Posts Tagged: creative destruction

China’s Destroyer God

Mao was fond of saying that the Chinese people were “first of all, poor, and secondly blank,” but getting the Chinese people to that state involved quite a bit of work on Mao’s part. Unlike earlier intellectuals whose rebellious nerves wavered later in life, Mao’s drive to destroy and dismantle only increased after the Communist… Read more »

The Hundred Days’ Reform

Defeat at the hands of Japan spurred another bout of self-strengthening in China. A new generation of reformers, led by Zhang Zhidong and Yuan Shikai, began to replace Li at the head of the ziqiang movement. Zhang coined what became the most famous phrase of the movement: “zhongxue weiti, xixue weiyong (中学为体，西学为用) Chinese learning should remain the… Read more »