Mao Tse-Tung he is known as the great leader of the chinese revolution, which took place in 1949, and was the founder of China Popular Republic that same year. He joined the Communist Party during his youth, led Chinese troops in the fight against the Kuomintang and Japanese, and ruled China from 1949 to 1959. He remained influential in China until 1976, the year of his death.
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birth and youth
Mao Tse-Tung or HandZedong was born in Shaoshan, a city located in Hunan Province, China, on December 26, 1893. His parents were called Mao Yichang (father) and Wen Qimei (mother). Mao Tse-Tung's family had great financial condition, as his father was a successful farmer in the Shaoshan region.
During his childhood, Mao was sent to study at a Confucian college and remained there until he was 13 years old, when his father called him to work on the family farm. Mao's biographers say that, during his youth, he had the
rebel personality, and a sign of this happened when he refused to accept an arranged marriage proposed by his father.![Mao Tse-Tung (1893-1976) led the struggle against the nationalists and the Japanese and was at the forefront of significant changes in China.[1]](/f/e2d3c48ba2bd08c2460bb7f115ca3772.jpg)
interest in communism
THE Mao's approximation with the communism(political and economic theory that had as one of its main mentors Karl Marx) happened after he started high school, in 1911. One of the factors that provided this was the outbreak of 1911 revolution, or RevolutionXinhai, an event that marked the fall of the Chinese monarchy and the transformation of the country into a republic.
In addition to this revolutionary experience, Mao also had contact with Marxist theories through his personal studies and the course at a school in Hunan province, which graduated him to be a teacher. After his graduation, he got a job at the Peking University library.
It was during his stay in Beijing (1917-1919) that Mao ended up converting to communism. One of the people closest to Mao at that time was Li Dazhao, who got him the job at the library. Li Dazhao led a study group on Marxism, of which Mao was a member. Later, Dazhao founded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921, and Mao soon joined the party.
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Chinese Civil War
In the first half of the 1920s, the CCP maintained a good relationship with the BrokenNationalist, also called Kuomintang, one of the main parties in China. This approximation of the CCP with the Kuomintang was also part of the strategy of the Soviet Union for China, since it was necessary to ally with the Kuomintang to guarantee the unification of China – divided into fiefs – in order to then carry out the revolution in the country.
In the midst of these events, Mao assumed important functions in the CCP structure and was elected to take over the party committee in Shanghai, for example. It was in this phase between the founding of the CCPh (1921) and the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War (1927) that Mao realized the importance ofmobilize the mass of peasants in defense of their ideas. He was also involved in various actions with the peasants, giving them military training.
The good relationship between the CCP and the Kuomintang ended in 1925, when the leader of the nationalists, Sun Yat-sen, passed away. The Kuomintang came to be led by Chiang Kai-shek, who held conservative positions and began to view the communists as a threat. A period of great persecution against communists.
This persecution resulted in the Chinese Civil War and expelled communists from cities like Shanghai, for example. Because of this persecution, the CCP created the Red Army to defend yourself. Mao was eventually named commander-in-chief of that army and led Communist troops in the fight against the Kuomintang in Hunan and Jiangxi provinces.
Mao's revolutionary experience throughout the 1920s and the way feudal lords ruled and exploiting the peasants in China convinced him that the revolution he advocated would only happen through the armed uprising. Some of Mao's best-known phrases say that “Political power is born from the rifle." and "Revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence in which one class overthrows the other.”
Mao's involvement in the war against the Kuomintang cost him dearly, from a personal perspective. In 1930, Kuomintang forces kidnapped his sister and his second wife, called Yang Kaihui, and both were beheaded for refusing to publicly renounce communism. Mao, in turn, continued his resistance through the guerrillas and founded the Jiangxi Soviet, becoming its president.
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great march
In 1934, Mao's forces were surrounded by Kuomintang troops in the mountains of the Jiangxi region. For this reason, Mao and his soldiers started what became known as “Greatmarch” (or Long March). This escape mobilized about 100,000 soldiers, who marched over 10,000 kilometers to escape Kuomintang attacks.
You survivors of the Long March there were about 10 thousand people. The rest died of fatigue, hunger or in battle. After this march of the Chinese communists ended in October 1935, a communist government was established in Yan’an and Mao Tse-tung became CCP leader.
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Second Sino-Japanese War
In 1937, China and Japan went to war as a result of the continuity of the expansionist project of the Japanese in Chinese territory. This expansionism of the Japanese had been ongoing since the 19th century and was expanded from 1931 onwards because of the emergence of a puppet state called Manchukuo. In this war, the Japanese quickly managed to conquer important cities in China, such as Beijing, Ink and Shanghai.
The Second Sino-Japanese War never ended the rivalry between nationalists (Kuomintang) and communists, but it weakened hostilities between them. Between 1937 and 1945, the communists led by Mao fought against the nationalists, but mainly against the Japanese invaders.
In the years of fighting the Japanese, Mao Zedong managed to get the support of part of the Chinese peasantry and organized his forces. In addition, he continued to formulate his ideas, which became known as “Maoism”.
chinese revolution
After the Japanese were defeated in 1945, China was freed from its invaders and the struggle between nationalists and communists for the country's power was restarted. Communists were much more powerful and organized in 1945 than in 1937, while nationalists weakened.
The army of communists came to be called the ArmyPopularinRelease. Communists received support from the Soviet Union, and nationalists received support from the United States. In October 1948, the communists had an important victory by conquering Guizhou and, in January 1949, they defeated the nationalists in Xuzhou. Strengthened by the war, Mao, leader of the CCP, inaugurated the China Popular Republic on October 1, 1949.
This marked the victory of China's communists, and nationalist dissidents eventually fled and settling on the island of Formosa, starting a rift between mainland China and Taiwan. extends to today.
Government of Mao Tse-Tung
Immediately after founding the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong became the country's ruler. At the head of the government of China and the Chinese Communist Party, Mao led profound transformations in the country. Mao's first measures were aimed at recoveryeconomical from China and, for that, had the financial support of the Soviet Union.
Mao also led a campaign against "enemies of the state" and the corrupt through the Three Anti Campaign and FiveAnti. These campaigns began investigating former Kuomintang members, people linked to the country's bureaucracy and China's economic elites. Most of those investigated were judged, humiliatedpublicly and condemned. The convictions included paymentintraffic ticket, sending to forced labor camps and even execution. Many of those investigated, desperate, committed suicide.
On the land issue, Mao also carried out sensitive reforms and initiated a program of remodelingagrarian. In this program, the lands of the feudal lords were taken by the government and distributed to the peasants who had no land to survive. During this process, which lasted for decades, millions of feudal lords were executed for the government. It is estimated that this resulted directly in the death of up to two million people.
To develop the country's economy, Mao promoted five-year plans. The background was known as Big jump forward. This happened in 1958, and during the Great Leap, Mao called on farmers to abandon food production to work in steel production.
The result was catastrophic, as agricultural production fell, and millions of people died of hunger. As a result of this, the GreatHunger, which took place from 1959 to 1961 and forced the Chinese government to buy grain from Western nations like Canada to ease the supply crisis. The famine in China was so severe that it resulted in death from 20 to 40 million people, according to estimates.
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cultural revolution
Starting in 1959, Mao left the Chinese presidency, being replaced by LiuShaoqi. He remained the most powerful figure in the Chinese Communist Party and had great influence in the country. However, in 1962, the new Chinese president was harshly critical of Mao's Great Leap Forward in 1958.
This event showed that there was an internal split in the CCP and that there was a faction in the party dissatisfied with the measures taken by Mao. Criticism of Mao was influenced by the de-Stalinization (process that promoted the end of the cult of Stalin, former Soviet leader) that took place in the Soviet Union. For this reason, the cult of Mao came to be questioned in China.
Mao's response to criticism occurred through the cultural revolution, an event that lasted from 1966 to 1976. Mao called on young Chinese to ally themselves in defense of the revolution and started a tremendous ideological persecution against those who disagreed with him.
In the Cultural Revolution, the "Red Guards" were instructed to to stalk and report all those who exhibited the “typical old habits of the bourgeois”. This persecution turned, for example, against teachers who did not profess ideals identical to those of the Red Book of Mao, against people who wore clothes and practiced habits considered Western etc.
One of the impacts of the Cultural Revolution was the destruction of China's higher education system and the persecution and death of thousands of people. Historian Eric Hobsbawm defined the Cultural Revolution as the worst campaign against culture, education and intelligence in the history of the 20th century. It is believed that of one to two million people were killed in the ten years of the Cultural Revolution.
Death
In 1976, Mao Zedong's health was very poor. That year, the leader of the Chinese Revolution suffered three heart attacks, the last in September 9, 1976, ended up being fatal. Mao died in Beijing at the age of 82, and historians now estimate that his actions between 1949 and 1976 resulted in the death of 40 to 70 million people.
weddings
Throughout his life, Mao Tse Tung married four times and of these marriages had the total of tensons. In chronological order, Mao's wives were as follows:
Luo Yixiu (1907-1910);
Yang Kihui (1921-1927);
He Zizhen (1928-1939);
Jiang Qing (1939-1976).
Image credits:
[1] Hung Chung Chih and Shutterstock
By Daniel Neves
Graduated in History
