Reading Mao's biography(?) is so painful; how painful must have been life under him?

This is not the first time I am reading about Mao Zedong. Or about China.

China featured very prominently in Nehru's 'Glimpses of World History'. The so called 'Opium Wars' had vexed me then.

When the same wars were portrayed brilliantly in Amitav Ghosh's 'Sea of Poppies', I was further enthused to learn about them and the fate of China over the past few centuries.

Then came Pankaj Mishra's 'From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West'. That has coherent historical threads about the time when the old dynastic rule collapsed in China to give rise to a modern--albeit shaky--republican system.

Months back, I was reading Frank Dikotter's 'Mao's Great Famine'. Though I lost the book when I was midway through it, I'd got the message of the book well.

Mao was not normal human being. Most agree on this: for his supporters and admirers, he was THE GOD and for his detractors and critics, THE MONSTER, with the blood of highest number of human beings in history on his hand.

He had a zeal for power. Communists seem to believe that he ruled for the best of 'proletariat' and still rue the fact that power was taken by 'revisionists' after his death.

Xi's political reforms, divide and rule

News Analysis

By Francesco Sisci

China's leaders have anticipated the strongest opposition to their planned concentration of powers that will come from vested interests at the local level. That is why the judiciary, controlled by Beijing, has been given freer rein and a string of corruption trials can be expected to showcase President Xi Jinping's use of age-old divide and rule tactics.

Xi concentrates power and ends Deng's "crossing the river feeling the stones"

News analysis
By Francesco Sisci


Informed South Asians tend to have a day-to-day and even hour-to-hour updates of the developments in the West. Also, the liberal democracies in the west, even if not so, tend to project themselves as very transparent regimes. None of these, however, holds true in case of China and it is a sort of enigma for many in the region. While both admirers and bashers of China can be found, an objective assessment of the situation in China is rather infrequent to come by.

So what is China really up to? Where are the country and its rulers, the Communist Party heading? In this short but comprehensive column, Francesco Sisci sums up the latest developments in the wake of momentous decisions taken by the authorized body of the Chinese Communist party. He argues that the much needed reforms are now on right track as a result of decisive push by the new Party General Secretary and President Xi Jinping. 

Sino-Indian rivalry plays out in Nepal

For long Nepal has been dependent on India both politically and economically while maintainig stable relationship with China. The emerging realities of increasing Sino-Indian rivalry are making the balancing act of Nepal harder as the time passes.

While mocking the severe dependency of Nepal, particularly the politicians, to India and the Indian establishment, it is often joked that if it rains in Delhi, they open umbrella in Kathmandu.
While people keep debating whether particular government in Kathmandu is pro- or anti-Indian, the relationship between the two very dissimilar neighbors in South Asia remains highly complex and quite often veers towards trouble.
Nepal’s geographical proximity to India apart, the ‘dependency’ factor has become historic as the latest uninterrupted period of such relationship exists for almost two centuries by now. It was in the fateful Sugauli Treaty of 1815 that Nepal was forced to cede almost one third of its territory in the east, west and the south to the British India thereby also ensuring that the British would not encroach further north.
Ever since, regardless of the nature of regime in Kathmandu and the ups and downs in the formal political relations, the social and economic realities of the Indo-Nepal relationship have remained largely unchanged, with the low-productivity subsistence economy of Nepal being dependent on the industrializing Indian economy. After the Indian independence, the Indo-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1950 was signed, which galvanized the relationship between Nepal and independent India.
Even though the calls for amending or even scrapping the 1950 treaty are ccommon and occasionally become very loud in Nepal, the persistent economic dependence on India as a result of chronically under-performing economy and lack of clarity about alternative of that treaty has ensured that the treaty endures even though it can be scrapped unilaterally with a year’s time.