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PLA
Daily 2003-12-25
SHANGHAI,
Dec. 24 (Xinhuanet) -- Many foreigners have learned
more through their personal experience of the influence
of late Chairman Mao Zedong on economic and social
development in modern China.
Gerhard
Wahl, a German maglev expert, said China's current economic
success was an invaluable legacy from Chairman Mao and
other late Chinese leaders.
Wahl,
a 64-year-old expert from Germany's Siemens AG, has
served as the chief German coordinator for the construction
of the maglev line in Shanghai, which is soon to go
into operation following a one-year trial.
"I
heard of Mao as earlier as I was a middle school student,
but I know more about Mao and China during my recent
three-year work in China," Wahl said.
Wahl
said that he knows little about Mao's political thought
but he regarded Mao as a man of "integrity, strong will
and fearless of difficulty."
He
valued Mao's dauntless spirit that is critical important
for a nation and a country as well, saying that the
spirit could not be discarded and ignored.
Masaharu
Yamasaki, a 52-year-old Japanese, said Mao still has
influence in the socialist country.
The
Communist Party of China committees maintain the core
leadership in provinces, autonomous regions and cities
across the country and key job positions are held by
Party members, said the general manager of the Shanghai
International Trade Center Company, jointly funded by
China and Japan.
Fifty-six-year-old
Takashi Numa, another Japanese who says he knows more
than other "China experts" about China for working 12
years in China, said "Mao was a hero in the war field
more than 30 years ago, but the "Cultural Revolution"
(1966-1976) initiated by him in his later years led
to dramatic setback of national economy and living standard
of the people.
"Anyway,
Mao was a great man because he led the Chinese people
to drive away foreign colonists and set the country
free from long-term colonial control."
Any
country deserves credit for insisting on its own position
and stand on the international arena and establishing
equal relations with other countries, he said.
Mao
(December 1893-September 1976) headed China's first-generation
central leadership after the People's Republic of China
was founded in 1949. |
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