MAO TSE TUNG

EARLY LIFE

• Mao Zedong was born on December 26, 1893, in Shaoshan village, Hunan Province, China. His father, Mao Yichang, was a formerly impoverished peasant who had become one of the wealthiest farmers in Shaoshan.
• Mao childhood was not very easy and was often beaten by his ill tempered father. Mao’s mother, Wen Qimei, was a devout Buddhist.
• At age 8, Mao was sent to Shaoshan Primary School. Learning the value systems of Confucianism, By age 13, he was working full-time in the fields, growing increasingly restless and ambitious.
• At the age of 14, Mao Tse-tung’s father arranged a marriage for him, but he never accepted it becoming a fierce critic of arranged marriage and temporarily moving away.

• He became a voracious reader and read while working on farms. developed a “political consciousness” from Zheng Guanying booklet which lamented the deterioration of Chinese power and argued for the adoption of representative democracy.
• Interested in history, Mao was inspired by the military prowess and nationalistic fervour of George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte.
• Mao supported the protesters’ demands, but the armed forces suppressed the dissenters and executed their leaders.The famine spread to Shaoshan, where starving peasants seized his father’s grain.
• He disapproved of their actions as morally wrong, but claimed sympathy for their situation. At age 16, Mao moved to a higher primary school in nearby Dongshan, where he was bullied for his peasant background.

THE RISING BOYHOOD

• In 1911, Mao began middle school in Changsha.Revolutionary sentiment
was strong in the city, where there was widespread animosity towards
Emperor Puyi’s absolute monarchy and many were advocating
republicanism.
• He was a drop out from the schools and mainly studied independently. He
was inspired by Friedrich Paulsen, whose liberal emphasis on individualism led Mao to believe that strong individuals were not bound by moral codes but should strive for the greater good.

BOYHOOD

• In 1918, Mao Tse-tung graduated from the Hunan First Normal School, becoming a certified teacher. That same year, his mother died, and he had no desire to return home.
• He finally found a position as a librarian assistant at Beijing University and attended a few classes. At about this time, he heard of the successful Russian Revolution, which established the communist Soviet Union. In 1921, he became one of the inaugural members of the Chinese Communist Party.
• The Communist Party of China was founded by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao. The first session of the National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1921. was attended by 13 delegates, Mao included.
• In 1923, Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen began a policy of active cooperation with the Chinese Communists, who had grown in strength and number. Mao Tse-tung had supported both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.

JOURNEY STARTS

• Over the next few years, he adopted Leninist ideas and believed that appealing to the farming peasants was the key to establishing communism in Asia.In March 1925, Chinese President Sun Yat-sen died, and his successor, Chiang Kai-shek, became the chairman of the Kuomintang.
• Unlike Sun Yat-sen, Chiang was more conservative and traditional. In April 1927, he broke the alliance and began a violent purge of the Communists, imprisoning or killing many.

• Mao helped establish the Soviet Republic of China in the mountainous area of Jiangxi and was elected chairman of the small republic. He developed a small but strong army of guerilla fighters.
• Chiang Kai-shek was getting nervous about their success and growing numbers and as a result civil war broke out and thousands of communist were killed in this uprising.
• The CPC founded the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army of China, better known as the “Red Army”, to battle Chiang. A battalion led by General Zhu De was ordered to take the city of Nanchang on August 1, 1927, in what became known as the Nanchang Uprising.
• In 1934 more than 100,000 Communists and their dependents trekked west and north in what became known as the “Long March” across the Chinese mountains and swampland to Yanan, in northern China. It was estimated that only 30,000 of the original 100,000 survived the
8,000-mile journey.

STRUGGLE FOR POWER AND LONG MARCH

• In July 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army invaded China KNOWN AS RAPES OF NANKING, forcing Chiang Kai-shek to flee the capital in Nanking. Chiang’s forces soon lost control of the coastal regions and most of the major cities.
• Unable to fight a war on two fronts, Chiang reached out to the Communists for a truce and support. During this time, Mao established himself as a military leader and, with aid from Allied forces, helped fight the Japanese.

• With the Japanese defeat in 1945, Mao Tse-tung was able to set his sights on controlling all of China. Efforts were made — by the United States in particular to establish a coalition government, but China slid into a bloody civil war.
• On October 1, 1949, in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, Mao announced the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. Chiang Kai-shek and his followers fled to the island of Taiwan, where they formed the Republic of China. It was the culmination of over two decades of civil and international wars.
• In October 1950, Mao made the decision to send the People’s Volunteer Army (PVA), a special unit of the People’s Liberation Army, into the war in Korea and fight as well as to reinforce the armed forces of North Korea.
• Mao gave rights to women and also told them to seize the land from their landlords resulting deaths of thousands.PEOPLE WERE THE MASTERS.
• He didn’t have a very good relation with US also.He also launched propaganda campaign that “resist America and help Korea’ in korean war(1952) which helped him immensely.
• Communist crushed all the political oppositions and also laid a great emphasis to industry building.In 1953 he formed cooperative which proved very beneficial but upcoming years was not easy at all.

SKIRMISHES

• During the land reform, a significant numbers of landlords and well-to-do peasants were beaten to death at mass meetings organised by the Communist Party as land was taken from them and given to poorer peasants, which significantly reduced economic inequality.
• Mao himself claimed that a total of 700,000 people were killed in attacks on “counter-revolutionaries” during the years 1950–1952.In addition, at least 1.5 million people,perhaps as many as 4 to 6 million,were sent to “reform through labour” camps where many perished.
• Mao played a personal role in organizing the mass repressions and established a system of execution quotas, which were often exceeded. He defended these killings as necessary for the securing of power.
• Following the consolidation of power, Mao launched the First Five-Year Plan (1953–1958). The plan aimed to end Chinese dependence upon agriculture in order to become a world power.

• In January 1958, Mao Tse-tung launched the “Great Leap Forward,” attempting to increase agricultural and industrial production. The program established large agricultural communes with as many as 75,000 people working the fields.

• He also launched collectivisation of lands where private property is abolished and all lands were in government control.
• Many died due to this.China also faced the greatest famine in history which caused deaths of millions.Government reported that this is due to floods and drought but many believed that this was  due to Mao policies.

THE FALLOUT

• International relations were also at stake.Russia broke out his relations due to Taiwan bombings.Tibet issue was also there in which Chinese army suppressed the protest brutally.
• He ordered everyone to build the steel for industry and ordered the people to work day and night but the steel was of poor quality and soon his policies were not working at all.
• State also took the grain forcibly from the farmers and the government of the people was no longer their government.
• Within a year, an appalling famine set in and entire villages died of starvation. In the worst manmade famine in human history, an estimated 40 million people died of hunger between 1959 and 1961. It became clear that Mao knew how to organize a revolution, but was totally inept at running a country.
• In 1962 Mao Tse-tung was quietly pushed to the sidelines and his rivals took control of the country. For the first time in 25 years, Mao was not a central figure in leadership.

• Whatever the cause of the disaster, Mao lost esteem among many of the
top party cadres, was eventually forced to abandon the policy in 1962, and lost political power to moderate leaders such as Liu Shaoqi and  Deng Xiaoping.
• These were quite years for Mao but after that he rose to power again.He started attacking the party as a strategy by words.
• He started cultural revolution which was his greatest tactics.Mao reorganised the party and liu(later died due to isolation) and Den Xiaoing(later sent to exile) was demoted.
• He instigated college students and they formed the own army called Red Guards and attacked everyone brutally who was against Mao.

CULTURAL REVOLUTION

• The Cultural Revolution led to the destruction of much of China’s traditional cultural heritage and the imprisonment of a huge number of Chinese citizens, as well as the creation of general economic and social chaos in the country.
• It was a pure dictatorship and the most disappointing was small children were taking part in it.Some people use to enjoy beating and torturing
• In 1969, Mao declared the Cultural Revolution to be over, although various historians in and outside of China mark the end of the Cultural Revolution
• An estimate of around 400,000 deaths is a widely accepted minimum.
• In 1972, to further solidify his place in Chinese history, Mao Tse Tung met with United States President Richard Nixon, a gesture that eased tensions between the two countries.
• Officially, in China, he is held in high regard as a great political strategist and military mastermind, the savior of the nation.
• Smoking may have played an important role in his declining health, for Mao was a heavy smoker.
• Mao Tse-tung died from complications of Parkinson’s disease on September 9, 1976, at the age of 82, in Beijing, China. He left a controversial legacy in both China and the West as a genocidal monster and political genius.