Bo and and the chinese civil war

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 As seen in ‘the best we could do’ with Vietnam,  many previously colonial colonies were split against each other and fought in proxy wars during The Cold War, these proxy wars lead to many detrimental Effects Within these post colonial society. Vietnam was far from the only nation affected, the geopolitical struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union started indirect conflicts as proxy wars (where instead of fighting directly, they would split the nations into delegates and have them fight on there part) this was done to many countries across the globe a good example is what happened  in post-colonial China 


in China, the post World War II power vacuum caused by the defeat of Japan started a civil war between the two pre-existing militarist groups: the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) led by Chiang Kai-shek (advocating for a capitalist/nationalist China) and the Communist Party of China (CPC) led by Mao Zedong (advocating for a communist/agrarian China). The division and rivalry of these two groups exist due to the foreign influences of the US and the USSR. The war between these 2 sides caused immense suffering and displacement of the Chinese, forcing millions to flee their homes, compounding the trauma of years of Japanese occupation. This has a lot of similarities with what occurred in ‘the best we could do’ where the Vietnamese people faced a similar cycle of displacement and colonization, this parallels to Bo's life and how he was similarly abused by the French colonial system, and had his life competely torn apart due to communist v. capitalist division that was sponsored by foreign powers.
 



 

Comments

  1. Berry’s BlogDecember 7, 2025 at 2:05 PM

    I really liked that you connected what happened in the book to similar situations in other places. I also think that it was very interesting that you chose China as most people would tend to think of Korea before China but this was very insightful.

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