this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2025
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Pretty incredible that they managed to turn him into a human. It's so much easier to think of enemies as evil that can't be reformed.
The KMT would have killed him after a show trial for sure and in many ways that's what he deserved.
I think the correct communist line is that the idea of someone "deserving" punishment or death is idealist nonsense, and it's better for society to have rehabilitative justice for everyone if you have a stable enough situation and enough resources to enact such a thing (but obviously even summary executions may be necessary in an unstable revolutionary context, just not because of what people "deserve").
"You weren't responsible for becoming Emperor at the age of three or the 1917 attempted restoration coup. But you were fully to blame for what happened later. You knew perfectly well what you were doing when you took refuge in the Legation Quarter, when you traveled under Japanese protection to Tianjin, and when you agreed to become Manchukuo Chief Executive."
It is remarkable that Puyi's only objection to this statement by Zhou Enlai was to state that he had acted monstrously while a child emperor.
In that sense Puyi might be the first and only war criminal and dictator who was too hard on himself. (At least in some aspects)
tbf he was also really sadistic as a child and that might have been the first time in his life that he was prompted to take ownership of those sorts of actions.
He was a complete shit who made adults around him literally eat dirt. Those adults also at various points plotted to murder him and were the people whose responsibility included raising him. The only non eunuchs in his court whom he could not order around the same way refused to see him and engaged in weird courtly games around his behavior, including the senior female courtier forcing Puyi's mother to commit suicide when he misbehaved.
There was no way he was going to come out of this undamaged, and none of the people responsible took ownership of that. He was the sole person to take any ownership of the fact that he wasn't raised right, and he blamed himself as a toddler and pre-teen.
fuck