When you turn the pages of Chinese history, one name that stands out for both good and bad reasons is Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong, known as China’s most divisive character, was a Chinese communist revolutionary, politician, and socio-political theorist. He was the founder of the People’s Republic of China, and he transformed the country into a single-party socialist state, nationalizing industry and enterprise and implementing socialist reforms across the board. Until his death, he ruled China as Chairman of the Communist Party of China. Maoism is the name given to his Marxist-Leninist ideology, as well as his political and military plans and actions. While his fans praise him for putting the country on the path to progress and credit him with the emergence of modern China, his detractors accuse him of being a dictator during whose reign human rights violations were as prevalent as mud. They even hold him accountable for the deaths of approximately 70 million people as a result of famine, forced labor, suicide, and execution.
Childhood and Adolescence
Mao Zedong was born in Hunan Province, China, on December 26, 1893, to Mao Yichang and Wen Qimei. He was the fourth of the couple’s four children. Mao Zedong grew up in an affluent household because his father was one of the region’s wealthiest farmers.
Shaoshan Primary School was where Zedong acquired his early education. He, on the other hand, despised and scorned ancient Chinese classics advocating Confucian ideals, preferring instead to read popular novels.
Zedong attempted, but failed, to abandon his house at the age of 11 in order to disassociate himself from his Confucian background. His father quickly returned him to him. Zedong finished his primary education two years later.
Meanwhile, Zedong and his father worked full-time on the field. Zedong read a lot to keep his restless and ambitious mind occupied. After reading a booklet by Zheng Guanying around this time, he developed a political conscience. The nationalistic attitude of George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte boosted his political position even further.
In 1911, Zedong travelled to Changsha to pursue secondary studies. The city was a hotbed for revolutionary operations, and Zedong was a part of them. The Xinhai Revolution began the same year, with the goal of toppling the monarchy and establishing republicanism with an elected president.
In the rebel army, Zedong served as a private soldier. The Xinhai Revolution, led by Sun Yat-sen, was successful in overthrowing the monarchy in the southern province only because the monarchy was backed in the northern province. He agreed with monarchist general Yuan Shikai, who urged the monarchy while also serving as President of the Republic of China, to avoid civil conflict.
Ideology Formation in the Communist Party
Zedong returned to studies after the victory of the Xinhai Revolution, but he soon left Changsha School since it was based on Confucianism. He subsequently took it upon himself to educate himself, spending much of his time in the public library reading classical liberalism’s key books.
Zedong enrolled at Changsha’s Fourth Normal School, a teacher training college, with the goal of becoming a teacher. During his time at college, he became a regular reader of the radical newspaper New Youth. The journal pushed China to imitate western democratic and scientific principles in order to rid the country of its despotism and superstition.
New Youth published Zedong’s first article. The paper, titled ‘A Study of Physical Culture,’ advised people to improve their physical strength in order to participate fully in the revolution.
Zedong was an active participant in the school’s revolutionary activities. He was the secretary of the Students Society and the commander of the student volunteer army, which was formed to defend the school against raiding warlord warriors. In June 1919, Zedong received his diploma from the same institution.
In quest of work, Zedong relocated to Beijing, China’s capital. Despite the fact that he was a trained teacher, he was unable to obtain work. Zedong got a position as a library assistant at Beijing University with the support of his tutor, Yang Changji.
He learned of the successful Russian Revolution on the other side of the globe, which led to the foundation of the communist Soviet Union, during this time.
Zedong became increasingly influenced by Lenin, who was a prominent advocate of Marxism’s socio-political theory, and looked for methods to blend it with old Chinese ideas to make it practical in modern China.
Meanwhile, Zedong was fired from his employment at Beijing University and relocated to Changsha, where he taught history at the Xiuye Primary School. The situation in China had deteriorated as the Japanese controlled significant swaths of the country, which the Chinese leadership of Beiyang accepted.
With no other option, Zedong organized protests against Zhang Jinghui, the pro-Duan governor of Hunan Province. He even co-founded the Hunanese Student Association and launched the Xiang River Review, a weekly radical periodical in which he urged for the formation of a large unity of masses against the government. Following that, Zedong organized a walkout with fellow teachers and students, but Zhang threatened the group and had them deported to Beijing as representatives of China’s regional centers.
Zedong had gained notoriety and prominence in Beijing as a result of his writings. He then began rallying support for the Chinese Nationalistic Party, which he eventually succeeded in ousting Zhang from power.
In the French concession of Shanghai, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao launched the Communist Party of China in 1921, with Zedong as an original member. In Changsha, Zedong established a branch. The Communist Party of China’s National Congress met for the first time in July 1921.
Zedong got more interested in the Communist Party’s activities. To disseminate Marxism, he established the Self-Study University, made revolutionary literature available to the public, and replaced textbooks with Marxist materials.
In July 1922, the Communist Party held its Second Congress. It was in this document that the party finally agreed to follow Lenin’s counsel and form an alliance with the KMT’s “bourgeois democrats” in order to spark a nationalistic revolution.
Mao was elected as an alternate member of the KMT Central Executive Committee at the First KMT Congress. During a visit to his hometown of Shaoshan, Zedong understood the peasantry’s revolutionary potential.
For support for China’s regeneration, Zedong turned to the countryside. Following in the footsteps of fellow Communist leaders, Zedong attempted to channel the Hunanese peasants’ vigor and resistance into a network of peasant associations.
Chiang Kai Shek vs. Mao Zedong
When KMT leader Sun Yat-sen died, the issue got complicated since his replacement, Chiang Kai-shek, was a staunch right-winger who sought to sideline the communist school of thought. Initially, Zedong was supportive of Chiang, but as time passed, the partnership was unable to work together because to an ideological schism between peasants and senior KMT politicians and generals.
Chiang, who had effectively deposed warlords in the northern campaign, now targeted Communist sympathizers. He initiated a harsh purge of Communists, which resulted in the deaths of over 25,000 Communist Party members.
Zedong conceded defeat and marched his survivors east to Jiangxi’s Jinggang Mountains. Despite his defeat, Zedong remained in good spirits. He organized a regiment of roughly 1800 individuals by uniting five communities in the state.
Zedong was elected chairman of the Soviet Republic of China after successfully establishing the little republic in the hilly region of Jiangxi. He built a tiny but effective army of guerilla fighters and ordered the torture and execution of any dissidents who disobeyed the party’s rules.
The army, which appeared to be little, had taken control of ten territories that were previously under Communist rule. Chiang became frightened and anxious as a result of this, as he dreaded Zedong’s group’s success and expanding size.
To put an end to the Communist insurgency, Chiang assembled a force of 1 million government troops to surround and attack the Communist stronghold.
Despite the fact that the Communist leaders wanted to confront the government, Zedong counseled them to retreat. The Long March was started as a result of this, and it lasted for a year, with over 100,000 Communists and their dependents marching northwest.
To get to Yanan, the 8000-mile voyage entailed passing through Chinese mountains and swampland. Only a handful of the initial 100,000 people made it to the finish of the trek.
When Zedong arrived in Yanan, he formed an alliance with the Kuomintang. He used his oratory skills to persuade others to join the cause. He became the senior Communist leader as a result of this. With the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, Chiang sought Communist assistance after losing control of the country’s major cities and coastal regions. Zedong took advantage of the opportunity to head the troops and attacked the Japanese soldiers.
In 1945, the Japanese were vanquished. Despite America’s suggestion of a coalition government, Zedong insisted on complete power, sparking a civil war that lasted until 1949, when the People’s Republic of China emerged. On the other hand, Chiang had relocated to Taiwan and established the Republic of China.
During his reign, Mao Zedong made a number of positive adjustments to the country’s functioning. He improved women’s status, encouraged education, improved access to healthcare, and increased life expectancy. On the negative side, millions of people died as a result of his policies.
Following a campaign in which Zedong invited people to express their worries about the nation’s functioning, Zedong was taken aback when he received scathing criticism and scolding. He crushed millions of people, labeling them as rightists and imprisoning the remainder, fearful of losing authority.
The Great Leap Forward (GLF)
In 1958, Zedong started the ‘Great Leap’ program, which aimed to construct huge agricultural communes with up to 75,000 people laboring in the fields in order to boost the country’s agricultural and industrial growth. He promised that each member of the family would receive a portion of the profits as well as a tiny plot of property.
With floods and a terrible harvest, the agriculture and industrial output expectations that sounded optimistic at first turned into a catastrophic calamity. Worse, the country was ravaged by a famine that destroyed entire towns and killed over 40 million people.
With the collapse of the Great Leap initiative in 1961, Zedong stepped aside to allow his competitors to seize control of the country. He had not given up hope, though, and was waiting for the proper moment to make a comeback.
The Revolutionary Cultural
The year 1966 brought the restoration of Mao Zedong to power. He quickly launched the Cultural Revolution, holding demonstrations in front of hundreds of thousands of youthful people. He targeted the young because he didn’t want them to remember the Great Leap’s failure and following starvation. To regain power, Zedong concocted a crisis situation that only he could fix. He persuaded the youth force that the upper and middle classes were attempting to reestablish capitalism and, as a result, should be expelled from society.
The Revolution threw China’s traditional heritage into disarray. The Red Guards, a group of young people, fought authorities at all levels of society and even established their own tribunals.
During the Cultural Revolution, schools were closed, and young city intellectuals were sent to the countryside to be “re-educated” by peasants. In the countryside, the city elite engaged in hard manual labor and other tasks.
Millions of individuals are thought to have died as a result of the Cultural Revolution. Zedong ordered the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1969. The Revolution, however, came to an end with the death of Mao Zedong.
Personal History and Legacy
Mao Zedong married four times during his life, the first time when he was 13 years old to Luo Yixiu. He refused to acknowledge her as his wife because he was an outspoken opponent of arranged marriage. He then married Yang Kaihui and had three children with her.
After Yang Kaihui’s death, Zedong married He Zizhen, with whom he had six children. When she died, Zedong married Jiang Qing and stayed with her till his death. She gave birth to a daughter for him.
Zedong had been in poor health for several years, and in the early months of 1976, he had a serious heart attack and a worsening lung infection. On September 9, 1976, he passed away.
Trivia
He is credited for building the People’s Republic of China, which was established in 1949.
Maoism is the political theory drawn from the ideas of China’s Marxist-Leninist leader.