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From: "Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu at mindspring.com>
Professor DeLong, I suppose, quotes Lin Biao (out of context, I may add) to prove that he, DeLong , is not the only one afflicted with blind fixation on Mao. So let me return the honor with a quote from an Ameerican president.
First, let me describe the historical context:
The Chinese populace has always been conditioned to associate power with godliness. Even as late as the 1850's, a revolt against the Qing dynasty, known in history as the Taiping Rebellion, would be led by a self-proclaimed Son of God. The Taiping Rebellion leader, Hong Xiuquan (1814-64) who, under the influence of Christian missionaries, including an Anglican, Robert Morrison, and an American Baptist, the Rev. I.J. Roberts, after a hallucinatory fever during which Hong Xiuquan would apparently experience a runaway Pauline vision, would claim to be the 2nd son of the Judea-Christian God and brother of Jesus Christ.
Hong Xiuquan would successfully control, for almost 15 years, the Yangtze Valley, the most fertile part of the Qing empire (1644-1911). Having established the Peace Heaven Kingdom (Taiping Tianguo), Hong Xiuquan would proclaim the Ten Commandments that Moses had allegedly received from the Judea-Christian God on Mount Sinai as constitution for his new Peace Heaven Kingdom and, amid other social and land reforms, would introduce a new solar calendar with a 366-day-year.
The success of Hong Xiuquan, the self-proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ, would prompt President Franklin Pierce of the United States, in his message to Congress on December 5, 1853, to report euphorically but prematurely, on the political prospect of the Peace Heaven Kingdom (Taiping Tiangou): "The condition in China at this time renders it probable that some important changes will occur in that vast empire which will lead to a more unrestricted intercourse with it."
It would not be the last unfulfilled prediction about China by an American President.
Hong Xiuquan's Taiping Rebellion would be put down in 1865 by Zeng Kuofan, the Qing dynasty general, with the help of American mercenary Frederick Townsend Ward (1831-1862) who would arrive in Shanghai in 1859. After a few victorious battles, F.T. Ward would have himself killed in action 3 years later by rebel forces.
F.T Ward's Fourth Rank (Si'pin) post and the command of the mercenary Ever Victorious Army (Changsheng Jun) would be taken over in 1863 by Charles S. Gordon, known as Chinese Gordon, a British mercenary who had made a name for himself by defeating the ineffective Qing dynasty army in the sacking of Peking by British and French troops 3 years earlier, in 1860.
The saga of Chinese Gordon is as weird as if General Norman Schwartzkopf were hired by Saddam Hussein 3 years after the Persian Gulf War to help suppress revolts by Islamic fundamentalists in defeated Iraq.
Historians on this list would appreciate that historical facts are more intriguing than ideological postures.
Henry C.K. Liu