work for a few years, happiness for a thousand.” Cadres battled to have their own districts’ production exceed the posted targets by the highest amount, with penalties of beatings and humiliation awaiting those who could not make the grade. A similar effort on producing iron caused the entire populace of the country to melt down the readily available household iron objects and recast the iron into useless ingots. The government’s can-do attitude worked well for mobilizing the populace; however, the methods failed to produce real results, and tens of millions starved to death, as detailed in Jasper Becker’s Hungry Ghosts. During the famines of 1958-1961, farmers in the countryside resorted to eating wood pulp, marsh plankton, and human flesh, among other things. Efforts by farmers to improve their living conditions during the Great Leap Forward met with repression from the PRC government, particularly at the local level. For their own parts, the officials at the middle and higher levels busied themselves covering up the death toll that the Great Leap had brought to China’s countryside. 30 million people, the approximate amount that died during these three years, is roughly equivalent to the 2009 population of Iraq.

In the early 1960s, the People’s Republic earned a brief few years of respite, as the government repealed many of the policies which had proved so disastrous during the Great Leap Forward. During this time, the country swung towards a more bourgeois lifestyle, which displeased Chairman Mao. After extensive thought, he launched the Great People’s Proletarian Cultural Revolution in May 1966. The Cultural Revolution strove to eliminate ‘old’ ideas. In many respects, it succeeded. Academics, intellectuals, party officials and anyone with ‘capitalist’ background received the brunt of the fury of the Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 almost until Mao’s death in 1976. While the death toll of the Cultural Revolution did not reach that of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution arguably had a greater scope than the Great Leap, in that it directed itself not just at economic production, but at the underpinnings of traditional Chinese culture itself, as well as any sort of international cultural influences. At the most bizarre, the destruction extended even to dairy cows imported from Holland, as well as more obvious things such as Buddhist temples and university libraries. The destruction of traditional culture cut the feet out from under an entire generation of Chinese people, and left them jaded, cynical, and stricken with anomie, unable to turn fully either to Communist materialism or traditional spiritualism to this day.

However, besides these two obvious follies instigated by Chairman Mao as a leader, a third ill effect of his rule, less obvious than the two reasons described in the previous paragraphs, may actually have more insidious and sinister effects. The third leg of the trifecta was Mao’s governing style. When governing, Mao mainly used uncodified connections between himself and other high-ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party to implement his policies. The system worked adequately with Mao alive, but as soon as he died, he left his leader with the unappetizing inheritance of having to implement a system of governance from the ground up or to follow in Mao’s lead as a charismatic dictator. To this day, China lacks effective rule of law, and the party continues as a discretionary power independent of the government. Mindful of the problems facet by Sun Yat-sen during his presidency of the Republic of China, Chairman Mao also ensured that the Communist Party would keep a firm grasp on the reins of the military- the end of this practice will likely signal the first true step towards a more free China. Furthermore, Mao centralized power rather than extending it, establishing a precedent of mistrust of non-governmental organizations. Once again, the mistrust of NGOs also continues to plague China to to this day. Additionally, Mao’s Hundred Flowers Campaign also established a precedent for thought control towards intellectuals which has contributed to the inabililty of Chinese universities to attain true world-class levels.

In light of all the harmful acts perpetrated by or on behalf of Chairman Mao, it seems incongruous that his face now adorns all of the paper currency in the People’s Republic of China. Unquestionably, Chairman Mao must have done overwhelmingly positive things to merit the preservation of his remains at Tiananmen Square, his face on beautiful new red 100 yuan bills, and his thought taught in school. In order to determine why Mao seems so fundamental to the PRC, it is important to think more of the scope and context of the Chinese Communist movement and the victory it produced in 1949. On one level, the Communists defeated the Nationalists. We can understand this quite clearly, with one party defeating another in a revolutionary conflict. However, on another level the 1949 victory was the defeat of Feudalism by Socialism, and hence, the liberation of the vast majority of the Chinese people from over 2000 years of feudal serfdom. Putting things in terms that Americans can understand, Mao is George Washington, removing an internationally controlling force, but also and more importantly, Mao is Abraham Lincoln, liberating virtual human chattel from a degraded state. Moreover, Mao had a further function in Chinese culture which has no strong correspondence in US history, that of the state builder. Before the 1949 triumph of the Communists, China had weathered 100 years of turmoil beginning at the time of the First Opium War. The 1911 revolution left a republic too weak to survive, and the Nationalist Party under Chiang Kai-shek was far too corrupt to effectively govern China, as documented in Lynne Joiner’s Noble Survivor, the story of John S. Sayles. Through the victory in the 1945-1949 civil war Mao unified and strengthened the Chinese state in a manner reminiscent of European statesmen such as Otto Van Bismark or Camillo Benso, the Count Cavour. The strengthening of China gives a third leg to the tripod of support for Chairman Mao. Furthermore, Mao’s post-liberation personality cult meant that the entire nation depended on his decisions and at some times performed a behavior analogous to praying to the Chairman.

So where then, does this leave us? The scales hold a modernized, unified, and strengthened Chinese state on one side, and the lives of at least 30 million individuals (at a bare minimum) on the other. While without Chairman Mao, there would be no ‘New China’, the Chairman failed in much of what he set his mind to doing post-liberation. In trying to understand why there is relatively little criticism of Chairman Mao even 30 years after his death, it may help if we mentally seperate Mao the person and the results of Mao’s rule – person/bad, rule/tending to good. Dr. Li Zhisui’s book details the manner in which Chairman Mao exploited his dictatorship for his own benefit, schemed to keep primacy in Chinese society, and generally behaved irresponsibly with the lives of millions of Chinese citizens- he was a ‘bad’ person, no doubt. However, at the end of the cultural revolution and onwards, China found itself, if not perfect, at least better off than it had been under the Nationalists. Hence, the results of his life were actually good- assessments of his personal character are beside the point. Naturally, the Communist Party controls public discourse in China, and so their line on Mao, defined clearly at the end of the 1970s, will prevail until some sort of revolutionary change occurs in China. Naturally, many individuals give a perjorative evaluation of Chairman Mao in private; however, this sentiment does not surface in mass media. Those who care continue to curse Mao in private, while many feel that the time of Mao is over, and the problems of the 60s and 70s have little bearing on post-opening China, if they care to think of the problems at all. While Deng Xiaoping’s words regarding cats were speaking to the relative merits of capitalism and communism, they can also be applied to the Chairman himself. He gave China a stronger national consciousness than the hollow principles that masked the nationalists’ corruption, and in that, he did a great service to China’s people. At this point, China still awaits its Gorbachev, but until then Mao will have to suffice for Tiananmen and the face on China’s money- at this point in time, what figure could replace him?