Chinese leader?

[BSH]

Since there have been discussions over leaders of other civs - Germans, Russians - how about China? Mao is no better a choice than Hitler for Germany. I changed my leader's name to Yao (sometimes other things). When a leader is just a name, it's no big deal, but I really don't want to see an animation of one of the 20th Century's most evil monsters. So, who do you suggest should be the leader of Civ III's China?

Note to Firaxis - DITCH MAO!!

B

[ancient]

god you must be joking...

Mao Zedong is the only suitable leader for the chinese, he had helped china so much, with out Mao china would be in much more trouble then it is now. He had greatly improved the life of the average chinese, and made a less corrupt china government, comparing hitler and mao is insane, they are exact opposites. Hittler Killed millions of jews, because they are jews, mao never did any such thing, or even a comparitable deed. Before mao foreigners had immunity in china, the country was lawless and constintly violent, the people were little more than slaves, and foreigners could controll the nation to their every whim..

you chould see the movie cseries once apon a time in china (very accurate (except for some kung fu)) and then compare now to then...

[Inverse Icarus]

...

[Juggernaut]

Political correctness s***s. I wan't Hitler and Stalin. I mean, there are millions of WWII games, does anyone complain 'bout that? I've hardly heard of the CivIII german leader...The most famous leaders from every civ should be picked. Basta.

Overall, with the cartoon-esque vibes over the leader pics and the Happy Meal-feeling over the CSU's, I worry the target group's age has been decreased, like with StarWars I. Additionally, this, from the Civ3 Legacy:

Civ has always been intuitive and easy to understand for strategy fans. Weâre now working even harder to make Civ a game that can be easily played and enjoyed by casual gamers

[KrazyHorse]

Mao was a sick ****, but who are you going o put in his place? Sun Yat Sen? Mao's the only great Chinese leader whose name most Occidentals are going to recognise.

[S. Kroeze]

Re: god you must be joking...

Originally posted by ancient
Mao Zedong is the only suitable leader for the chinese, he had helped china so much, with out Mao china would be in much more trouble then it is now. He had greatly improved the life of the average chinese, and made a less corrupt china government, comparing hitler and mao is insane, they are exact opposites. Hittler Killed millions of jews, because they are jews, mao never did any such thing, or even a comparitable deed. Before mao foreigners had immunity in china, the country was lawless and constintly violent, the people were little more than slaves, and foreigners could controll the nation to their every whim..

'To Mao, the killing of opponents -or simply of those who disagreed with his political aims- was an unavoidable, indeed a necessary, ingredient of broader political campaigns.

He rarely gave direct instruction for their physical elimination. But his rule brought about the deaths of more of his own people than any other leader in history.'
(source: P.Short: 'Mao; A Life',1999)
This is a rather favourable biography.(!)
Estimates of amount of his victims vary from 40 to 60 million people.

You truly must hate humanity, the Chinese in particular.....

Mao was a sick ****, but who are you going o put in his place? Sun Yat Sen? Mao's the only great Chinese leader whose name most Occidentals are going to recognise.

I agree most Occidentals are ignorant barbarians. Yet I do not think this can be used as an excuse ever. This game is called: CIVILIZATION (not 'Killer').
In about 50 years most people will have forgotten what Hitler did too! Nor are the crimes of Lenin sufficiently known.

What about Confucius? Or Liu Bang?
Or Qin Shi-huangdi, another monster, less evil than Mao? After all, he did truly accomplish something lasting: the unification of China!

[Alexander I]

I agree - Qin Shih Huang-ti would be quite satisfactory. He did build the original Great Wall, after all. (No, not the one we have now, that was built in the 1500s by the Ming Dynasty).

And your wonderful Mao who saved China? What about the 'cultural revolution' where they tried to destroy all Chinese culture and history? They even defaced parts of the Great Wall!

If any of you have seen the CTP Forbidden City video, you'll know that it takes you inside a big empty imperial throne room. It was only empty after Mao sold off all the treasures and even destroyed some of them! That room was chock full of precious wonders!

[Dngfei]

Wow, Shi Huangdi killed tons in his day and spent a lifetime bringing suffering to many peole to build a tremendous underground city that is his tomb. Many of the things Mao did were horrific, but he came to power with a lot of support from the Chinese people. Destroying historic wonders was a shame, but it was done in protest of corrupt Chinese feudalism. How ever evil Mao was, he did a lot to bring China to where it is today.

The only logical argument against Mao is that he doesn't represent a time when the Chinese civilization was at its peak with respect to the rest of the world. If Mao was taken out of Civ because he was cruel, why not take out Caesar and Alexander too?

[Alinestra Covelia]

Good points on both sides raised here, I think. The way I see it, Mao Zedong was an excellent revolutionary, who wholeheartedly deserved the following he initially got, but in later years (and under increasing responsibility) discovered the hard way that rule is not the same as revolution.

Mao's service to the Chinese people is best illustrated by the early years of his political actions. Whereas the KMT (Kuomintang - the Nationalist party) was stagnant and lived off the land with disdain, Mao actually managed to compel all those who followed him to pay for everything they got from the peasants. So from the word go, the Communists began as a considerably more humane party than the corrupt KMT.

During the Japanese occupation, Mao and Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai Shek) allied briefly in order to repel the invaders, but at the close of the Sino Japanese War, Jiang Jieshi ordered the massacre of several thousand Communist allies in Shanghai. In the ensuing war between Communist and Nationalist parties, Mao was driven to the Kunming mountains to the southwest after losses, and finally began the famous 1,300-mile Long March to his base in the north.

When Mao's final victory was eventually secured, and Jiang fled to Taiwan (which the Americans continued to support, mostly because they preferred even a Nationalist neighbor to a Communist one), the country was racked by famine and medievally low standard of living - all problems that the KMT had been unable or unwilling to solve. The ramifications of Mao's party's achievements are lengthy and detailed, but suffice it to say that they generally achieved a great improvement, although of course this was done often at great cost to humanity.

Mao was the leader to force China's economy into modernity through industry alone (and not economy, which was ideologically forbidden) and this resulted in the successful Five Year Plans, as well as the disastrous Great Leap Forward. However, he also instituted possibly the world's first population limitation policy, which was ultimately an important factor in raising overall standard of life. (This policy also only applied to the ethnic Han Chinese majority - the ethnic minorities were immediately exempt from this from the beginning, since they were after all minorities.) His Cultural Revolution resulted in the defacement of countless cultural relics and the loss of untold lives - and the pity of it is that the Revolution was intended to weed out those whom Mao suspected of undermining Communism. The possibility that his own plan may have been at fault never occurred to him, but the ultimate aim behind the Revolution was certainly altruistic in nature, even if destructive.

In military terms, Mao was responsible for the final development that forced all the western powers to abandon further hopes of colonization (often with claims of racial superiority) over the Chinese - it was under his rule that the Chinese developed their first atomic bomb. Although distressing to all nations (as a newcomer to the Nuclear Club always is) it marked a further signal that China was developing quickly enough to remain independent in a 20th Century world.

Even though today's Chinese government is now a very different creature from the Maoist party of 1949 (for instance, the abandonment of Maoist economic thought by Deng Xiaoping allowed a dramatic increase of trade), it cannot be denied that Mao was instrumental for its present day form. It was not a perfect entity under his rule, and is by no means a perfect entity today, but there is no disputing its growing importance to the world, and the growing responsibilities that its leaders have shouldered. If nothing else, the excesses of the Cultural Revolution are a reminder (within living memory) of what could go wrong in a rapidly developing nation - but Mao has also left many legacies that indicate successes quite contrary to this.


[/lesson]

My own two cents: I hope they spell his name Mao Zedong. Call me pedantic.

[Transcend]

I would like to see Napoleon as the French leader, not the obscure Joan of Arc.

Stalin and Hitler would be better fits for Russia and Germany respectively.

It's about time to give Octavian his due in history. He was the founder of the Roman Empire after all.

[joseph1944]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
Chiang Kai Shek) allied briefly in order to repel the invaders. In the ensuing war between Communist and Nationalist parties,
Mao's final victory was eventually secured, and Jiang fled to Taiwan (which the Americans continued to support, mostly because they preferred even a Nationalist neighbor to a Communist

In fact Chiang invaded Taiwan and kill several thousand Taiwanese to take control of the Island. I was in Taiwan in 1963 and when I called a young lady "Chinese", she told me, she was not Chinese but Taiwanese and if Chiang was to leave, he would not be missed. The Taiwanese hated Chiang.

[joseph1944]

Originally posted by joseph1944

In fact Chiang invaded Taiwan and kill several thousand Taiwanese to take control of the Island. I was in Taiwan in 1963 and when I called a young lady "Chinese", she told me, she was not Chinese but Taiwanese and if Chiang was to leave, he would not be missed. The Taiwanese hated Chiang.

A footnote for History.

I did mention the Polynesian, or at lease talked about them around 3 to 4 months ago. No one really know how long they have been on the Pacific Islands. They did not keep any type of record. Europe found them in the 15 & 1600. Get this Taiwan is not Chinese. Yes they claim it but when the Dutch landed there in the 1600, the only people that lived there was the Polynesian. They told the Dutch that one in a while a Chinese Pirate would hide there but always left. It was the Dutch that brought the Chinese to the Island. (Slaves) If anyone doe's not believe go to the Taiwan site on the Internet and read their history.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
During the Japanese occupation, Mao and Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai Shek) allied briefly in order to repel the invaders, but at the close of the Sino Japanese War, Jiang Jieshi ordered the massacre of several thousand Communist allies in Shanghai. In the ensuing war between Communist and Nationalist parties, Mao was driven to the Kunming mountains to the southwest after losses, and finally began the famous 1,300-mile Long March to his base in the north.

Nope.

The Long March was not a result of civil war from 1945 - 1949, rather it was a result of KMT attacks on the largest CCP base in Jiangxi, around 1936 IIRC.

[BSH]

One thing I think of in regards to what character should represent China in the game is the list of historical figures in China's long history. The communist regime, in a long-term view, is just another dynasty (only not hereditary). And Mao's only great achievement was the killing of more sheer numbers of Chinese people than any other leader. Others before him brought greater cultural achievement, economic wealth, trade, unification and expansion in their eras. It really shows the Eurocentric bias, that Mao is the only Chinese strongman recognizable to the typical computer gameplayer.

As far as the relative economic and/or industrial success of the PRC, consider that ROC Taiwan's economy was historically much larger than PRC's, in spite of the population differential. PRC only joined the modern industrial nations after Mao's death, after Deng's reforms. I'll give the PRC credit for not reinventing any wheels; virtually all their industrial and technological advances of the last 50 years were bought, borrowed, or stolen from industrialized nations in the west (including Russia).

I guess the bottom line is that I really want the option of NOT having Mao be the face of China for Civ III. One can't deny his importance, although it is not positive in the way that PRC apologists portray it. To be honest, I don't even care who they include, as long as there's an option to get rid of Mao.

[Provost Harrison]

I am just surprised so many people are easily rattled by these things. Mao is an easily recognisable face, which makes it ideal when trying to negotiate and empathise with a real life situation. He is well known which makes him the ideal leader. This is not a war of political correctness, this is a game!