Hedging is the practice of taking a position in one market to offset and balance against the risk adopted by assuming a position in a contrary or opposing market or investment. The word hedge is from Old English hecg, originally any fence, living or artificial.
BEIJING -- Every morning, as many as 20,000 people flock to Tiananmen Square to join the vast queues of pilgrims, often stretching a kilometre long, at the entrance to the tomb of Mao Zedong. They stand for an hour or more, in blazing sun or winter cold, waiting patiently to pay their respects to the Great Helmsman. They place flowers at the foot of a Mao statue. They gaze reverentially at the chairman's crystal coffin, often bowing to the waxy corpse inside.
Mao Zedong's decision to take on the United States in the Korean War was a direct attempt to confront what the Communist bloc viewed as the strongest anti-Communist power in the world, undertaken at a time when the Chinese Communist regime was still consolidating its own power after winning the Chinese Civil War.