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Mao Zedong

“Mao”redirects here. For other uses, see Mao (disam-biguation).

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Mao.

Mao Zedong ( *i/̍ maʊ zəˈdʊŋ, dzə-/), alsotransliterated as Mao Tse-tung and commonly re-ferred to as Chairman Mao (December 26, 1893– September 9, 1976), was a Chinese Communist

revolutionary and the founding father of the People'sRepublic of China, which he governed as Chairman ofthe Communist Party of China from its establishmentin 1949 until his death in 1976. His Marxist–Leninisttheories, military strategies, and political policies arecollectively known as Marxism–Leninism–Maoism orMao Zedong Thought.

Born the son of a wealthy farmer in Shaoshan, Hunan,Mao adopted a Chinese nationalist and anti-imperialistoutlook in early life, particularly influenced by the eventsof the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and May Fourth Move-ment of 1919. Mao converted to Marxism–Leninism

while working at Peking University and became a found-ing member of the Communist Party of China (CPC),leading the Autumn Harvest Uprising in 1927. Duringthe Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT)and the CPC, Mao helped to found the Red Army, ledthe Jiangxi Soviet's radical land policies and ultimatelybecame head of the CPC during the Long March. Al-though the CPC temporarily allied with the KMT underthe United Front during the Second Sino-Japanese War(1937–45), after Japan's defeat China's civil war resumedand in 1949 Mao's forces defeated the Nationalists whowithdrew to Taiwan.

On October 1, 1949, Mao proclaimed the foundation ofthe People's Republic of China (PRC), a one-party statecontrolled by the CPC. In the following years Mao solid-ified his control through land reform campaigns againstlandlords, and perceived enemies of the state he termedas "counter-revolutionaries". In 1957 he launched acampaign known as the Great Leap Forward that aimedto rapidly transform China's economy from an agrarianeconomy to an industrial one, which led to a widespreadfamine whose death toll is estimated at between 18 and45 million. In 1966, he initiated the Great ProletarianCultural Revolution, a program to remove “counter-revolutionary”elements of Chinese society that lasted

10 years and which was marked by violent class struggle,widespread destruction of cultural artifacts and unprece-

dented elevation of Mao's personality cult.*[1] In 1972,Mao welcomed U.S. president Richard Nixon in Beijing,signalling a policy of opening China, which was furtheredunder the rule of Deng Xiaoping (1978–1992). Maosuffered a series of heart attacks in 1976, dying in thatSeptember, aged 82. He was succeeded as ParamountLeader by Hua Guofeng (1976–1978), who was quicklysidelined and replaced by Xiaoping.

A controversial figure, Mao is regarded as one of themost important individuals in modern world history.*[2]

Supporters credit him with driving imperialism out ofChina,*[3] modernising China andbuilding it into a worldpower, promoting the status of women, improving edu-cation and health care, and increasing life expectancy asChina's population grew from around 550 million to over900 million during the period of his leadership.*[4]*[5]He is also known as a theorist, military strategist, poetand visionary.*[6] In contrast, critics consider him adictator comparable to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalinwho severely damaged traditional Chinese culture, as wellas a perpetrator of systematic human rights abuses whowas responsible for an estimated 40 to 70 million deaths

through starvation, forced labour and executions, rank-ing his tenure as the top incidence of democide in humanhistory.*[7]*[8]*[9]

1 Early life

Main article: Early life of Mao Zedong

1.1 Youth and the Xinhai Revolution:

1893–1911

Mao Zedong was born on December 26, 1893 inShaoshan village, Hunan Province, China.*[10] His fa-ther, Mao Yichang, was a formerly impoverished peas-ant who had become one of the wealthiest farmers inShaoshan. Growing up in rural Hunan, Mao Zedong de-scribed his father as a stern disciplinarian, who wouldbeat him and his three siblings, the boys Zemin andZetan, and an adopted girl, Zejian.*[11] Mao's mother,Wen Qimei, was a devout Buddhist who tried to tem-per her husband's strict attitude.*[12] Zedong too became

a Buddhist, but abandoned this faith in his mid-teenageyears.*[12] At age 8, Mao was sent to Shaoshan PrimarySchool. Learning the value systems of Confucianism,

1

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2 1 EARLY LIFE

he later admitted that he didn't enjoy the classical Chi-nese texts preaching Confucian morals, instead favouringpopular novels like Romance of the Three Kingdoms andWater Margin.*[13] At age 13, Maofinished primary edu-cation, and his father had him married to the 17-year-oldLuo Yigu, uniting their land-owning families. Mao re-

fused to recognise her as his wife, becoming a fiercecriticof arranged marriage and temporarily moving away. Luowas locally disgraced and died in 1910.*[14]

Mao's childhood home in Shaoshan, in 2010, by which time it

had become a tourist destination.

Working on his father's farm, Mao read voraciously,*[15]developing a “political consciousness”from ZhengGuanying's booklet which lamented the deteriorationof Chinese power and argued for the adoption ofrepresentative democracy.*[16] Interested in history,Mao was inspired by the military prowess and national-istic fervour of George Washington and Napoleon Bona-

parte.*[17] His political views were shaped by Gelaohui-led protests which erupted following a famine in Hu-nanese capital Changsha; Mao supported the protesters'demands, but the armed forces suppressed the dissentersand executed their leaders.*[18] The famine spread toShaoshan, where starving peasants seized his father'sgrain; disapproving of their actions as morally wrong,Mao nevertheless claimed sympathy for their situa-tion.*[19] At age 16, Mao moved to a higher primaryschool in nearby Dongshan,*[20] where he was bulliedfor his peasant background.*[21]

In 1911, Mao began middle school in Changsha.*[22]

Revolutionary sentiment was strong in the city, withwidespread animosity towards Emperor Puyi's absolutemonarchy and many advocating republicanism. The re-publicans' figurehead was Sun Yat-sen, an American-educated Christian who led the Tongmenghui soci-ety.*[23] In Changsha, Mao was influenced by Sun'snewspaper, The People's Independence (Minli bao),*[24]and called for Sun to become president in a school es-say.*[25] As a symbol of rebellion against the Manchumonarch, Mao and a friend cut off their queue pigtails, asign of subservience to the emperor.*[26]

Inspired by Sun's republicanism, the army rose up across

southern China, sparking the Xinhai Revolution. Chang-sha's governor fled, leaving the city in republican con-trol.*[27] Supporting the revolution, Mao joined the rebel

army as a private soldier, but was not involved in fight-ing. The northern provinces remained loyal to the em-peror, and hoping to avoid a civil war, Sun—proclaimed“provisional president”by his supporters—compromised

with the monarchist general Yuan Shikai. The monarchywould be abolished, creating the Republic of China, but

the monarchist Yuan would become president. The rev-olution over, Mao resigned from the army in 1912, af-ter six months of being a soldier.*[28] Around this time,Mao discovered socialism from a newspaper article; pro-ceeding to read pamphlets by Jiang Kanghu, the studentfounder of the Chinese Socialist Party, Mao remained in-terested yet unconvinced by the idea.*[29]

1.2 Fourth Normal School of Changsha:

1912–19

Over thenext few years, Mao enrolled and dropped out ofa police academy, a soap-production school, a law school,an economics school, and the government-run ChangshaMiddle School.*[30] Studying independently, he spentmuch time in Changsha's library, reading core works ofclassical liberalism such as Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws , as wellas the works of western scientists and philosophers suchas Darwin, Mill, Rousseau, and Spencer.*[31] Viewinghimself as an intellectual, years later he admitted that atthis time he thought himself better than working peo-ple.*[32] Inspired by Friedrich Paulsen, the liberal em-

phasis on individualism led Mao to believe that strong in-dividuals were not bound by moral codes but should strivefor the greater good; that the end justifies the means.*[33]Seeing no use in his son's intellectual pursuits, Mao's fa-ther cut off his allowance, forcing him to move into a hos-tel for the destitute.*[34]

Desiring to become a teacher, Mao enrolled at the FourthNormal School of Changsha, which soon merged withthe First Normal School of Changsha, widely seen as thebest school in Hunan.*[35] Befriending Mao, professorYang Changji urged him to read a radical newspaper,New Youth (Xin qingnian), the creation of his friend Chen

Duxiu, a dean at Peking University. Although a Chinesenationalist, Chen argued that China must look to the westto cleanse itself of superstition and autocracy.*[36] Maopublished his first article in New Youth in April 1917,instructing readers to increase their physical strength toserve the revolution.*[37] He joined the Society for theStudy of Wang Fuzhi (Chuan-shan Hsüeh-she), a revolu-tionary group founded by Changsha literati who wishedto emulate the philosopher Wang Fuzhi.*[38]

In his first school year, Mao befriended an older student,Xiao Zisheng; together they went on a walking tour ofHunan, begging and writing literary couplets to obtain

food.*[39] A popular student, in 1915 Mao was electedsecretary of the Students Society. Forging an Associa-tion for Student Self-Government, he led protests against

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2.2 New Culture and political protests, 1919–20 3

Mao in 1913

school rules.*[40] In spring 1917, he was elected to com-mand the students' volunteer army, set up to defend theschool from marauding soldiers.*[41] Increasingly inter-ested in the techniques of war, he took a keen interest in

World War I, and also began to develop a sense of soli-darity with workers.*[42] Mao undertook feats of physi-cal endurance with Xiao Zisheng and Cai Hesen, and withother young revolutionaries they formed the Renovationof the People Study Society in April 1918 to debate ChenDuxiu's ideas. Desiring personal and societal transforma-tion, the Society gained 70–80 members, many of whomwould later join the Communist Party.*[43] Mao gradu-ated in June 1919, being ranked third in the year.*[44]

2 Early Revolutionary Activity

Main article: Early revolutionary activity of Mao Zedong

2.1 Beijing, Anarchism, and Marxism:

1917–19

Mao moved to Beijing, where his mentor Yang Changjihad taken a job at Peking University.*[45] Yang thoughtMao exceptionally“intelligent and handsome”,*[46] se-curing him a job as assistant to the university librarian Li

Dazhao, an early Chinese Communist.*[47] Li authoreda series of New Youth articles on the October Revolutionin Russia, during which the Communist Bolshevik Party

under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin had seized power.Lenin was an advocate of the socio-political theory ofMarxism, first developedby theGerman sociologists KarlMarx and Friedrich Engels, and Li's articles brought anunderstanding of Marxism to the Chinese revolutionarymovement.*[48] Becoming“more and more radical”,

Mao was influenced by Peter Kropotkin's anarchism butjoined Li's Study Group and“developed rapidly towardMarxism”during the winter of 1919.*[49]

Paid a low wage, Mao lived in a cramped room withseven otherHunanese students, but believed that Beijing'sbeauty offered“vivid and living compensation”.*[50] Atthe university, Mao was widely snubbed by other studentsdue to his rural Hunanese accent and lowly position. Byjoining the university's Philosophy and Journalism Soci-eties, he attended lectures and seminars by the likes ofChen Duxiu, Hu Shi, and Qian Xuantong.*[51] Mao'stime in Beijing ended in the spring of 1919, when he trav-

elled to Shanghai with friends departing for France,*[52]before returning to Shaoshan, where his mother was ter-minally ill; she died in October 1919, with her husbanddying in January 1920.*[53]

2.2 New Culture and political protests,

1919–20

On May 4, 1919, students in Beijing gathered at the Gateof Heavenly Peace to protest against the Chinese govern-ment's weak resistance to Japanese expansion in China.

Patriots had been outraged at the influence given to Japanin the Twenty-One Demands in 1915, the complicity ofDuan Qirui’s Beiyang Government, and the betrayalof China at the Treaty of Versailles by allowing Japanto receive territories in Shandong which had been sur-rendered by Germany. These demonstrations ignited thenation-wide May Fourth Movement and fueled the NewCulture Movement which blamed China’s diplomaticdefeats on social and cultural backwardness.*[54]

In Changsha, Mao had begun teaching history at the Xi-uye Primary School*[55] and organizing protests againstthe pro-Duan Governor of Hunan Province, Zhang

Jingyao, popularly known as “Zhang the Venomous”due to his corrupt and violent rule.*[56] In late May,Mao co-founded the Hunanese Student Association withHe Shuheng and Deng Zhongxia, organizing a studentstrike for June and in July 1919 began production ofa weekly radical magazine, Xiang River Review (Xi-angjiang pinglun). Using vernacular language that wouldbe understandable to the majority of China's populace,he advocated the need for a“Great Union of the PopularMasses”, strengthened trade unions able to wage non-violent revolution; his ideas were not Marxist, but heavilyinfluenced by Kropotkin's concept of mutual aid.*[57]

Zhang banned the Student Association, but Mao contin-ued publishing after assuming editorship of liberal mag-azine New Hunan (Xin Hunan) and offering articles in

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4 2 EARLY REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITY

Students in Beijing rallied during the May Fourth Movement.

popular local newspaper Justice (Ta Kung Po). Severalof these articles advocated feminist views, calling for the

liberation of women in Chinese society; Mao was influ-enced by his forced arranged-marriage.*[58] In Decem-ber 1919, Mao helped organise a general strike in Hu-nan, securing some concessions, but Mao and other stu-dent leaders felt threatened by Zhang, and Mao returnedto Beijing, visiting the terminally ill Yang Changji.*[59]Mao found that his articles had achieved a level of fameamong the revolutionary movement, and set about solicit-ing support in overthrowing Zhang.*[60] Coming acrossnewly translated Marxist literature by Thomas Kirkup,Karl Kautsky, and Marx and Engels—notably The Com-munist Manifesto—he came under their increasing influ-ence, but was still eclectic in his views.*[61]

Mao visited Tianjin, Jinan, and Qufu,*[62] before mov-ing to Shanghai, where he worked as a laundryman andmet Chen Duxiu, noting that Chen's adoption of Marx-ism“deeply impressed me at what was probably a crit-ical period in my life”. In Shanghai, Mao met an oldteacher of his, Yi Peiji, a revolutionary and member ofthe Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party,which was gaining increasing support and influence. Yiintroduced Mao to General Tan Yankai, a senior KMTmember who held the loyalty of troops stationed alongthe Hunanese border with Guangdong. Tan was plottingto overthrow Zhang, and Mao aided him by organizing

the Changsha students. In June 1920, Tan led his troopsinto Changsha, while Zhang fled. In the subsequent re-organization of the provincial administration, Mao wasappointed headmaster of the junior section of the FirstNormal School. Now receiving a large income, he mar-ried Yang Kaihui in the winter of 1920.*[63]

2.3 Founding the Communist Party of

China: 1921–22

The Communist Party of China was founded by Chen

Duxiu and Li Dazhao in the French concession of Shang-hai in 1921 as a study society and informal network. Maoset up a Changsha branch, also establishing a branch of

Location of the first Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in

July 1921, in Xintiandi , former French Concession , Shanghai.

the Socialist Youth Corps. Opening a bookstore underthe control of his new Cultural Book Society, its purposewas to propagate revolutionary literature throughout Hu-nan.*[64] Helping to organise workers' strikes in the win-ter of 1920–21,*[65] he was involved in the movementfor Hunanautonomy, hoping that a Hunanese constitutionwould increase civil liberties in the province, making hisrevolutionary activity easier; although the movement wassuccessful, in later life, he denied any involvement.*[66]By 1921, small Marxist groups existed in Shanghai, Bei-jing, Changsha, Wuhan, Canton and Jinan, and it was de-cided to hold a central meeting, which began in Shang-hai on July 23, 1921. The first session of the NationalCongress of the Communist Party of China was attended

by 13 delegates, Mao included, and met in a girls' schoolthat was closed for the summer. After the authoritiessent a police spy to the congress, the delegates movedto a boat on South Lake near Chiahsing to escape de-tection. Although Soviet and Comintern delegates at-tended, the first congress ignored Lenin's advice to ac-cept a temporary alliance between the Communists andthe“bourgeois democrats”who also advocated nationalrevolution; instead they stuck to the orthodox Marxist be-lief that only the urban proletariat could lead a socialistrevolution.*[67]

Now party secretary for Hunan, Mao was stationed in

Changsha, from which he went on a Communist recruit-ment drive.*[68] In August 1921, he founded the Self-Study University, through which readers could gain ac-

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2.4 Collaboration with the Kuomintang: 1922–27 5

cess to revolutionary literature, housed in the premisesof the Society for the Study of Wang Fuzhi.*[68] Takingpart in the YMCA mass education movement to fight il-literacy, he opened a Changsha branch, though replacedthe usual textbooks with revolutionary tracts in order tospread Marxism among the students.*[69] He continued

organizing the labour movement to strike against the ad-ministration of Hunan Governor Zhao Hengti, particu-larly following the execution of two anarchists.*[70] InJuly 1922, the Second Congress of the Communist Partytook place in Shanghai, though Mao lost the address andcouldn't attend. Adopting Lenin's advice, the delegatesagreed to an alliance with the “bourgeois democrats”of the KMT for the good of the “national revolution”. Communist Party members joined the KMT, hopingto push its politics leftward.*[71] Mao enthusiasticallyagreed with this decision, arguing for an alliance acrossChina's socio-economic classes; a vocal anti-imperialist,

in his writings he lambasted the governments of Japan,UK and US, describing the latter as “the most murder-ous of hangmen”.*[72] Mao's strategy for the successfuland famous Anyuan coal mines strikes (contrary to laterParty historians) depended on both “proletarian”and“bourgeois”strategies. The success depended on inno-

vative organizing by Liu Shaoqi and Li Lisan who notonly mobilised the miners, but formed schools and co-operatives. They also engaged local intellectuals, gentry,military officers, merchants, Red Gang dragon heads andchurch clergy in support.*[73]

2.4 Collaboration with the Kuomintang:

1922–27

At the Third Congress of the Communist Party in Shang-hai in June 1923, the delegates reaffirmed their commit-ment to working with the KMT against the Beiyang gov-ernment and imperialists. Supporting this position, Maowas elected to the Party Committee, taking up residencein Shanghai. *[74] Attending the First KMT Congress,held in Guangzhou in early 1924, Mao was elected analternate member of the KMT Central Executive Com-mittee, and put forward four resolutions to decentralisepower to urban and rural bureaus. His enthusiastic sup-port for the KMT earned him the suspicion of some Com-munists.*[75] In late 1924, Mao returned to Shaoshan torecuperate from an illness. Discovering that the peas-antry were increasingly restless due to the upheaval of thepast decade, some hadseized land fromwealthy landown-ers to found communes; this convinced him of the rev-olutionary potential of the peasantry, an idea advocatedby the KMT but not the Communists.*[76] As a re-sult, he was appointed to run the KMT's Peasant Move-ment Training Institute, also becoming Director of itsPropaganda Department and editing its Political Weekly

(Zhengzhi zhoubao) newsletter.*[77]*[78] Through thePeasant Movement Training Institute, Mao took an ac-tive role in organizing the revolutionary Hunanese peas-

Mao the revolutionary in 1927.

Mao making speeches to the masses

ants and preparing them for militant activity, taking themthrough military training exercises and getting them tostudy various left-wing texts.*[79] In the winter of 1925,Mao fled to Canton after his revolutionary activities at-tracted the attention of Zhao's regional authorities.*[80]

The Communists controlled the left wing of the KMT,struggling for power with the party's right wing. Whenparty leader Sun Yat-sen died in May 1925, he wassucceeded by a rightist, Chiang Kai-shek, who initi-ated moves to marginalise the position of the Commu-nists.*[81] Mao nevertheless supported Chiang's decision

to overthrow the Beiyang government and their foreignimperialist allies using the National Revolutionary Army,who embarked on the Northern Expedition in 1926.*[82]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Expeditionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Revolutionary_Armyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shekhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangzhouhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant_Movement_Training_Institute_at_Guangzhouhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant_Movement_Training_Institute_at_Guangzhouhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangzhouhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anyuan_Coal_Mine_Strikehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Hengtihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y.C._James_Yen#Biography


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6 3 CIVIL WAR

In the wake of this expedition, peasants rose up, appro-priating the land of the wealthy landowners, whom werein many cases killed. Such uprisings angered senior KMTfigures, who were themselves landowners, emphasizingthe growing class and ideological divide within the rev-olutionary movement.*[83]

“Revolution is not a dinner party, nor an essay, nor apainting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be so re-fined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, cour-teous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is aninsurrection, an act of violence by which one class over-throws another.”

—Mao, February 1927.*[84]

In March 1927, Mao appeared at the Third Plenum ofthe KMT Central Executive Committee in Wuhan, whichsought to strip General Chiang of his power by appointing

Wang Jingwei leader. There, Mao played an active rolein the discussions regarding the peasant issue, defendinga set of “Regulations for the Repression of Local Bul-lies and Bad Gentry”, which advocated the death penaltyor life imprisonment for anyone found guilty of counter-revolutionary activity, arguing that in a revolutionary sit-uation, “peaceful methods cannot suffice”.*[85]*[86]In April 1927, Mao was appointed to the KMT's five-member Central Land Committee, urging peasants torefuse to pay rent. Mao led another group to put togethera“Draft Resolution on theLand Question”, which calledfor the confiscation of land belonging to“local bulliesand

bad gentry, corrupt officials, militarists and all counter-revolutionary elements in the villages”. Proceeding tocarry out a“Land Survey”, he stated that anyone own-ing over 30 mou (four and a half acres), constituting 13%of the population, were uniformly counter-revolutionary.He accepted that there was great variation in revolution-ary enthusiasm across the country, and that a flexible pol-icy of land redistribution was necessary.*[87] Presentinghis conclusions at the Enlarged Land Committee meet-ing, many expressed reservations, some believing that itwent too far, and others not far enough. Ultimately, hissuggestions were only partially implemented.*[88]

3 Civil War

Main articles: Chinese Civil War and Chinese Revolu-tion (1949)

3.1 The Nanchang and Autumn Harvest

Uprisings: 1927

Fresh from the success of the Northern Expedition tooverthrow the warlords, Chiang turned on the Commu-nists, who by now numbered in the tens of thousands

Flag of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army

across China. Ignoring the orders of the Wuhan-basedKMT government, he marched on Shanghai, a city con-trolled by Communist militias. Although the Commu-

nists welcomed Chiang's arrival, he turned on them, mas-sacring 5000 with the aid of the Green Gang.*[86]*[89]Chiang's army then marched on Wuhan, but was pre-vented from taking the city by Communist General YeTing and his troops.*[90] Chiang's allies also attackedCommunists; in Beijing, 19 leading Communists werekilled by Zhang Zuolin, while in Changsha, He Jian'sforces machine gunned hundreds of peasant militia-men.*[91]*[92] That May, tens of thousands of Commu-nists and their sympathisers were killed by nationalists,with the CPC losing approximately 15,000 of its 25,000members.*[92]

"'Eagles cleave the air,Fish glide in the limpid deep;Under freezing skies a millioncreatures contend in freedom.Brooding over this immensity,I ask, on this boundless landWho rules over man's destiny?"

—Excerpt from Mao'spoem“Changsha”, September 1927.*[93]

The CPC continued supporting the Wuhan KMT gov-ernment, a position Mao initially supported,*[92] buthe had changed his mind by the time of the CPC'sFifth Congress, deciding to stake all hope on the peas-ant militia.*[94] The question was rendered moot whenthe Wuhan government expelled all Communists from theKMT on July 15.*[94] The CPC founded the Workers'and Peasants' Red Army of China, better known as the"Red Army", to battle Chiang. A battalion led by Gen-eral Zhu De was ordered to take the city of Nanchang onAugust 1, 1927 in what became known as the NanchangUprising; initially successful, they were forced into re-treat after five days, marching south to Shantou, and fromthere being driven into the wilderness of Fujian.*[94] Ap-

pointed commander-in-chief of the Red Army, Mao ledfour regiments against Changsha in the Autumn HarvestUprising, hoping to spark peasant uprisings across Hu-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_Harvest_Uprisinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_Harvest_Uprisinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujianhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shantouhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanchang_Uprisinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanchang_Uprisinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanchanghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Dehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_People%2527s_Liberation_Army#From_the_founding_of_the_People%2527s_Liberation_Army_to_the_Korean_Warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Zuolinhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Tinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Tinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Ganghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_People%2527s_Liberation_Army#From_the_founding_of_the_People.27s_Liberation_Army_to_the_Korean_Warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Revolution_(1949)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Revolution_(1949)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_Warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-revolutionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-revolutionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Jingwei


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3.3 Jiangxi Soviet Republic of China: 1929–1934 7

nan. On the eve of the attack, Mao composed a poem—theearliest of his to survive—titled“Changsha”. Hisplanwas to attack the KMT-held city from three directions onSeptember 9, but the Fourth Regiment deserted to theKMT cause, attacking the Third Regiment. Mao's armymade it to Changsha, but could not take it; by September

15, he accepted defeat, with 1000 survivors marching eastto the Jinggang Mountains of Jiangxi.*[93]*[95]

In their biography of Mao, Mao: The Unknown Story,Jung Chang and Jon Halliday dispute this version ofevents.*[96] Chang and Halliday claim that the uprisingwas in fact sabotaged byMao to allow him to snare a forceof Nationalist mutineers from Nanchang who were cross-ing over to the CPC, prevent them from defecting to anyother CPC leader, and enhance his own personal powerwithin the CPC. They claim that Mao's three-day delayin seeing the other leaders of the Hunan uprising, sched-uled for August 15 but delayed by Mao until August 18,

was to allow Mao to check that the mutineers would stillbe passing close by and that if Mao had not had the op-portunity of adding this force to his own forces within theCPC he would not have gone to south Hunan.*[97]

Chang and Halliday also claim that Mao lobbied to nar-row down the uprising and talked the other leaders (in-cluding Russian diplomats at the Soviet consulate inChangsha who, Chang and Halliday claim, had been con-trolling much of the CPC activity) into striking only atChangsha. This, they say, was in order to allow Maoto also gain control of a force of 1,700 peasant rebelsand defectors from the Nationalist army who were near

Changsha. Chang and Halliday point out that once Maohad gained control of these men, he then moved to a posi-tion 100 km east of Changsha at Wenjiashi and was thereon September 11, the uprising's launch date, far fromhis troops, and that on September 14, before the troopshad reached Changsha or met heavy resistance, Mao or-dered them to abandon the assault on Changsha and con-verge on his position. Chang and Halliday report a viewsent to Moscow by the secretary of the Soviet Consulatein Changsha that the retreat was “the most despicabletreachery and cowardice.”*[97]

Chang and Halliday allege that Mao later fabricated the

version of events in order to hide the fact that far fromleading a peasant uprising, he hijacked it for his own per-sonal ends, sabotaged the organisation, and departed withthe new troops before the attack on Changsha had be-gun.*[97]

3.2 Base in Jinggangshan: 1927–1928

Hiding in Shanghai, the CPC Central Committee ex-pelled Mao from their ranks and from the Hunan Provin-cial Committee, punishment for his “military oppor-

tunism”, for his focus on rural activity, and for being toolenient with“bad gentry”. They nevertheless adoptedthree policies he had long championed: the immediate

formation of Workers' councils, the confiscation of allland without exemption, and the rejection of the KMT.Mao's response was to ignore them.*[98] Setting up basein Jinggangshan City, an area of the Jinggang Mountains,Mao united five villages as a self-governing state, support-ing the confiscation of land from rich landlords, who were

“re-educated”and sometimes executed. He ensured thatno massacres took place in the region, pursuing a morelenient approach than that advocated by the Central Com-mittee.*[99] Proclaiming that“Even the lame, the deafand the blind could all come in useful for the revolution-ary struggle”, he boosted the army's numbers,*[100] in-corporating two groups of bandits into his army, buildinga force of around 1,800 troops.*[101] He laid down rulesfor his soldiers: prompt obedience to orders, all confis-cations were to be turned over to the government, andnothing was to be confiscated from poorer peasants. Indoing so, he molded his men into a disciplined, efficient

fighting force.*

[100]“When the enemy advances, we retreat.

When the enemy rests, we harass him.When the enemy avoids a battle, we attack.When the enemy retreats, we advance.”

Mao's advice in combating the Kuomintang,1928.*[102]*[103]

In spring 1928, the Central Committee ordered Mao'stroops to southern Hunan, hoping to spark peasant up-risings. Mao was skeptical, but complied. Reaching Hu-

nan, they were attacked by the KMT and fled after heavylosses. Meanwhile, KMT troops had invaded Jinggang-shan, leaving them without a base.*[104] Wandering thecountryside, Mao's forces came across a CPC regimentled by General Zhu De and Lin Biao; they united, at-tempting to retake Jinggangshan. Initially successful, theKMT counter-attacked, pushing the CPC back; over thenext few weeks, they fought an entrenched guerrilla warin the mountains.*[102]*[105] Central Committee againordered Mao to march to south Hunan, but he refused, re-maining at his base. Contrastingly, Zhu complied, lead-ing his armies away; the KMT attacked Mao's base, andalthough his troops fended them off for 25 days, Mao left

the camp at night to find reinforcements. Reuniting withthe decimated Zhu's army, they returned to Jinggangshanand retook the base. Joined by a defecting KMT regimentand Peng Dehuai's Fifth Red Army, themountainousareawas unable to grow enough crops to feed everyone, lead-ing to food shortages throughout the winter.*[106]*[107]

3.3 Jiangxi Soviet Republic of China:

1929–1934

In January 1929, Mao and Zhu evacuated the base and

took their armies south, to the area around Tonggu andXinfeng in Jiangxi, which they consolidated as a newbase.*[108] Together having 2,000 men, with a further

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiangxihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinfeng_County,_Jiangxihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonggu_Countyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peng_Dehuaihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Biaohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Dehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinggangshan_Cityhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%2527_councilhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao:_The_Unknown_Storyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiangxihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinggang_Mountains


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3.5 Alliance with the Kuomintang: 1935–1940 9

3.4 The Long March: 1934–1935

On October 14, 1934, the Red Army broke throughthe KMT line on the Jiangxi Soviet's south-west cor-ner at Xinfeng with 85,000 soldiers and 15,000 party

cadres and embarked on the "Long March". In order tomake the escape, many of the wounded and the ill, aswell as women and children, were left behind, defendedby a group of guerrilla fighters whom the KMT mas-sacred.*[129]*[130] The 100,000 who escaped headedto southern Hunan, first crossing the Xiang River afterheavy fighting,*[130]*[131] and then the Wu River, inGuizhou where they took Zunyi in January 1935. Tem-porarily resting in the city, they held a conference; here,Mao was elected to a position of leadership, becomingChairman of the Politburo, and de facto leader of bothParty and Red Army, in part because his candidacy wassupported by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. Insisting thatthey operate as a guerrilla force, he laid out a destina-tion: the Shenshi Soviet in Shaanxi, Northern China,from where the Communists could focus on fighting theJapanese. Mao believed that in focusing on the anti-imperialist struggle, the Communists would earn the trustof the Chinese people, who in turn would renounce theKMT.*[132]

From Zunyi, Mao led his troops to Loushan Pass, wherethey faced armed opposition but successfully crossedthe river. Chiang flew into the area to lead his armiesagainst Mao, but the Communists outmanoeuvred himand crossed the Jinsha River.*[133] Faced with the moredifficult task of crossing the Tatu River, they man-aged it by fighting a battle over the Luding Bridge inMay, taking Luding.*[134] Marching through the moun-tain ranges around Ma'anshan,*[135] in Moukung, West-ern Szechuan they encountered the 50,000-strong CPCFourth Front Army of Zhang Guotao, together proceed-ing to Maoerhkai and then Gansu. However, Zhangand Mao disagreed over what to do; the latter wishedto proceed to Shaanxi, while Zhang wanted to flee eastto Tibet or Sikkim, far from the KMT threat. It wasagreed that they would go their separate ways, with ZhuDe joining Zhang.*[136] Mao's forces proceeded north,

through hundreds of miles of Grasslands, anarea ofquag-mire where they were attacked by Manchu tribesmanand where many soldiers succumbed to famine and dis-ease.*[137]*[138] Finally reaching Shaanxi, they foughtoff both the KMT and an Islamic cavalry militia be-fore crossing over the Min Mountains and Mount Liu-pan and reaching the Shenshi Soviet; only 7-8000 hadsurvived.*[138]*[139] The Long March cemented Mao'sstatus as the dominant figure in the party. In November1935, he was named chairman of the Military Commis-sion. From this point onward, Mao was the CommunistParty's undisputed leader, even though he would not be-

come party chairman until 1943.

*

[140]Many if not most of the events as later described byMao and which the CPC claims are true are seen as

false by Jung Chang. During the decade spent research-ing the book, Mao: The Unknown Story,*[141] for in-stance, Chang found evidence that there was no battleat Luding and that the CPC crossed the bridge unop-posed. Chang interviewed an eye witness to the crossingof the Dadu (Tatu) River at Luding, Mrs Zhu De, then

93 years old, who recalled no deaths, except for two peo-ple who fell from the bridge at Luding while repairing it.Chang also points out the contradictions in the versionof events as told by the CPC, which said the bridge wastaken by a suicide attack by 22 men, but that these menwere also present at a ceremony following the crossing ofthe bridge.*[142]

Chang and Halliday also dispute the Communist Party ofChina's official version by claiming that far from the LongMarch being a masterful piece of strategy by the CPC,it was in fact devised by Chiang Kai-shek, leader of theKMT. Chiang's aim was to give the CPC an easy route

to follow through warlord controlled areas. Hemmed inby Nationalist troops on three sides, the CPC was forcedto follow the route dictated by the KMT. The aim of thiswas to allow KMT forces to follow the reds into warlordcontrolled areas such as Sichuan and win over warlordsscared of the sudden arrival of the Communist force. Theonly glitch in this plan came when Mao refused to followthe easy route into Sichuan where he was to meet up witha red army much larger than his ownandledby a morese-nior CPC member, Chang Kuo Tao. Mao recognised thethreat Chang posed to his rising position in the CPC anddoubled back to give himself time to further cement his

political power, causing the needless deaths of thousandsof his own troops.*[142]

Chang and Halliday also claim that Mao and other topCPC leaders did not walk the Long March, but were car-ried on litters – Mao himself told his staff that being car-ried on the Long March gave him much time to read –with the litter bearers' knees being worn to the bone whenforced to carry Mao up mountains.*[142]

3.5 Alliance with the Kuomintang: 1935–

1940

Main article: Second Sino-Japanese WarArriving at the Yan'an Soviet during October 1935,

Mao's troops settled in Pao An. Remaining theretill spring 1936, they developed links with localcommunities, redistributed and farmed the land,offered medical treatment and began literacy pro-grams.*[138]*[143]*[144] Mao now commanded15,000 soldiers, boosted by the arrival of He Long's menfrom Hunan and the armies of Zhu Den and Zhang Guo-tao, returning from Tibet.*[143] In February 1936 theyestablished the North West Anti-Japanese Red Army

University in Yan'an, through which they trained increas-ing numbers of new recruits.*[145] In January 1937 theybegan the“anti-Japanese expedition”, sending groups

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Longhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan%2527anhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_Warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_Mountainshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaanxihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchu_peoplehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian-Manchurian_grasslandhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Dehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Dehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikkimhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibethttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gansuhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Guotaohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%2527anshanhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luding_Countyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luding_Bridgehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatu_Riverhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinsha_Riverhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loushan_Passhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaanxihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalinhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_of_the_Communist_Party_of_Chinahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zunyi_Conferencehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zunyihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guizhouhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_River_(Yuan_River,_north)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiang_Riverhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March


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10 3 CIVIL WAR

In an effort to defeat the Japanese, Mao (left) agreed to collab-

orate with Chiang (right).

of guerrilla fighters into Japanese-controlled territory toundertake sporadic attacks,*[146]*[147] while in May1937, a Communist Conference was held in Yan'anto discuss the situation.*[148] Western reporters alsoarrived in the“Border Region”(as the Soviet had beenrenamed); most notable were Edgar Snow, who usedhis experiences as a basis for Red Star Over China, andAgnes Smedley, whose accounts brought internationalattention to Mao's cause.*[149]

On the Long March, Mao's wife He Zizen had been in-jured from a shrapnel wound to the head, and so traveledto Moscow for medical treatment; Mao proceeded to di-vorce her and marry an actress, Jiang Qing.*[118]*[150]Mao moved into a cave-house and spent much of histime reading, tending his garden and theorizing.*[151]He came to believe that the Red Army alone was un-able to defeat the Japanese, and that a Communist-led“government of national defence”should be formed with

the KMT and other“bourgeois nationalist”elements toachieve this goal.*[152] Although despising Chiang Kai-shek as a “traitor to the nation”,*[153] on May 5 hetelegrammed the Military Council of the Nanking Na-tional Government proposing a military alliance, a courseof action advocated by Stalin.*[154] Although Chiang in-tended to ignore Mao's message and continue the civil

war, he was arrested by one of his own generals, ZhangXueliang, in Xi'an, leading to the Xi'an Incident; Zhangforced Chiang to discuss the issue with the Communists,resulting in the formation of a United Front with conces-sions on both sides on December 25, 1937.*[155]

The Japanese had taken both Shanghai and Nanking(Nanjing)—resulting in the Nanking Massacre, an atroc-ity Mao never spoke of all his life—pushing the Kuom-intang government inland to Chungking.*[156] TheJapanese's brutality led increasing numbers of Chinesejoining the fight, with the Red Army growing from50,000 to 500,000.*[157]*[158] In August 1938, the Red

Army formed the New Fourth Army and the EighthRoute Army, which were nominally under the com-mand of Chiang's National Revolutionary Army.*[159]

Mao in 1938, writing On Protracted War.

In August 1940, the Red Army initiated the HundredRegiments Campaign, in which 400,000 troops at-tacked the Japanese simultaneously in five provinces;

a military success, it resulted in the death of 20,000Japanese, the disruption of railways and the loss of acoal mine.*[158]*[160] From his base in Yan'an, Maoauthored several texts for his troops, including Philos-ophy of Revolution, which offered an introduction tothe Marxist theory of knowledge, Protracted Warfare,which dealt with guerilla and mobile military tactics, andNew Democracy, which laid forward ideas for China's fu-ture.*[161]

3.6 Resuming civil war: 1940–1949

In 1944, the Americans sent a special diplomatic en-voy, called the Dixie Mission, to the Communist Partyof China. According to Edwin Moise, in Modern China: A History 2nd Edition:

Most of the Americans were favourablyimpressed. The CPC seemed less corrupt,more unified, and more vigorous in its resis-tance to Japan than the KMT. United Statesfliersshot down over North China ... confirmedto their superiors that the CPC was both strong

and popular over a broad area. In the end, thecontacts with theUSA developedwith theCPCled to very little.

After the end of World War II, the U.S. continued theirmilitary assistance to Chiang Kai-shek and his KMTgovernment forces against the People's Liberation Army(PLA) led by Mao Zedong in the civil war for controlof China. Likewise, the Soviet Union gave quasi-covertsupport to Mao by their occupation of north east China,which allowed the PLA to move in en masse and tooklarge supplies of arms left by the Japanese's Kwantung

Army.Mao, to enhance the Red Army's military operationsnamed his close associate, then General Zhu De to be

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Dehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwantung_Armyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwantung_Armyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Unionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_Warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%2527s_Liberation_Armyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Missionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Regiments_Campaignhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Regiments_Campaignhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Revolutionary_Armyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Route_Armyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Route_Armyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Fourth_Armyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacrehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghaihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_United_Front_(China)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi%2527an_Incidenthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi%2527anhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Xuelianghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Xuelianghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Qinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Smedleyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_Over_Chinahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Snow


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11

its Commander-in-Chief under his supervision and con-trol as the Chairman of the Communist Party of Chinathat hasjurisdiction over thesaid army through theparty'sCentral Military Commission headed by future PremierZhou En-Lai

In 1948, under direct orders from Mao, the People's Lib-eration Army starved out the Kuomintang forces occupy-ing the city of Changchun. At least 160,000 civilians arebelieved to have perished during the siege, which lastedfrom June until October. PLA lieutenant colonel ZhangZhenglu, who documented the siege in his book WhiteSnow, Red Blood , compared it to Hiroshima: “The ca-sualties were about the same. Hiroshima took nine sec-onds; Changchun took five months.”*[162] On January21, 1949, Kuomintang forces suffered great losses indecisive battles against Mao's forces.*[163] In the earlymorning of December 10, 1949, PLA troops laid siegeto Chongqing and Chengdu on mainland China, and Chi-

ang Kai-shek fled from the mainland to Formosa (Tai-wan).*[163]*[164]

4 Leadership of China

Mao Zedong declares the founding of the modern People's Re-

public of China, October 1, 1949.

The People's Republic of China was established on Octo-ber 1, 1949. It was the culmination of over two decadesof civil and international wars. Mao famously announced:“We (the Chinese people) have stood up.”*[165]

Mao took up residence in Zhongnanhai, a compound nextto the Forbidden City in Beijing, and there he orderedthe construction of an indoor swimming pool and otherbuildings. Mao's physician Li Zhisui described him asconducting business either in bed or by the side of thepool, preferring not to wear formal clothes unless ab-solutely necessary.*[166] Li's book, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, is regarded as controversial, especially

by those sympathetic to Mao.

*

[167]In October 1950, Mao made the decision to send thePeople's Volunteer Army, a special unit of the People's

Liberation Army, China's armed forces into the war inKorea and fight against the United Nations forces andthe South Korean armies led by the U.S. as well as toreinforce the armed forces of North Korea, the KoreanPeople's Army, which had been in full retreat. Historicalrecords showed that Mao directed the PVA campaigns in

the Korean War to the minute details as Chairman of theruling CPC's Central Military Commission that overseesthe country's armed forces. Because he was the Chair-man of the CPC's CMC, he was also the Supreme Com-mander in Chief of the PLA aside from being the Chair-man of the People's Republic and Chairman of the rul-ing CPC. The PVA was under the overall command ofthen newly installed Premier Zhou Enlai and with Gen-eral Peng Dehuai as field commander and political com-missar as well.*[168]

Mao with his fourth wife, Jiang Qing , called “Madame Mao” ,

1946

Along with land reform, during which significant num-bers of landlords and well-to-do peasants were beaten

to death at mass meetings organised by the CommunistParty as land was taken from them and given to poorerpeasants,*[169] there was also the Campaign to SuppressCounter-revolutionaries,*[170] which involved public ex-ecutions targeting mainly former Kuomintang officials,businessmen accused of “disturbing”the market, for-mer employees of Western companies and intellectualswhose loyalty was suspect.*[171] The U.S. State depart-ment in 1976 estimated that there may have been a mil-lion killed in the land reform, and 800,000 killed in thecounter-revolutionary campaign.*[172]

Mao himself claimed that a total of 700,000 people

were killed in attacks on“counter-revolutionaries”dur-ing the years 1950–52.*[173] However, because therewas a policy to select “at least one landlord, and usu-

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12 4 LEADERSHIP OF CHINA

ally several, in virtually every village for public execu-tion”,*[174] the number of deaths range between 2 mil-lion*[174]*[175] and 5 million.*[176]*[177] In addition,at least 1.5 million people,*[178] perhaps as many as 4 to6 million,*[179] were sent to “reform through labour”camps where many perished.*[179] Mao played a per-

sonal role in organizing the mass repressions and estab-lished a system of execution quotas,*[180] which wereoften exceeded.*[170] He defended these killings as nec-essary for the securing of power.*[181]

Starting in 1951, Mao initiated two successive move-ments in an effort to rid urban areas of corruption by tar-geting wealthy capitalists and political opponents, knownas the three-anti/five-anti campaigns. Whereas the three-anti campaign was a focused purge of government, in-dustrial and party officials, the five-anti campaign setits sights slightly broader, targeting capitalist elements ingeneral.*[182] Workers denounced their bosses, spouses

turned on their spouses, and children informed on theirparents; the victims were often humiliated at struggle ses-sions, a method designed to intimidate and terrify peopleto the maximum. Mao insisted that minor offenders becriticised and reformed or sent to labour camps,“whilethe worst among them should be shot”. These campaignstook several hundred thousand additional lives, the vastmajority via suicide.*[183]

In Shanghai, suicide by jumping from tall buildings be-came so commonplace that residents avoided walking onthe pavement near skyscrapers for fear that suicides mightland on them.*[184] Some biographers have pointed out

that driving those perceived as enemies to suicide was acommon tactic during the Mao-era. For example, in hisbiography of Mao, Philip Short notes that in the Yan'anRectification Movement, Mao gave explicit instructionsthat“no cadre is to be killed”, but in practice allowedsecurity chief Kang Sheng to drive opponents to suicideand that“this pattern was repeated throughout his lead-ership of the People's Republic.”*[7]

Mao at Joseph Stalin's 70th birthday celebration in Moscow, De-

cember 1949

Following the consolidation of power, Mao launched the

First Five-Year Plan (1953–58). The plan aimed to endChinese dependence upon agriculture in order to becomea world power. With the Soviet Union's assistance, new

industrial plants were built and agricultural productioneventually fell to a point where industry was beginningto produce enough capital that China no longer neededthe USSR's support. The success of the First-Five YearPlan was to encourage Mao to instigate the Second Five-Year Plan in 1958. Mao also launched a phase of rapid

collectivization. The CPC introduced price controls aswell as a Chinese character simplification aimed at in-creasing literacy. Large-scale industrialization projectswere also undertaken.

Programs pursued during this time include the HundredFlowers Campaign, in which Mao indicated his sup-posed willingness to consider different opinions abouthow China should be governed. Given the freedom to ex-press themselves, liberal and intellectual Chinese beganopposing the Communist Party and questioning its lead-ership. This was initially tolerated and encouraged. Aftera few months, Mao's government reversed its policy and

persecuted those, totalling perhaps 500,000, who criti-cised, as well as those who were merely alleged to havecriticised, the party in what is called the Anti-RightistMovement. Authors such as Jung Chang have alleged thatthe Hundred Flowers Campaign was merely a ruse to rootout“dangerous”thinking.*[185]

Li Zhisui, Mao's physician, suggested that Mao had ini-tially seen the policy as a way of weakening those withinhis party who opposed him and was surprised by the ex-tent of criticism and the fact that it began to be directedat his own leadership.*[186] It was only then that he usedit as a method of identifying and subsequently persecut-

ing those critical of his government. The Hundred Flow-ers movement led to the condemnation, silencing, anddeath of many citizens, also linked to Mao's Anti-RightistMovement, with death tolls possibly in the millions.

4.1 Great Leap Forward

Mao with Nikita Khrushchev and Ho Chi Minh during a state

dinner in Beijing, 1959

In January 1958, Mao launched the second Five-YearPlan, known as the Great Leap Forward, a plan intendedas an alternative model for economic growth to the So-

viet model focusing on heavy industry that was advo-cated by others in the party. Under this economic pro-gram, the relatively small agricultural collectives which

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4.1 Great Leap Forward 13

had been formed to date were rapidly merged into farlarger people's communes, and manyof the peasants wereordered to work on massive infrastructure projects and onthe production of iron and steel. Some private food pro-duction was banned; livestock and farm implements werebrought under collective ownership.

Under the Great Leap Forward, Mao and other partyleaders ordered the implementation of a variety of un-proven and unscientific new agricultural techniques bythe new communes. Combined with the diversion oflabour to steel production and infrastructure projects,these projects combined with cyclical natural disastersled to an approximately 15% drop in grain production in1959 followed by a further 10% decline in 1960 and norecovery in 1961.*[187]

In an effort to win favour with their superiors and avoidbeing purged, each layer in the party hierarchy exagger-

ated the amount of grain produced under them. Basedupon the fabricated success, party cadres were orderedto requisition a disproportionately high amount of thetrue harvest for state use, primarily in the cities and ur-ban areas but also for export. The net result, whichwas compounded in some areas by drought and in oth-ers by floods, left rural peasants with little food for them-selves and many millions starved to death in the largestfamine known as the Great Chinese Famine. This faminewas a direct cause of the death of some 30 million Chi-nese peasants between 1959 and 1962.*[188] Further,many children who became emaciated and malnourishedduring years of hardship and struggle for survival died

shortly after the Great Leap Forward came to an end in1962.*[187]

The extent of Mao's knowledge of the severity of the sit-uation has been disputed. Mao's physician believed thathe may have been unaware of the extent of the famine,partly due to a reluctance to criticisehis policies anddeci-sions and the willingness of his staff to exaggerate or out-right fake reports regarding food production.*[189] Uponlearning of the extent of the starvation, Mao vowed tostop eating meat, an action followed by his staff.*[190]

Hong Kong-based historian Frank Dikötter,*[191] chal-

lenged the notion that Mao did not know about thefaminethroughout the country until it was too late:

The idea that the state mistakenly took toomuch grain from the countryside because it as-sumed that the harvest was much larger thanit was is largely a myth—at most partially truefor the autumn of 1958 only. In most casesthe party knew very well that it was starvingits own people to death. At a secret meetingin the Jinjiang Hotel in Shanghai dated March25, 1959, Mao specifically ordered the party toprocure up to one third of all the grain, much

more than had ever been the case. At the meet-ing he announced that“To distribute resourcesevenly will only ruin the Great Leap Forward.

In the beginning, commune members were able to eat for free

at the commune canteens. This changed when food production

slowed to a halt.

When there is not enough to eat, people starveto death. It is better to let half of the peo-ple die so that the other half can eat their fill.”*[192]*[193]

Professor Emeritus Thomas P. Bernstein of the ColumbiaUniversity offered his view on Mao's statement on star-

vation in the March 25, 1959 meeting:

Some scholars believe that this shows Mao’s readiness to accept mass deathon an immensescale. My own view is that this is an instanceof Mao’s use of hyperbole, another being hiscasual acceptance of death of half the popu-lation during a nuclear war. In other contexts,Mao did not in fact accept mass death. Zhou’sChronology shows that in October 1958, Maoexpressed real concern that 40,000 people inYunnan had starved to death (p. 173). Shortly

after the March 25 meeting, he worried about25.2 million people who were at risk of starva-tion.*[194] But from late summer on, Mao es-sentially forgot about this issue, until, as noted,the“Xinyang Incident”came to light in Oc-tober 1960.*[195]

In the article “Mao Zedong and the Famine of 1959–1960: A Study in Wilfulness”, published in 2006 in TheChina Quarterly, Professor Thomas P. Bernstein also dis-cussed Mao's change of attitudes during different phasesof the Great Leap Forward:

In late autumn 1958, Mao Zedong stronglycondemned widespread practices of the Great

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4.3 Split from Soviet Union 15

had not proved as successful as planned. The most directof these was Minister of Defence and Korean War vet-eran General Peng Dehuai. Following Peng's criticismof the Great Leap Forward, Mao orchestrated a purge ofPeng and his supporters, stifling criticism of the GreatLeap policies. Senior officials who reported the truth

of the famine to Mao were branded as “right oppor-tunists.”*[202] A campaign against right-wing oppor-tunism was launched and resulted in party members andordinary peasants being sent to prison labor camps wheremany would subsequently die in the famine. Years laterthe CPC would conclude that as many as six million peo-ple were wrongly punished in the campaign.*[203]

Thenumber of deaths by starvation during theGreat LeapForward is deeply controversial. Until the mid-1980s,when official census figures were finally published by theChinese Government, little was known about the scaleof the disaster in the Chinese countryside, as the hand-

ful of Western observers allowed access during this timehad been restricted to model villages where they were de-ceived into believing that the Great Leap Forward hadbeen a great success. There was also an assumption thatthe flow of individual reports of starvation that had beenreaching theWest, primarily through Hong Kong andTai-wan, must have been localised or exaggerated as Chinawas continuing to claim record harvests and was a net ex-porter of grain through the period. Because Mao wantedto pay back early to the Soviets debts totalling 1.973 bil-lion yuan from 1960 to 1962,*[204] exports increasedby 50%, and fellow Communist regimes in North Korea,

North Vietnam and Albania were provided grain free ofcharge.*[196]

Censuses were carried out in China in 1953, 1964 and1982. The first attempt to analyse this data to estimatethe number of famine deaths was carried out by Amer-ican demographer Dr. Judith Banister and published in1984. Given the lengthy gaps between the censuses anddoubts over the reliability of the data, an accurate figureis difficult to ascertain. Nevertheless, Banister concludedthat the official data implied that around 15 million excessdeaths incurred in China during 1958–61, and that basedon her modelling of Chinese demographics during the

period and taking account of assumed under-reportingduring the famine years, the figure was around 30 mil-lion. The official statistic is 20 million deaths, as given byHu Yaobang.*[205] Yang Jisheng, a former Xinhua NewsAgency reporter who had privileged access and connec-tions available to no other scholars, estimates a death tollof 36 million.*[204] Frank Dikötter estimates that therewere at least 45 million premature deaths attributable tothe Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962.*[206] Var-ious other sources have put the figure at between 20 and46 million.*[207]

US President Gerald Ford watches as Henry Kissinger shakes

hands with Mao Zedong during their visit to China, December

2, 1975

4.3 Split from Soviet Union

Main article: Sino-Soviet split

On the international front, the period was dominated bythe further isolation of China. The Sino-Soviet split re-sulted in Nikita Khrushchev's withdrawal of all Soviettechnical experts and aid from the country. The split con-cerned the leadership of world Communism. The USSRhad a network of Communist parties it supported; Chinanow created its own rival network to battle it out for localcontrol of the left in numerous countries.*[208] LorenzM. Lüthi argues:

The Sino-Soviet split was one of the keyevents of the Cold War, equal in importanceto the construction of the Berlin Wall, theCuban Missile Crisis, the Second VietnamWar, and Sino-American rapprochement. Thesplit helped to determine the framework of theSecond Cold War in general, and influencedthe course of the Second Vietnam War in par-ticular.*[209]

The split resulted from Nikita Khrushchev's more mod-

erate Soviet leadership after the death of Stalin in March1953. Only Albania openly sided with China, therebyforming an alliance between the two countries whichwould last until after Mao's death in 1976. Warned thatthe Soviets had nuclear weapons, Mao minimized thethreat. Becker says that, “Mao believed that the bombwas a 'paper tiger', declaring to Khrushchev that it wouldnot matter if China lost 300 million people in a nuclearwar: the other half of the population would survive toensure victory.”*[210]

Stalin had established himself as the successor of“cor-rect”Marxist thought well before Mao controlled the

Communist Party of China, and therefore Mao neverchallenged the suitability of any Stalinist doctrine (at leastwhile Stalin was alive). Upon the death of Stalin, Mao

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believed (perhaps because of seniority) that the leader-ship of the“correct”Marxist doctrine would fall to him.The resulting tension between Khrushchev (at the headof a politically and militarily superior government), andMao (believing he had a superior understanding of Marx-ist ideology) eroded the previous patron-client relation-

ship between the Communist Party of the Soviet Unionand the CPC. In China, the formerly favourable Sovietswere now denounced as“revisionists”and listed along-side“American imperialism”as movements to oppose.

Partly surrounded by hostile American military bases (inSouth Korea, Japan, and Taiwan), China was now con-fronted with a new Soviet threat from the north and west.Both the internal crisis and the external threat called forextraordinary statesmanship from Mao, but as China en-tered the new decade the statesmen of the People's Re-public were in hostile confrontation with each other.

4.4 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

During the early 1960s, Mao became concerned with thenature of post-1959 China. He saw that the revolutionand Great Leap Forward had replaced the old elite witha new one. He was concerned that those in power werebecoming estranged from the people they were supposedto serve. Mao believed that a revolution of culture wouldunseat and unsettle the“ruling class”and keep China in astate of“perpetual revolution”that, theoretically, wouldserve the interests of the majority, not a tiny and priv-ileged elite.*[211] Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, thenthe State Chairman and General Secretary, respectively,had favoured the idea that Mao should be removed fromactual power but maintain his ceremonial and symbolicrole, with the party upholding all of his positive contri-butions to the revolution. They attempted to marginaliseMao by taking control of economic policy and assertingthemselves politically as well. Many claim that Mao re-sponded to Liu and Deng's movements by launching theGreat Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966. Somescholars, such as Mobo Gao, claim the case for this isperhaps overstated.*[212] Others, such as Frank Diköt-

ter, hold that Mao launched the Cultural Revolution towreak revenge on those who had dared to challenge himover the Great Leap Forward.*[213]

Believing that certain liberal bourgeois elements of soci-ety continued to threaten the socialist framework, groupsof young people known as the Red Guards struggledagainst authorities at all levels of society and even set uptheir own tribunals. Chaos reigned in much of the na-tion, and millions were persecuted, including a famousphilosopher, Chen Yuen. During the Cultural Revolu-tion, nearly all of the schools and universities in Chinawere closed and the young intellectuals living in cities

were ordered to the countryside to be“re-educated”bythe peasants, where they performed hard manual labourand other work.

The Cultural Revolution led to the destruction of muchof China's traditional cultural heritage and the imprison-ment of a huge number of Chinese citizens, as well ascreating general economic and social chaos in the coun-try. Millions of lives were ruined during this period, asthe Cultural Revolution pierced into every part of Chi-

nese life, depicted by such Chinese films as To Live, TheBlue Kite and Farewell My Concubine. It is estimated thathundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, perished in theviolence of the Cultural Revolution.*[207]

When Mao was informed of such losses, particularly thatpeople had been driven to suicide, he is alleged to havecommented:“People who try to commit suicide—don'tattempt to save them! . . . China is such a populousnation, it is not as if we cannot do without a few people.”*[214] The authorities allowed the Red Guards to abuseandkill opponentsof theregime. Said XieFuzhi, nationalpolice chief: “Don't say it is wrong of them to beat up

bad persons: if in anger they beat someone to death, thenso be it.”*[215] As a result, in August and September1966, there were a reported 1,772 people murdered bythe Red Guards in Beijing alone.*[216]

It was during this period that Mao chose Lin Biao, whoseemed to echo all of Mao's ideas, to become his succes-sor. Lin was later officially named as Mao's successor.By 1971, however, a divide between the two men becameapparent. Official history in China states that Lin wasplanning a military coup or an assassination attempt onMao. Lin Biao died in a plane crash over the air space ofMongolia, presumably on his way to flee China, probably

anticipating his arrest. The CPC declared that Lin wasplanning to depose Mao, and posthumously expelled Linfrom the party. At this time, Mao lost trust in many of thetop CPC figures. The highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intel-ligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa describedhis conversation with Nicolae Ceaușescu who told himabout a plot to kill Mao Zedong with the help of Lin Biaoorganised by the KGB.*[217]

Despite being considered a feminist figure by some and asupporter of women's rights, documents released by theUS Department of State in 2008 show that Mao declaredwomen to be a“nonsense”in 1973, in conversation with

Kissinger, joking that“China is a very poor country. Wedon't have much. What we have in excess is women...Let them go to your place. They will create disasters.That way you can lessen our burdens.”*[218] When Maooffered 10 million women, Kissinger replied by sayingthat Mao was “improving his offer”.*[219] Mao andKissinger then agreed that their comments on women beremoved from public records, prompted by a Chinese of-ficial who feared that Mao's comments might incur publicanger if released.*[220]

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17

4.4.1 “Mango fever”

On August 4 1968, Mao was presented with somemangoes by the Pakistani foreign minister, Syed Shari-fuddin Pirzada, in an apparent diplomatic gesture.*[221]Mao called the mangoes a“spiritual time bomb”*[222]

and shortly afterwards, Mao had his aide divide them upand send them to Mao Zedong Propaganda Teams acrossBeijing, starting with one started at Tsinghua Universityon August 5.*[223] On August 7, an article was publishedin the People's Daily saying:

In the afternoon of the fifth, when the greathappy news of Chairman Mao giving mangoesto the Capital Worker and Peasant Mao Ze-dong Thought Propaganda Team reached theTsinghua University campus, people immedi-ately gathered around the gift given by theGreat Leader Chairman Mao. They cried outenthusiastically and sand with wild abandon-ment. Tears swelled up in their eyes, and theyagain and again sincerely wished that our mostbeloved Great Leader lived thenthousand yearswithout bounds ... They all made phone calls totheir own work units to spread this happy news;and they also organised all kinds of celebratoryactivities all night long, and arrived at [the na-tional leadership compound] Zhongnanhai de-spite the rain to report the good news, and toexpress their loyalty to the Great Leader Chair-

man Mao.*[223]

Subsequent articles were also written by government of-ficials to propagandise receiving the mangoes,*[224] andanother poem in the People's Daily said: “Seeing thatgolden mango/Was as if seeing the great leader ChairmanMao ... Again and again touching that golden mango/thegolden mango was so warm”.*[225] Few people at thistime in China had ever seen a mango before, and a mangowas seen as“a fruit of extreme rarity, like Mushroomsof Immortality”.*[225]

One of the mangoes was sent to the Beijing Textile Fac-tory,*[223] whose revolutionary committee organised arally in the mangoes' honour.*[224] Workers read outquotations from Mao and celebrated the gift. Altars wereerected to prominently display the fruit; when the mangopeel began to rot after a few days, the fruit was peeled andboiled in a pot of water. Workers then filed by and eachwas given a spoonful of mango water. The revolutionarycommittee also made a wax replica of themango, anddis-played this as a centrepiece in the factory. There followedseveral months of“mango fever”, as the fruit became afocus of a“boundless loyalty”campaign for ChairmanMao. More replica mangoes were created and the repli-

cas were sent on tour around Beijing and elsewhere inChina. Many revolutionary committees visited the man-goes in Beijing from outlying provinces; approximately

half a million people greeted the replicas when they ar-rived in Chengdu. Badges and wall posters featuring themangoes and Mao were produced in the millions.*[223]The fruit was shared among all institutions that had beena part of the propaganda team, and large processions wereorganised in support of the zhengui lipin (“precious gift”

), as the mangoes were known as.*[226] One dentist in asmall village compared a mango to a sweet potato; he wasput on trial for malicious slander and executed.*[225]

It has been claimed that Mao used the mangoes to ex-press support for the workers who would go to whateverlengths necessary to end the factional fighting among stu-dents, and a“prime example of Mao's strategy of sym-bolic support”.*[224] Even up until early 1969, partic-ipants of Mao Zedong Thought study classes in Beijingwould return with mass-produces mango facsimiles andstill gain media attention in the provinces.*[226]

4.4.2 End of the Cultural Revolution

In 1969, Mao declared the Cultural Revolution to be over,although various historians in and outside of China markthe end of the Cultural Revolution – as a whole or inpart – in 1976, following the demise of Mao.*[227] Inthe last years of his life, Mao was faced with declininghealth due to either Parkinson's disease*[228] or, accord-ing to his physician, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,*[229]as well as lung ailments due to smoking and heart trou-ble.*[230] Some also attributed Mao's decline in health to

the betrayal of Lin Biao. Mao remained passive as var-ious factions within the Communist Party mobilised forthe power struggle anticipated after hi

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