Liberators - 02 - Mao Tse-tung (1893-1976)
Mao Tse-tung the revolutionary statesman who found the People’s Republic of China was born in a rural village in the district of Hunan, China, in the year 1893. His father was a poor peasant who was very strict with the son. He often beat and abused him.
As the boy grew up he often rebelled against authority, not just his father, but his teachers, and later powerful people in high positions in the government.
After reading the works of Karl Marx he became a Communist and he often said “It is right to rebel.” In 1921 Mao and eleven others got together in Shanghai and formed the Chinese Communist Party. Form that small spark had grown a massive fire-the Chinese Revolution, one of the 20th century’s most important events.
Mao was a philosopher, poet, soldier, and ruler who was destined to leave his mark both on China and on the outside world.
At the age of six Mao was sent to a missionary school, but he had to work in the rice fields every afternoon and well into the late evening, with no time for studies.
From his childhood Mao hated learning by heart the ancient Confucian classics. Instead he would read over and over exciting tales about rebellious leaders. Even in the elementary school he was called a ‘difficult child’ by the teachers.
At the age of 13 Mao openly challenged his father in front of guests at a family party, when the father described him as ‘lazy’ and ‘useless’. Mao cursed at him and tried to drown himself in a nearby pond. The frightened father promised to stop abusing and beating him, thereafter.
At the age of 14, while he was working on the family farm his father arranged a marriage for him to an 18 year old girl he had never met. Though such marriages were the custom, Mao absolutely refused to go ahead with it.
By the time he reached his late teens, Mao took to polities. In 1910 during a severe famine, his father continued to send big loads of rice for sale at a distant market, even though the neighbours were starving. With the help of the neighbours Mao seized a load of rice and distributed it among them.
At the age of 16, Mao left home and settled down in a nearby town. There he began to read newspapers regularly. He also started to read history and for the first time he learned about leaders such as Napoleon, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln.
Many of his classmates were children of wealthy landlords. They had everything they wanted while Mao had none. They scoffed and laughed at him and made him uneasy. Already suspicious of the landlord class, he now began to hate them. With very few friends there solitary Mao worked hard at studies and received best results.
In 1911, he enrolled in a school in Changsha, the Capital City of Hunan Province. There too he read a lot, made long hikes, slept in open places, swam in rivers and made his body tough. To Mao it seemed clear that someone hoping to lead others must be physically strong himself. He cut off the traditional ‘pigtail’ and persuaded other students to do so.
Soon afterwards he left school, Mao joined the revolutionary army of Dr Sun Yat-Sen who was struggling to overthrow the Manchu rulers. For five months he served in the army, and meanwhile read books written by the Englishman Adam Smith and Jean J. Rousseau, the Frenchman.
From the age of 20 to 25, Mao studied in a school in Changsha preparing to become a teacher. After passing out he took a job in Peking as a librarian at the National Peking University. There he got the opportunity to read all the works of Karl Marx. Soon he became a believer of Marx and the need for China to become a Communist Society. Then he began to organize students on the campus into Marxist Study Groups and peasants likewise. In July 1921 with few friends he secretly formed the Communist Party of China, officially.
Working closely with Dr Sun Yat-Sen’s Kuomintang Party Mao devoted himself fulltime to the cause of revolution. In 1925 Sun Yat-Sen died. The new leader of the Kuomintang Chiang Kaishek, feared the growing power of Communists and he was determined to crush them. His soldiers killed a lot of the working class. In 1930 he succeeded in capturing Mao’s wife and sister and had their heads cut off. The two heads were stuck on spikes and displayed to show the people what will happen to them if they followed or helped Mao’s Communists.
Chiang launched a massive attack, the fifth of that kind, and surrounded Mao’s Communist army. Mao and his generals escaped somehow and fled to a mountainous areas a in South Central China. As Chiang’s soldiers followed them Mao led his troops to the far north of China across some 7,000 miles and this historic retreat is named as the ‘Long March’.
In late 1935 about 8,000 of Mao’s followers arrived at the mountain province Yenan and Mao organized a method of guerilla warfare. At the same time he educated the peasants, set up schools for their children, and developed the strategies he would use to govern the nation.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, the U.S.A. convinced Chiang Kai-Shek that he should fight against the Japanese but not the communists. Accordingly Chiang established a ‘united front’ with Mao.
After Japan surrendered in 1945, Mao and Chiang met together and tried to work out plans for a new government. But the talks failed. So in 1946 a bloody civil war broke out in China with Chiang on one side and Mao on the other.
The war lasted for four years, and finally Chiang’s troops were defeated. He fled to the offshore island Taiwan. On the 1st October 1949 in Peking Mao announced the formation of the Peoples Republic of China – a unified nation.
In 1950 China’s relations with the U.S.A. broke off. In the Korean War Mao helped Korea against the U.S.A. The U.S.A. made a pledge to defend Taiwan against any Chinese invasion.
Based on a deep faith in the common people, Mao then launched the programme known as the ‘Great Leap forward’. Accordingly the Chinese people began to work long hours in factories, farms and public works furiously to achieve Mao’s goals.
Meanwhile relations between the two great Communist Powers, China and Soviet Russia grew worse. As a result Russia cut off all economic aid to China.
Next, Mao launched the great Proletariat Cultural Revolution. Encouraged by Mao, millions of Chinese young people known as ‘Red Guards’ started to fight the traditional ways and means, that pervaded the society. The booklet titled ‘Quotations of Chairman Mao’ was regarded by them as a ‘bible’. By 1969 the Cultural Revolution was over.
Mao soon decided to improve relations with U.S.A., the rival of USSR. In 1972 America’s President Richard P. Nixon visited China.
At the age of 80 Mao was afflicted with several diseases. He knew that the end of his life was near. He allowed Chou En-lai an old friend who participated in ‘The Long March’, to run the daily affairs of government.
On the 9th September 1976 Mao Tse-tung died.
By the time of his death, China, poor when he first took power, had become the sixth largest industrial nation in the world. It had a well developed system of health care serving all of its people. No longer were there beggars on the streets of China’s great cities.
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