Paper tiger

Under a paper tiger refers to a be powerful or influential imaging individual, an organization or documents which on closer inspection in fact no meaning or power have, or to become self- impotent, but this can be partly recognized only after a longer time of observation.

In politics, authorities or international organizations are often referred to as a paper tiger that no longer reach due to red tape to results, but only pretend to want to achieve a result. Furthermore, for example, technical articles are referred to as paper tigers, which have in a literal sense "on paper " a performance that they can not afford real for several reasons.

Term was coined by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China. In his The words of Chairman Mao, the paper tiger is mentioned as follows: "Imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers. " (一切 反动派 都是 纸老虎Yīqiè fǎndòngpài Dou shì zhǐ lǎohǔ. . )

" Just as there is nothing in the world that would not have a dual nature ( that's just the law of unity of opposites ), so imperialism and all reactionaries also have a dual nature: they are real tigers and paper tigers at the same time. (...) On the one hand they are real tigers that eat people, millions and destroy millions of lives. The struggle of the people is a time full of difficulties and hardships throughout his journey full of twists and turns. The Chinese people needed to liquidate the rule of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism of China, more than a hundred years, and tens of millions of people lost their lives, before in 1949, the victory was won. You see, were not living tigers, iron tigers hard, real tiger? But in the end they have turned into paper tigers, dead tigers in in buttery soft tiger. These are historical facts. One has for all this is not seen and heard? Truly a thousand upon thousands of times! In thousands and tens of thousands of cases! Thus one must by its very nature, from a long perspective, in strategic terms, imperialism and all reactionaries than looking at what they really are: a paper tiger. We must base our strategic thinking. On the other hand, they are once again lively, hard as iron, real tiger can eat the people. We must base our tactical thinking. "