From: "Stasi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Peoples War] Mao: Imperialism Is A Paper Tiger
To commemorate the 25th anniversay of the death of Mao Tse-Tung, the
Peoples War list will have an essay or extract from the works of Mao posted
to the list everyday for the rest of the week.
Stasi.
Mao Tse-tung
U.S. IMPERIALISM IS A PAPER TIGER
==============================
>From the
Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung,
Foreign Languages Press
Peking 1977
First Edition 1977
Vol. V, pp. 308-11.
U.S. IMPERIALISM IS A PAPER TIGER
* Part of a talk with two Latin-American public figures.*
July 14, 1956
The United States is flaunting the anti-communist banner everywhere in
order to perpetrate aggression against other countries.
The United States owes debts everywhere. It owes debts not only to the
countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa, but also to the countries of
Europe and Oceania. The whole world, Britain included, dislikes the United
States. The masses of the people dislike it. Japan dislikes the United
States because it oppresses her. None of the countries in the East is free
from U.S. aggression. The United States has invaded our Taiwan Province.
Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Viet Nam and Pakistan all suffer from U.S.
aggression, although some of them are allies of the United States. The
people are dissatisfied and in some countries so are the authorities.
All oppressed nations want independence.
Everything is subject to change. The big decadent forces will give way
to the small new-born forces. The small forces will change into big forces
because the majority of the people demand this change. The U.S. imperialist
forces will change from big to small because the American people, too, are
dissatisfied with their government.
In my own lifetime I myself have witnessed such changes. Some of us
present were born in the Ching Dynasty and others after the Revolution.
The Ching Dynasty was overthrown long ago. By whom? By the party led by
Sun Yat-sen, together with the people. Sun Yat-sen's forces were so small
that the Ching officials didn't take him seriously. He led many uprisings
which failed each time. In the end, however, it was Sun Yat-sen who brought
down the Ching Dynasty. Bigness is nothing to be afraid of. The big will be
overthrown by the small. The small will become big. After overthrowing the
Ching Dynasty, Sun Yat-sen
met with defeat. For he failed to satisfy the demands of the people, such as
their demands for land and for opposition to imperialism. Nor did he
understand the necessity of suppressing the counter-revolutionaries who were
then moving about freely. Later, he suffered defeat at the hands of Yuan
Shih-kai, the chieftain of the Northern warlords. Yuan Shih-kai's forces
were larger than Sun Yat-sen's. But here again this law operated: small
forces linked with the people become strong, while big forces opposed to the
people become weak. Subsequently Sun Yat-sen's bourgeois-democratic
revolutionaries co-operated with us Communists and together we defeated the
warlord set-up left behind by Yuan Shih-kai.
Chiang Kai-shek's rule in China was recognized by the governments of all
countries and lasted twenty-two years, and his forces were the biggest. Our
forces were small, fifty thousand Party members at first but only a few
thousand after counter-revolutionary suppressions. The enemy made trouble
everywhere. Again this law operated: the big and strong end up in defeat
because they are divorced from the people, whereas the small and weak emerge
victorious because they are linked with the people and work in their
interest. That's how things turned out in the end.
During the anti-Japanese war, Japan was very powerful, the Kuomintang
troops were driven to the hinterland, and the armed forces led by the
Communist Party could only conduct guerrilla warfare in the rural areas
behind the enemy lines. Japan occupied large Chinese cities such as Peking,
Tientsin, Shanghai, Nanking, Wuhan and Canton. Nevertheless, like Germany's
Hitler the Japanese militarists collapsed in a few years, in accordance with
the same law.
We underwent innumerable difficulties and were driven from the south to
the north, while our forces fell from several hundred thousand strong to a
few tens of thousands. At the end of the 25,000-li Long March we had only
25,000 men left.
In the history of our Party many erroneous "Left" and Right lines have
occurred. Gravest of all were the Right deviationist line of Chen Tu-hsiu
and the "Left" deviationist line of Wang Ming. Besides, there were the Right
deviationist errors committed by Chang Kuo-tao, Kao Kang and others.
There is also a good side to mistakes, for they can educate the people
and the Party. We have had a good many teachers by negative example, such as
Japan, the United States, Chiang Kai-shek, Chen Tu-hsiu, Li Li-san, Wang
Ming, Chang Kuo-tao and Kao Kang. We paid a very high price to learn from
these teachers by negative example. In the past, Britain made war on us many
times. Britain, the United States, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, tsarist
Russia and Holland were all very interested in this land of ours. They were
all our teachers by negative example and we were their pupils.
During the War of Resistance, our troops grew and became 900,000 strong
through fighting against Japan. Then came the War of Liberation. Our arms
were inferior to those of the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang troops then
numbered four million, but in three years of fighting we wiped out eight
million of them all told. The Kuomintang, though aided by U.S. imperialism,
could not defeat us. The big and strong cannot win, it is always the small
and weak who win out.
Now U.S. imperialism is quite powerful, but in reality it isn't. It is
very weak politically because it is divorced from the masses of the people
and is disliked by everybody and by the American people too. In appearance
it is very powerful but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of, it is a
paper tiger. Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the
wind and the rain. I believe the United States is nothing but a paper tiger.
History as a whole, the history of class society for thousands of years,
has proved this point: the strong must give way to the weak. This holds true
for the Americas as well.
Only when imperialism is eliminated can peace prevail. The day will come
when the paper tigers will be wiped out. But they won't become extinct of
their own accord, they need to be battered by the wind and the rain.
When we say U.S. imperialism is a paper tiger, we are speaking in terms
of strategy. Regarding it as a whole, we must despise it. But regarding each
part, we must take it seriously. It has claws and fangs. We have to destroy
it piecemeal. For instance, if it has ten fangs, knock off one the first
time, and there will be nine left; knock off another, and there will be
eight left. When all the fangs are gone, it will still have claws. If we
deal with it step by step and in earnest, we will certainly succeed in the
end.
Strategically, we must utterly despise U.S. imperialism. Tactically, we
must take it seriously. In struggling against it, we must take each battle,
each encounter, seriously. At present, the United States is powerful, but
when looked at in a broader perspective, as a whole and from a long-term
viewpoint, it has no popular support, its policies are disliked by the
people, because it oppresses and exploits them.
For this reason, the tiger is doomed. Therefore, it is nothing to be afraid
of and can be despised. But today the United States still has strength,
turning out more than 100 million tons of steel a year and hitting out
everywhere. That is why we must continue to wage struggles against it, fight
it with all our might and wrest one position after another from it. And that
takes time.
It seems that the countries of the Americas, Asia and Africa will have
to go on quarrelling with the United States till the very end, till the
paper tiger is destroyed by the wind and the rain.
To oppose U.S. imperialism, people of European origin in the
Latin-American countries should unite with the indigenous Indians. Perhaps
the white immigrants from Europe can be divided into two groups, one
composed of rulers and the other of ruled. This should make it easier for
the group of oppressed white people to get close to the local people, for
their position is the same.
Our friends in Latin America, Asia and Africa are in the same position
as we and are doing the same kind of work, doing something for the people to
lessen their oppression by imperialism. If we do a good job, we can root out
imperialist oppression. In this we are comrades.
We are of the same nature as you in our opposition to imperialist
oppression, differing only in geographical position, nationality and
language. But we are different in nature from imperialism, and the very
sight of it makes us sick.
What use is imperialism? The Chinese people will have none of it, nor
will the people in the rest of the world. There is no reason for the
existence of imperialism.
Prepared � for the Internet by David J. Romagnolo, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(November 1999)
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