Debate on Mao's Historical Assessment

Well, welcome to Uncensored, Professor Gao.

Um, we just heard Victor Davis Hanson, one of America's, uh, foremost

historians condemning, uh, Mao.

Um, explain to, uh, my audience why you think that

Mao has been unfairly assessed by history.

Uh, thank you for having me. Yes, uh, perhaps,

uh, first of all I might ask, uh, uh, Mi- uh, Mr.

Hanson, have you been to China?

No.

No.

Um, you're not a historian of China, you-

Have, have you been to Gre- have you been, have you been to Greece?

No, no, no. We're not talking about Greece.

No.

We're talking about Mao.

No, we're talking about West- Western civili- I'm talking about Western

civilizations.

Yeah. No, no, no. I'm talking about Mao. I'm talking about Mao.

I don't think you have the-

Well, we're talking about both

... legitimacy. I don't think you have the qualification

to talk

about Mao and, uh, and, and, and, and China.

Oh, yeah. I don't think I'd have been given a visa.

Because you're not historian on China, and then you don't have been to-

Yeah, I don't think I'd be given a visa

... have not been to China.

Have you been to the moon or can you-

So now, having said that-

Have you been to the moon? Can you talk about astronomy-

Having said that-

... if you haven't been to the moon?

You're absurd.

No, s- I, no, you're not-

You're an absurd

... talking sense. But anyway, let's, let, let me start asking, uh,

answering, um, uh, uh, uh, Piers Morgan's

question. Uh, why do I think,

uh, Mao, uh, uh, is a great

leader of China and changed China, and the

Chinese people think that as well?

Uh, and, and th- this is, is interesting because this is the f-

uh, uh, fifth,

50th anniversary of the death of Mao.

And if you look at

how the Chinese think,

uh, both inside the Chinese Communist Party

and outside and

ordinary people,

and, uh, and the anecdotal evidence plus, uh, uh,

comprehensive research, rigorous research

demonstrate that,

uh, Mao I- is the, is the founder of the People's Republic of

China, and without him there would not be a

success

of the 1949

Chinese revolution. And China is, as it is today,

is due to largely his leadership.

So now you're talking about, I mean,

Piers Morgan mentioned this, which is a cliche,

that Mao was the greatest,

uh, butcher, uh, in the world like Stalin and Hitler.

This is a cliche. It's a total cliche.

I don't think, I don't know why you're-

But it's a fact

... you're still repeating it. No, it's not. It's not.

No, it's a fact.

He was responsible.

No, it's not.

He was responsible.

Yes, there is, there's huge-

Mao was responsible-

There's huge-

... for the deaths of up to-

No

... 80 million people.

No. He's not