Simon Boyi Chen Profile picture
Sep 19, 2020 4 tweets 1 min read Read on X
“Are these peasants seriously going to eat all the sweet potatoes?”
A distinctive feature of communist operations in Chinese Civil War by 1948 was that novel, large-scale conventional-scale military operations were combined with mass mobilization and conscription of civilians /1
for logistic support—the latter referred to as “People’s War” in Mao Zedong’s parlance.
Before the outbreak of the Huaihai Campaign, Captain Guo, a company commander in 100th Army, 7th Corps, Republic of China Army, was conducting an inspection of civilian houses in a village. /2
In one dwelling, pulling back a cloth curtain, he stumbled upon a room chock-full of sweet potatoes, covering the entire floor.
He promptly reported the suspicious finding to his superior officers.
They scratched their heads. “These peasants in Shandong province, they all eat /3
sweet potatoes.“ Captain Guo was instructed to do nothing.
Idiots, he reflected many decades after the war: his superiors simply didn’t understand the psychology of how communists had operated.
Nor did most of the Republic of China Army understand, to their own detriment. /end

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Simon Boyi Chen

Simon Boyi Chen Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @simonbchen

Aug 29
Part of Vietnamese communism's veneration of Ho Chi Minh was the idea and myth that he was a lifelong celibate revolutionary, that he was involuntarily celibate owing to the necessary workmanlike toil on the sacred revolutionary path. But in fact, Ho Chi Minh did have a Cantonese
wife during his revolutionary career, although he soon abandoned her for furtherance of his revolutionary path. It can also be surmised that Ho Chi Minh probably had a conflicted and wistful attitude towards his involuntarily celibate status later on as a senior communist leader,
with his evident and visible thirst for companionship of female attendants famous among another foreign country's communist leaders and organizers receiving his frequent visitations to that foreign country. Why does Vietnamese communism actively deny and cover up Ho Chi Minh's
Read 6 tweets
Aug 14
Authoritarian ideologies that are the most effective at mass-mobilizing popular support are equivalent to secular religions. A religion can be a church, or a cult (although the two are definitely not mutually exclusive). A church is characterized by organizational discipline—
Party discipline, military discipline, thought discipline, behavioral discipline, all become core to the soul of the revolutionary movement and authoritarian regime ideology. A cult is characterized by irrational, devotional belief—the Party’s Supreme Leader being a living god,
a secular revolutionary equivalent of a Shinto national religion with the earth revolving around Emperor as the sun beaming off brilliant rays at the gravitational orbital center. A revolutionary movement can have elements of both church and cult—church’s ruthless organizational
Read 5 tweets
Jul 16
JD Vance rightfully earned his place as Trump's right-hand man and Vice President, because of his outstanding abilities, high intelligence, and public renown. Yet, exactly because of those same qualities, he is also a long-term threat to Trump's personal and familial dynastic
hold on power, a long-term strategic challenge to the orderly succession and continuity of power, privilege, and influence, from Trump to his familial dynastic successors. Whether Trump understands that he has truly invited a potential monster into his personal closet, or whether
he got giddy and enthused over JD Vance's impeccable credentials and energy like an American businessman roleplaying (cosplaying) an authoritarian dictator that he Trump is, isn't clear, although my suspicions lean towards the latter possibility. Furthermore, it is also precisely
Read 8 tweets
Apr 3
In Western highly-educated social elite upper-middle class society, many people live in fear of getting “canceled” for something wrong they said on Internet 5 years ago. But for an authoritarian dictator’s subordinates, having embarrassing compromising material about themselves
(“kompromat”) can ironically be a valuable, even necessary, asset for them to survive in the dictator’s regime, as a dictator sees a subordinate’s embarrassing “kompromat” as a political insurance policy to ensure that the subordinate will forever be meek and submissive, and not
become too overly ambitious as to try to sideline the dictator with his supreme and unsurpassable glory and prestige. A dictator’s subordinate who completely lacks such “kompromat” is ironically in a more politically insecure position in regime, because in that case the dictator
Read 5 tweets
Feb 25
One of most important adages in the East Asian communist revolutionary movement in 20th century is, "Who are our friends? Who are our enemies? That is the most important question of the revolution." One important and implicit corollary of this quote is that, in a revolutionary
framework, this consideration actually applies to both revolutionaries overthrowing a regime, and to the incumbent government regime, that is, developing an accurate intelligence picture of who are friends and who are enemies is of utmost importance to both revolutionaries and
government. In turn, this means that many revolutionary operators must actually stay concealed, and their true allegiance and beliefs carefully hidden, so as to deny their opponents (the government) an accurate intelligence picture of the situation. The strategic stupidity of the
Read 5 tweets
Feb 21
When an undercover revolutionary operative is captured by the counterintelligence or police forces of the governing regime, the most critical hours are the first few days or so after capture, since that's when his (or her) comrades would still be residing in their temporary safe-
houses of which the imprisoned operative knows of the addresses and locations. If the operative breaks down under interrogation, even the most brutal interrogation, during these golden critical hours, and discloses secrets, then he can put his revolutionary comrades in severe
jeopardy, and likewise the Party's retribution against that imprisoned revolutionary operative's associates or family members for operative's "crime" of leaking secrets may also be accordingly severe. After those critical hours have passed, the secrets harbored in the operative's
Read 9 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(