Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong (毛澤東 or in the Wade-Giles transliteration, Mao Tse-tung) was the leader of the Chinese Communist Party from 1935. Under his leadership it became the ruling party of China.

Mao succeeded in creating a unified China that was free of foreign domination, for the first time since the Opium War.

Mao died in 1976.

Evaluation of Mao's Career

Mao's rule had a devastating toll on the Chinese people, with many claiming he deliberately murdered 35 million people, while his policies were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions more.

From 1949-1953, during the period of consolidation of power after victory in the Chinese civil war, an estimated 8.4 million people were killed by Mao's government.

Following the consolidation of power, Mao launched a phase of rapid, forced collectivization, lasting until around 1958. This included the so-called Hundred Flowers campaign, in which Mao indicated he was willing to consider different opinions about how China should be governed. Given the freedom to express themselves, many Chinese began questioning the dogmas of the Communist Party. After allowing this for a few months, Mao's government, having taken names, reversed policy, and rounded up those who criticized the Party. Another 7.4 million people were killed.

This led to a period of political retrenchment, lasting from 1959-1963, in which nearly 11 million people were killed. Also in this period, Mao decided that Chinese agriculture should be collectivized. This resulted in a massive drop in agricultural production that was so severe, 27 million people starved to death. After a few years, this policy was reversed.

Following these events, other members of the Communist Party decided that Mao should be deprived of power. They attempted to marginalize Mao, without denouncing him, allowing him to remain a figurehead, but without any real authority. Mao responded to this by launching the Cultural Revolution, in which the Communist hierarchy was circumvented by giving power directly to the Red Guards, groups of young people, often teenagers, who set up their own tribunals and ruled as a mob. In this period nearly 8 million people were killed.

After the Cultural Revolution, Mao was disgraced within the Party, though never officially. He was deprived of any real power and lived the rest of his life as a figurehead, while the Party was actually run by his political opponents. After his death, Chinese leaders rejected Mao's policies openly.

See also: Genocide

Mao's Legacy

The ideology surrounding Mao's interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, also known as Maoism, had influence around the world among some left-wing radicals in the 1960s, and in various third world revolutionary movements such as Peru's Shining Path. In mainland China many people still considered Mao a hero in the first half of his life, but that he became a monster after he was in power. Many blame all those killings on his failure to control the mobs of the Red Guards instead of accusing of him plotting the deaths of millions of people. Same is true for the deaths due to the famine.

/Talk