Sarah Paine — How Mao conquered China (lecture & interview)

Описание: In this episode, Prof Paine looks at Maoist China. How did Mao go from military genius to peacetime disaster? How did the patriotic hero inflict history’s worst catastrophe on China? How can someone shrewd enough to win a civil war outnumbered 5 to 1 make decisions like "let's have peasants make iron in their backyards" and "let's kill all the birds"? Lecture is followed by a Q&A with me. The first nationwide famine in Chinese history; Mao's lasting influence on other insurgencies; broken promises to Chinese minorities and the peasantry; what Taiwan means. Huge thanks to Substack for hosting this!

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Transcript: https://www.dwarkesh.com/sarah-paine-...
Spotify: http://spoti.fi/3APeQ3L
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

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Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale AI. Scale partners with the U.S. government to fuel America’s AI advantage through their data foundry. Scale recently introduced Defense Llama, Scale's latest solution available for military personnel. With Defense Llama, military personnel can harness the power of AI to plan military or intelligence operations and understand adversary vulnerabilities. If you’re interested in learning more on how Scale powers frontier AI capabilities, go to https://scale.com/dwarkesh.

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"The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949" https://www.amazon.com/Wars-Asia-1911...

"The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War" https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Empir...

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00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:47 - Disclaimer
00:03:13 - Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Thayer Mahan, Corbett
00:09:31 - The 1911 Revolution and the Civil War
00:14:27 - Clausewitz on Mao
00:15:47 - Mao the propagandist
00:24:35 - Mao the social scientist
00:29:51 - Mao the military leader
00:40:17 - Mao the feminist
00:49:34 - Mao the grand strategist
00:58:12 - Yin and Yang analysis
01:02:14 - Q&A begins
01:05:16 - Why was Mao worse than Stalin?
01:11:42 - Yalta satisfied no-one
01:14:50 - Corrupt allies, ideologue enemies
01:16:29 - US indifference to the Nationalists
01:25:35 - Imagining a Nationalist mainland
01:28:21 - Communists cling to power
01:32:02 - Xi and Mao
01:38:13 - Making victims victimize themselves
01:42:15 - Journalists' naivete
01:46:16 - Visiting China then and now