What Makes a Chinese Super Tyrant Invincible?

First, like Mao, a super tyrant is popular due to his charisma and creativeness in developing a false but popular theory and propaganda to deceive people. However, those were only the tricks to cheat common people whose wisdom was far inferior to a super tyrant’s.

The real issue is how he is able to subdue the high officials and generals. Take Mao for example, how could he be so successful in purging those high officials and generals who opposed his campaigns for excessive growth rate and Cultural Revolution? In addition, how is he able to make the leaders of superpowers regard him as a real tiger when China was in fact a very poor and weak country and was in chaos during the Cultural Revolution?

In their memoirs, Lin Biao’s close assistants believed that China was lucky so that it was not attacked by another country when Chinese troops were in chaos in 1967. However, it was also because there were no talented statesmen in other countries at that time.

When I was unemployed in China during the Cultural Revolution, I discussed with some talented intellectuals of the new generation mentioned in my book the question of how Mao could be removed. They said that judging by what Mao had done, Mao was a master of Han Fei Tsu’s art for being an emperor.

During the Warring State Period (475-221 BC), the sovereign power in quite a few states was usurped by powerful courtiers. Han Fei-tzu, a Legalist master, wrote a book Han Fei-tzu to teach sovereigns of state the art for being an emperor. He taught sovereigns to govern his subjects by law and control his officials by awe, power, tricks and intrigues. He gives the advice in his book that a sovereign must keep a distance from everyone including his family members, relatives and officials and trust no one.

Qin Shihuang praised the book highly and adopted Han Fei-tzu’s ways to maintain solid control of his empire. He followed closely Han’s advices and trusted no one. He killed his natural father Lu Buwei when Lu grew too powerful and sent his son Prince Fusu far away from him to be in charge of border defense.

Mao also trusted no one. Both Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao he purged were his closest friends.

Mao’s mastery of such a sophisticated art for being an emperor and in addition his charisma and creativeness in developing ideas and propaganda to make quite a few people his mad followers made it even more difficult to remove him unless he made a mistake.

Mao did make the mistake in removing Luo Ruiqing, Mao’s loyal four-star general who he appointed as PLA chief of general staff as a balancing force to prevent Lin Biao’s full control of the PLA. However, he made the mistake knowingly as he was in desperate need of Lin Biao’s support in carrying out his Cultural Revolution to purge Liu Shaoqi and his supporters. It is common sense for a sovereign that he shall never allow any one to have full control of his troops.

However, Mao was lucky that Lin was a Confucianist loyal to him and did not use the PLA to carry out a coup to remove Mao. The well-known plan to assassinate Mao was Lin’s son’s childish plan. If Lin, the well-known gifted marshal, had wanted to remove Mao before Mao played the trick to remove Lin, Mao would have been Lin’s prisoner.

Mao was not only a master of Han’s art for being an emperor, but also knew Chinese history well. Faced with Soviet threat of armed invasion when he had remove Lin Biao and could not control the PLA, he adopted Fan Sui’s well-known strategy of “allying with remote states while attacking neighboring ones” to obtain support fromAmerica. (Fan Sui was a well-known strategist who taught the sovereign of the State ofQinthat strategy and thus enabled Qin Shihuang to reunify China.)

My talented friends said that since Mao had cleverly avoided the consequence of his mistake, we could only wait for his death. They said that there was a serious succession problem in Han Fei-tzu’s art for being an emperor. As a sovereign is not close to any one and trusts no one, when he dies, there will be no powerful loyal courtiers to ensure smooth succession.

Qin Shihuang’s chosen successor Prince Fusu could not succeed him. So will Mao’s chosen successor, according to them.

From the above we can see that when a super tyrant has established his rule, due to his perfect mastery of Han Fee-tzu’s art for being emperor, good knowledge of all the accumulated strategies, tactics, tricks and intrigues in Chinese history, charisma and creativeness, he is invincible in his country.

Powerful other countries may remove him when he has not soundly established his power, but there is no superhero there to remove him in order to prevent the disasters he may bring to the world.

For example, when Hitler began his militarization of Germany in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, there was no superhero in Britain, France or any other country to take action to remove Hitler or even to build enough airplanes and tanks to counter German force. Hitler’s ambition to revenge was already very clear in his book “My Struggle”. Why werre world leaders so stupid?

When America was very clear of Bin Laden’s terrorist activities, why President Bush and his high officials repeatedly ignored the warning from the officials in charge of national security? Why was America unable to remove Bin Laden before 911?

In our present world, super tyrants are invincible while superhero is an endangered species.