Biography : Mao Sae Tung
Military Leader (1893–1976)
Military Leader (1893–1976)
Mao Tse-tung was the
principal Chinese Marxist theorist, soldier and statesman who led his nation's
Cultural Revolution.
Mao
Tse Tung - Leader, Killer, Icon, Mao Tse Tung
ruled a quarter of the world's population for twenty five years and Made China one of
the most powerful countries in the world. But behind the scenes he was Responsible for the deaths of Millions
of Chinese People.
 |
| Mao Sae Tung : Mao Tse Tung |
Compendium :
Born on December 26,
1893, in Shaoshan, Hunan Province, China, Mao Tse-tung served as chairman of
the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1959, and led the Chinese Communist
Party from 1935 until his death. Mao's "Great Leap Forward" and the
Cultural Revolution were ill-conceived and had disastrous consequences, but many of his goals, including stressing China's self-reliance, were
generally laudable.
For the Great Leader, Humble
Beginnings
In the late 19th
century, China was a shell of its once glorious past, led by the decrepit Qing
Dynasty. Mao Tse-tung was born on December 26, 1893, in the farming community
of Shaoshan, in the province of Hunan, China, to a peasant family that had
tilled their three acres of land for several generations. Life was difficult
for many Chinese citizens at the time, but Mao's family was better off than
most. His authoritarian father, Mao Zedong,
was a prosperous grain dealer, and his mother, Wen Qimei, was a nurturing
parent.
While Mao attended a small school in his village when he was 8 years old, he received little education. 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. When he turned 17, he left home to enroll in a secondary school in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. In 1911, the Xinhua Revolution began against the monarchy, and Mao joined the Revolutionary Army and the Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party. Led by Chinese statesman Sun Yat-sen, the Kuomintang overthrew the monarchy in 1912 and founded the Republic of China. Spurred on by the promise of a new future for China and himself, Mao reveled in the political and cultural change sweeping the country.
Mao Sae Tung : Mao Tse Tung
Move Toward Communist Ideology
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 traveled to Beijing, but was unsuccessful in finding a job. 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.
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, but 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. He rose up through the ranks of the party as a delegate assemblyman and then executive to the Shanghai branch of the party.
Death of Sun Yat-sen and the
'Long March'
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. That September,
Mao Tse-tung led an army of peasants against the Kuomintang, but was handily
defeated. The remnants of the army fled to Jiangxi Province, where they
reorganized. 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, and directed the
torture and execution of any dissidents who defied party law.
By 1934, there were more than 10 regions under the control of the Communists in Jiangxi Province. Chiang Kai-shek was getting nervous about their success and growing numbers. Small raids and attacks on outlying Communist strongholds had not discouraged them. Chiang reasoned it was time for a massive sweep of the region to eliminate the Communist influence. In October 1934, Chiang amassed nearly 1 million government forces and surrounded the Communist stronghold. Mao was alerted to the impending attack. After some intense arguing with other leaders, who wanted to conduct a final stand against the government forces, he convinced them that retreat was the better tactic.
For the next 12 months, 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. As word spread that the Communists had escaped extermination by the Kuomintang, many young people migrated to Yanan. Here Mao employed his oratory talents and inspired volunteers to faithfully join his cause as he emerged the top Communist leader.
In Respect To The People's Mind
Japanese-Chinese Conflict and
Mao's Rise To Power
In July 1937, the
Japanese Imperial Army invaded China, 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.
Over the next few years, Mao Tse-tung instituted sweeping land reform, sometimes through persuasion and other times through coercion, using violence and terror when he deemed it necessary. He seized warlord land, converting it into people's communes. He instituted positive changes in China, including promoting the status of women, doubling the school population and improving literacy, and increasing access to health care, which dramatically raised life expectancy. But Mao's reforms and support were less successful in the cities, and he sensed the discontent. In 1956, he launched the "Hundred Flowers Campaign" and, in democratic fashion, allowed others to express their concerns. Mao hoped for a wide range of useful ideas, expecting only mild criticism of his policies. Instead, he received a harsh rebuke and was shaken by the intense rejection by the urban intelligentsia. Fearing a loss of control, he ruthlessly crushed any further dissent. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese were labeled "rightists," and thousands were imprisoned.
Fallout from the "Great
Leap Forward"
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. Each
family received a share of the profits and a small plot of land. Mao had set
idealistic, some would say improbable, expectations for both agriculture and
industrial production, believing the country could make a century's worth of
advancement in a few decades.
At first, reports were promising, with accounts of overwhelming advancement. However, three years of floods and bad harvests told a different story. Agricultural production had not come close to expectations, and reports of massive steel production proved to be false. 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. The scale of the disaster was hidden from the nation and the world. Only high-level Communist Party leaders knew, and Mao's protective inner circle kept many of the famine's details from him.
As a result of the Great Leap Forward's failure, 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. While he waited for his time to return, an ardent supporter, Lin Biao, compiled some of Mao's writings into a handbook entitled Quotations from Chairman Mao. Known as the "Little Red Book," copies were made available to all Chinese.
The Chairman's Return to Power
and the Cultural Revolution
In 1966, Mao Tse-tung
made his return and launched the Cultural Revolution. Appearing at a gathering
at the Yangtze River in May, the 73-year-old Mao swam for several minutes in
the river, looking fit and energetic. The message to his rivals was,
"Look, I'm back!" Later, he and his closest aides choreographed a
series of public rallies involving thousands of young supporters. He calculated
correctly that the young wouldn't remember much about the failure of the Great
Leap Forward and the subsequent famine.
In a classic autocratic method to gain control, Mao Tse-tung manufactured a crisis that only he could solve. Mao told his followers that bourgeois elements in China were aiming to restore capitalism, and declared these elements must be removed from society. His youthful followers formed the Red Guards and led a mass purge of the "undesirables." Soon Mao was back in command. To prevent a repeat of the rejection he received during the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Mao ordered the closure of China's schools, and young intellectuals living in the cities were sent into the countryside to be "re-educated" through hard manual labor. The Revolution destroyed much of China's traditional cultural heritage as well as creating general economic and social chaos in the country. It was during this time that Mao's cult of personality grew to immense proportions.
A Revolutionary Legacy
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 and elevated China's prominence as a world player. During the
meetings, it became apparent that Mao's health was deteriorating, and not much
was accomplished because Mao was not always clear in his statements or
intentions.
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. Officially, in China, he is held in high regard as a great political strategist and military mastermind, the savior of the nation. However, Mao's efforts to close China to trade and market commerce and eradicate traditional Chinese culture have largely been rejected by his successors. While his emphasis on China's self-reliance and the rapid industrialization that he promoted is credited with laying the foundation for China's late 20th century development, his harsh methods and insensitivity to anyone who didn't give him full faith and allegiance have been widely rebuked as self-defeating.
Quick Facts
For the Great Leader, Humble
Beginnings
In the late 19th
century, China was a shell of its once glorious past, led by the decrepit Qing
Dynasty. Mao Tse-tung was born on December 26, 1893, in the farming community
of Shaoshan, in the province of Hunan, China, to a peasant family that had
tilled their three acres of land for several generations. Life was difficult
for many Chinese citizens at the time, but Mao's family was better off than
most. His authoritarian father, Mao Zedong,
was a prosperous grain dealer, and his mother, Wen Qimei, was a nurturing
parent.While Mao attended a small school in his village when he was 8 years old, he received little education. 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. When he turned 17, he left home to enroll in a secondary school in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. In 1911, the Xinhua Revolution began against the monarchy, and Mao joined the Revolutionary Army and the Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party. Led by Chinese statesman Sun Yat-sen, the Kuomintang overthrew the monarchy in 1912 and founded the Republic of China. Spurred on by the promise of a new future for China and himself, Mao reveled in the political and cultural change sweeping the country.
Move Toward Communist Ideology
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 traveled to Beijing, but was unsuccessful in finding a job. 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. 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, but 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. He rose up through the ranks of the party as a delegate assemblyman and then executive to the Shanghai branch of the party.
Death of Sun Yat-sen and the
'Long March'
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. That September,
Mao Tse-tung led an army of peasants against the Kuomintang, but was handily
defeated. The remnants of the army fled to Jiangxi Province, where they
reorganized. 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, and directed the
torture and execution of any dissidents who defied party law. By 1934, there were more than 10 regions under the control of the Communists in Jiangxi Province. Chiang Kai-shek was getting nervous about their success and growing numbers. Small raids and attacks on outlying Communist strongholds had not discouraged them. Chiang reasoned it was time for a massive sweep of the region to eliminate the Communist influence. In October 1934, Chiang amassed nearly 1 million government forces and surrounded the Communist stronghold. Mao was alerted to the impending attack. After some intense arguing with other leaders, who wanted to conduct a final stand against the government forces, he convinced them that retreat was the better tactic.
For the next 12 months, 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. As word spread that the Communists had escaped extermination by the Kuomintang, many young people migrated to Yanan. Here Mao employed his oratory talents and inspired volunteers to faithfully join his cause as he emerged the top Communist leader.
Japanese-Chinese Conflict and
Mao's Rise To Power
In July 1937, the
Japanese Imperial Army invaded China, 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.
Over the next few years, Mao Tse-tung instituted sweeping land reform, sometimes through persuasion and other times through coercion, using violence and terror when he deemed it necessary. He seized warlord land, converting it into people's communes. He instituted positive changes in China, including promoting the status of women, doubling the school population and improving literacy, and increasing access to health care, which dramatically raised life expectancy. But Mao's reforms and support were less successful in the cities, and he sensed the discontent. In 1956, he launched the "Hundred Flowers Campaign" and, in democratic fashion, allowed others to express their concerns. Mao hoped for a wide range of useful ideas, expecting only mild criticism of his policies. Instead, he received a harsh rebuke and was shaken by the intense rejection by the urban intelligentsia. Fearing a loss of control, he ruthlessly crushed any further dissent. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese were labeled "rightists," and thousands were imprisoned.
Fallout from the "Great
Leap Forward"
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. Each
family received a share of the profits and a small plot of land. Mao had set
idealistic, some would say improbable, expectations for both agriculture and
industrial production, believing the country could make a century's worth of
advancement in a few decades. At first, reports were promising, with accounts of overwhelming advancement. However, three years of floods and bad harvests told a different story. Agricultural production had not come close to expectations, and reports of massive steel production proved to be false. 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. The scale of the disaster was hidden from the nation and the world. Only high-level Communist Party leaders knew, and Mao's protective inner circle kept many of the famine's details from him.
As a result of the Great Leap Forward's failure, 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. While he waited for his time to return, an ardent supporter, Lin Biao, compiled some of Mao's writings into a handbook entitled Quotations from Chairman Mao. Known as the "Little Red Book," copies were made available to all Chinese.
The Chairman's Return to Power
and the Cultural Revolution
In 1966, Mao Tse-tung
made his return and launched the Cultural Revolution. Appearing at a gathering
at the Yangtze River in May, the 73-year-old Mao swam for several minutes in
the river, looking fit and energetic. The message to his rivals was,
"Look, I'm back!" Later, he and his closest aides choreographed a
series of public rallies involving thousands of young supporters. He calculated
correctly that the young wouldn't remember much about the failure of the Great
Leap Forward and the subsequent famine. In a classic autocratic method to gain control, Mao Tse-tung manufactured a crisis that only he could solve. Mao told his followers that bourgeois elements in China were aiming to restore capitalism, and declared these elements must be removed from society. His youthful followers formed the Red Guards and led a mass purge of the "undesirables." Soon Mao was back in command. To prevent a repeat of the rejection he received during the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Mao ordered the closure of China's schools, and young intellectuals living in the cities were sent into the countryside to be "re-educated" through hard manual labor. The Revolution destroyed much of China's traditional cultural heritage as well as creating general economic and social chaos in the country. It was during this time that Mao's cult of personality grew to immense proportions.
A Revolutionary Legacy
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 and elevated China's prominence as a world player. During the
meetings, it became apparent that Mao's health was deteriorating, and not much
was accomplished because Mao was not always clear in his statements or
intentions. 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. Officially, in China, he is held in high regard as a great political strategist and military mastermind, the savior of the nation. However, Mao's efforts to close China to trade and market commerce and eradicate traditional Chinese culture have largely been rejected by his successors. While his emphasis on China's self-reliance and the rapid industrialization that he promoted is credited with laying the foundation for China's late 20th century development, his harsh methods and insensitivity to anyone who didn't give him full faith and allegiance have been widely rebuked as self-defeating.
Quick Facts
Name
Mao Tse-tung
Occupation
Birth Date
Death Date
Education
Place of Birth
Place of Death
Mao Zedong
Mao Tse-tung
In Memory of The People
The world is yours, as
well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of
vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in
the morning. Our hope is placed on you. The world belongs to you. China's
future belongs to you.
Talk at a meeting with
Chinese students and trainees in Moscow (November 17, 1957).
Enable every woman who
can work to take her place on the labour front, under the principle of equal
pay for equal work. This should be done as quickly as possible.
Introductory note to
"On Widening the Scope of Women's Work in the Agricultural Co-operative
Movement" (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China's Countryside, Chinese
ed.,