Mao Zedong - The Picture Encyclopedia of Cultural Images

Mao Zedong - The Picture Encyclopedia of Cultural Images

Mao Zedong was a Chinese politician, military leader, and thinker. He was the founder of the People’s Republic of China, and its chairman until his death. Mao Zedong’s thoughts influenced generations of Chinese people, and he established the basis of the current political system of China, a still working alternative to that of the Soviet Union.

Mao Zedong was born in 1893 in a peasant family. He spent his youth studying, except for the early 1910’s, when he fought in the revolution which overthrew the monarchy in China. After finishing high school, Mao Zedong became a librarian and continued his studies in Beijing.

He first became associated with the Communist Party of China in 1921, when he attended an assembly of the Party. He did not take a major role in politics until the end of the 1920’s. In this chaotic era of Chinese history, Mao Zedong led a failed local uprising against the Kuomintang (the Chinese right wing), and in the end, barely escaped execution.

Mao Zedong then retreated to the mountains in south-eastern China, and established the Chinese Soviet Republic, which stood between 1931 and 1934. He became chairman of this state, and gave refuge to the Communists who were prosecuted by the governing Kuomintang. Mao also started to develop his political thinking, which later became known as Maoism. The first disciplines of this ideology aimed to translate Marxism into the agriculture-based political, social, and economic system of China.

By 1934, Kuomintang forces led by Chang Kai-shek surrounded the republic of Mao, and forced the guerillas and refugees to escape to the northwest of China and try to reunite with the forces of the Communist Party of China. This journey is called the “Long March,” as it took 9600 kilometers and one year to cross the country. During this time, Mao Zedong grown into a legendary figure among Chinese Communists, and a potential leader of the Communist Party.

During the Sino-Japanese war (1937-45), and World War II, Mao Zedong organized a Communist Red Army in China that matched the forces of the governing Kuomintang. The Red Army succeeded in repelling attacks from both Japan and the forces of Chiang Kai-shek. After the war ended, China remained torn in a civil war between the Soviet-supported forces of Mao Zedong and those of the Kuomintang, backed up by the United States. Finally, in 1949, the Red Army besieged and occupied the last town held by the government, and exiled Chiang Kai-shek and his followers to Taiwan.

Mao Zedong then established the People’s Republic of China, and started out with the same steps as every other Communist state in history: collectivization, redistribution of land, and industrialization. At this time, Mao Zedong was popular among the people of China, as he was believed to be a friend of the poor peasants and enemy of the rich and selfish politicians. This image was openly publicized in the media too, along with anti-imperialist and anti-Kuomintang propaganda, to help establish the Communist system.

As chairman of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong worked on adopting the Soviet model of Communism to China until 1958. During these years, he also built a personality cult, and amended Maoism with several thoughts. From 1949 on, he lived in relative isolation in his luxurious villa near the Forbidden City. He knew little of the everyday life and hardships of people. He traveled around in the country by a special luxury train, and his subordinates organized everything on the way he went, from a happy crowd in train stations to the planting of rice fields near the tracks during the great famine.

After Stalin’s death and Khrushchev’s renouncing of the great leader, the relationship between China and the Soviet Union quickly degraded into hostility, which gave China another opportunity and reason to work on its own way of building Communism. According to some historians, the breakup between the two countries occurred because Mao Zedong expected himself to become the leader of the Communist Block based on seniority.

1958 brought a great change in the policies of Mao Zedong. He announced the Great Leap, a program of radical economic, social, and cultural reforms. The vast majority of the reform did not have any connection with scientific facts, and was based on ideas of the leaders of the party rather than work of experts. The heavy industrialization ordered by the new policies required peasants to work on the development of infrastructure and in small scale versions of the heavy industry (like steel production) instead of agriculture. By 1962, this resulted in an immense drop in food production throughout China. The ensuing famine caused the death of tens of millions. Due to the faulty reports that the local Communist officials filed towards the higher levels of hierarchy, Mao Zedong allegedly never learned the real scale of the famine.

In 1961, Mao Zedong ended the Great Leap, and retreated from the front line of politics, allowing more realistic politicians like Deng Xiaoping to reverse the economic and social distress China was in. This established an opposition to Mao Zedong, and high ranking party officials started to plan to dispose of him. To render his opponents powerless, Mao Zedong introduced a Cultural Revolution in 1966.

The Cultural Revolution destroyed many values of China’s ancient culture, and gave power over culture to the plain people. This led to the prosecution of artists and thinkers in China. Another important step in the Cultural Revolution was the release of the book “Quotations from Chariman Mao Tse-tung,” also known as the little red book. This publication cited many quotes of Mao Zedong, and was used widely in all fields of life to settle disputes. The little red book shortly became the political version of the Bible in China.

In 1969, due to health problems, Mao Zedong retreated from politics, and remained passive, letting the people he was seeing fit govern China. In the last years of his life, he had various diseases including Parkinson disease and heart problems. He died in 1976.

After the death of Mao Zedong, in the ensuing chaos among the highest ranks of the Communist Party of China, Deng Xiaoping became the chairman of the People’s Republic of China. Though he did not hesitate to criticize the leadership of Mao, Mao Zedong have never been renounced like Stalin in the Soviet Union. The system of the People’s Republic of China changed much since Mao Zedong’s death, but his life’s work, especially the literature of Maoism still influence the life of Chinese people.

Picture 1: Mao Zedong