# Humanities & Anthropology > History & Civilisations >  Who do you think are the greatest Asians in history?

## Zauriel

Dr. Jose Rizal (Philippines)- the national hero of the Philippines and a martyr who fought hard for his people's rights before Mahatma Gandhi was born. 

Mahatma Gandhi (India) 

Sun Tze (China)- a military philosopher and author of The Art of War.

Sun Yat-sen (China)-the first provisional president of the Republic of China. 

Confucius (China)- a philospher

Emperor Meiji (Japan)- symbolic leader of the Meiji Restoration that spearheaded the modernization of Japan

Genghis Khan (Mongolia)- one of the history's greatest conquerors. 

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (Japan)- Japan's greatest naval strategist and is also considered as Japanese equivalent to Robert E. Lee, because he was being a reluctant but dutiful soldier who passively disagreed with his government's war with U.S.

Bruce Lee (Hong Kong)- an B-movie actor who is considered "father of mixed martial arts" and is arguably responsible for popularity of martial arts movie genre.

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## Zauriel

More nominations: 

Mustafa Kemal Atat&#252;rk (Turkey)- father of modern Turkey and the first President of the Republic of Turkey, who made Turkey the only country to resist the imposition of the unfair treaty by World War I victors.

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## Silverbackman

I assume we are talking about the entire Asian region. In that case there too many to post here ;). To name a few not mentioned;

*Adi Shankara*: Major Indian philosopher who preached a major monistic or 'advaita' philosophy. He defeated nearly all Buddhist and Nihilist philosophers and brought Hinduism back to India back when it was dominated with Buddhism.

*Cyrus the Great*: Created the first superpower empire in the Southern World that dominated the earlier ancient world.

*Qin Shi Huang*: Started the long and power Chinese Empire, a dominate power in history in both the Eastern World (East Asia) and the world. His empires would create the one of the most technologically advanced civilizations of pre-modern times (and was still a world power up till 1800 CE).

*Mohammed*: Created the Islamic Faith.

*Siddhartha Gautama*: Founder of Buddhism, a major world religion.

*Salahuddin*: Powerful Muslim warrior and defender of the Muslim lands during the crusades.

*Lao Tsu*: Founder of Taoism, a major eastern "religious" philosophy.
And many many more ;). I honestly think we should pick a particular region. Asians make up the majority of the world.

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## Silverbackman

If I was to choose one maybe Ghengis Kahn.

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## galychanyn

My choice: Genghis Khan (Mongolia)- one of the history's greatest conquerors.

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## Matiasu

I think the most interesting person is Emperor Meiji, but Buddha takes the price.

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## Yorkie

Definately the owner of 'Stevie's' Chinese Take-Away on the Isle of Skye.

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## Maciamo

Zauriel seems to have started the thread having East Asians in mind, not all Asians as far as the Near East. But as the thread evolved taking on all Asia, let's.

As for defining what "greatest" means, it could be the most influential, most famous, or most respected in general, trying to estimate in an objective way the overall sentiments worldwide. But it is more interesting in this kind of threads to simply choose the people that one respects or admires the most personally, even if they aren't that famous. In the first case, I would list people like Cyrus the Great, Jesus, Mohammed, Genghis Khan or Mao Zedong. But there is no way I would choose them as people I personally admire because of all the suffering and deaths they have brought onto millions or billions of people.

Giving my personal favourites is a very difficult task though.For example, to take one of my favourite periods in Japanese history, as much as I admire the fast-paced reforms and assimilation of Western science and knowledge in Japan during the reign of Emperor Meiji, he was just the ruler who supervised this revolution, not the mastermind or even initiator of the reforms. It would be tedious to analyse all the personality and deeds of all the politicians and visionaries that made the Meiji Revolution possible (e.g. Ito Hirobumi, Okuma Shigenobu or Okubo Toshimichi). And that is for the country I know the best in Asia. So for the time being I will just refrain from making my list of greatest Asians. I don't have enough free time these days to think this through.

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## DavidRojer

I think that Mustafa Kamal and Bruce Lee was the greatest in Asia.Both were not hippo-crates and were patriotic.Once ruled over people and second ruled in the heart of people.

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## Yetos

*Mahatma Gandhi,* 



he teach us the non violence revolt, 
or how to fight the state and the bankers 

just do not buy their products and don't deposit them your money, 
soon they leave you.

*The SALT MARCH*

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## Hal Fao

> *Mahatma Gandhi,* 
> 
> 
> 
> he teach us the non violence revolt, 
> or how to fight the state and the bankers 
> 
> just do not buy their products and don't deposit them your money, 
> soon they leave you.
> ...


To fight the bankers and the state?!
You can choose your bank and deposit your money there, but you can not fight against "the bank"!
You can select the political party to vote for, but you can not fight against the state and "party system".
Otherwise, you will destruct your nation!

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## Yetos

> To fight the bankers and the state?!
> You can choose your bank and deposit your money there, but you can not fight against "the bank"!
> You can select the political party to vote for, but you can not fight against the state and "party system".
> Otherwise, you will destruct your nation!


 :Laughing: 

Believe me, 4 years I have no deposit in no bank, 
When I took them people look at me strange, 
today more and more people take their money, 
I will allow any foreign Chief Banker to use my money against me, or my nation or my country

Fighting the Banks is the ultimate weapon to solve crisis that Banks create, 

Political parties are to give solutions, and express ideas on how problems must be solved, Justice be done etc,
Political parties must obey the people's choice, 
the difference is modern political parties are Just Armies of one man, 
It is bad time for democracy cause like at the end of Roman empire people vote someone just to find them 6 months to work or even for 50E, as in old senate elections with a wheat of grain, 
Globalization is like mare nostrum and pax romana, no matter who you are if you have gold YOU CAN BUY ROMAN CITIZEN ID, if you pay money to people you can be elected, 
soon a new religion is coming, as early Christianity, with fanatics who destroy all the system,

Gandhi teach us the way of non violence, 
if you don't like him, put your money to a bank, 
buy a gun and start killing the innocent who do not accept your life system proposal, 
When you realise what mean Bankers TRUST it will be to late,

simply find new methods of earning money, from the typical interest which slowly turns you to a poor every day, 

The ultimate protest against British empire was I can make salt, so British I do not care about your monopoly 
the ultimate protest against crisis is I do not deposit my money, 
the ultimate protest against another country is I do not buy their products, 
soon they will leave to find another nation to drain its blood,

and since you are a neighbor, 
why 30% of modern sales of silver in Europe is from ALbania, and yet Albania's economy is still based on immigrants money transfer?
simply the more you support the Bankers the more you support the silver monopoly, the more you support the monopoly the more poverty you get,
the more you get the more nation is weak and poor,
the more poor the nation the more political parties becomes armies, the more political army the more hiden agreements with bankers, the more agreements with bankers the more power they get to drain your life and make you more poor,

it is a chain, find the circle link to break to stop crisis,

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## Hal Fao

In Augustof this year I was on vacation in Greece for only ten days.I've been in Greece before 20 years and changes (regressive) were great.
The nowadays economic system (also political) is not perfect, as human nature itself (I agree withyou on this point), but we can not destroy our current systems.
Or,ok, let them perish. And, how would we go further?
Ideal systems we can not apply because we are not ideal ourselfs.
Hence, my dear friend, the systems are just "necessary evils"!
We have started our way out of the jungle, and as we move forward towards perfection, should make greater attention to the way we choose, not to lead us to the departure point!

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## LeBrok

I agree Hal Fao, we have pretty good systems these days and they work for us well. It is hard to make people happy and as you said the imperfect people are screwing things up. Just compare your life to life's of your ancestors 100 or 200 years ago, and you'll see the dramatic changes that came together with systems that we embrace, especially economic and education system.

I have to agree somewhat with Yetos, in general, on some aspects of banking system. If it comes to retail (personal/small business) banking the competition is not there. Once you have few accounts, mortgage, loans, investments it becomes very cumbersome process to change banks. Banks know that and they charge fees upon fees upon fees, and they don't care much about old customers. For god sake, we are doing now the job of clerks, banking on our computers and ATMs , but the fees are higher now than before banks had computers and had to rely only on work of people. We know that computers and automation is much cheaper than human labour, so it is obvious that we are being ripped off.
1. In this department we need a government regulation to make switching banks easier. It should be mandated to banks that by our request, all our data from one bank should be sand to new one of our choice, with few stokes of keys. Simple like that. It would increase competition in retail banking and benefited all of us. 
2. Also one coherent website should be created where citizens can compare services of all financial institutions available in the area.
3. MC and Visa monopoly should end, allowing other interested creditors to freely compete with same accessibility in all Points Of Sale (POS), benefited not only customers but also businesses. All businesses accepting MC or Visa are paying about 3% of sales to these credit cards. If not ridiculous it is simply monopolistic excessive gauging.

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## MobyD

> My choice: Genghis Khan (Mongolia)- one of the history's greatest conquerors.


He played an integral role in the unification of Eurasia and took down an empire. However you look at it, this was certainly a remarkable achievement.

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