Banana Skin

I'm wearing banana skin socks. Tally-ho!

The Little Red Book

Quickly after 1949,

Nationalists in Taiwan (Chiang, etc.)
achieved American modernization,
in partial response to Mainland pressure,
but never a popular will (often
decried as forced adherence)
like that generated by the iconic Mao.

Paranoia drove Mainland politics.

The Sparrow Campaign,
back-yard steel, endless searches
for Capitalist Roaders led
to several touted leaps forward
until distinctions between success & failure,
blurred by physical or psychological violence,
vanished without memory.
Then The Bomb.

Mao fattened on the world stage.

Nationalists fattened on western tits.
The Cold War kept things even
until the bloated, rotten-toothed dictator
tired of foreign policy & again looked in.
Unquestionably, the counterrevolution
he saw, to his mind, existed as China’s
most serious problem, inflaming The Chairman,
who in 1966 leapt forward & unleashed
the fury of The Gang of Four.

Led by Chang Qing, the group’s

most influential member, a former actress,
& wife to Chairman Mao, The Gang
instituted Red Terror, later called
The Cultural Revolution, to root out
counter-revolutionary & black gang ideology.
For a full ten years unsubstantiated exploits
carried out by cadres of intellectual enemies
terrified the 12% of the population
able to read The People’s Daily propaganda.

After interviews conducted by a
Central Case Examination Group,
cadre leaders, followers, & associates
faced public humiliation & execution
or banishment & forced physical labor.
In 69 education stopped, thereby
achieving The Gang’s ultimate goal,
turning themselves into state deities.
Even Kissinger ass-kissed The Chairman,
once insinuating Mao’s stature
to be as eventful as God’s.

Mao the merciful died in 76.

The new government arrested The Gang
& began to resolve the chaos.
Normalization of Sino/US relations
followed recognition by the Carter
Administration in 79, & presaged the current
Great Leap into the free market by building
an industrial manufacturing base
on the world’s largest labor force,
creating a major economic player.

Since the British ceded Hong Kong,

can Taiwan be far behind?
Economic power breeds military force.
Material & technological modernization
points to a struggle or shift in the Pacific.
Will Hawaii again pivot the line between
US interests & another Asian problem?