Mao tse tung biography cortazar
Mao Zedong
Leader of the People's Republic of China from to
For the TV series, see Mao Zedong (TV series).
"Mao" redirects here. For other uses, see Mao (disambiguation).
Mao Zedong | |
|---|---|
Mao in | |
| In office 20 March &#;– 9 September | |
| Deputy | |
| Preceded by | Zhang Wentian (as General Secretary) |
| Succeeded by | Hua Guofeng |
| In office 27 September &#;– 27 April | |
| Premier | Zhou Enlai |
| Deputy | Zhu De |
| Succeeded by | Liu Shaoqi |
| In office 8 September &#;– 9 September | |
| Deputy | |
| Succeeded by | Hua Guofeng |
| In office 1 October &#;– 27 September | |
| Premier | Zhou Enlai |
| Preceded by | Office established Li Zongren (as President of the Republic of China) |
| In office 9 October &#;– 25 December | |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Zhou Enlai |
| Born | ()26 December Shaoshan, Hunan, Qing China |
| Died | 9 September () (aged&#;82) Beijing, China |
| Resting place | Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, Beijing |
| Political party | CCP (from ) |
| Other political affiliations | Kuomintang (–) |
| Spouses |
|
| Children | |
| Parents | |
| Alma mater | Hunan First Normal University |
| Occupation |
|
| Signature | |
| Simplified&#;Chinese | 毛泽东 |
| Traditional&#;Chinese | 毛澤東 |
| Simplified&#;Chinese | 润之 |
| Traditional&#;Chinese | 潤之 |
Central institution membership
| |
Paramount Leader of | |
Mao Zedong[a] (26 December – 9 September ), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) and led the country from its establishment in until his death in Mao also served as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from until his death, and as the party's de facto leader from His theories, which he advocated as a Chinese adaptation of Marxism–Leninism, are known as Maoism.
Mao was the son of a peasant in Shaoshan, Hunan. He was influenced early in his life by the events of the Revolution and May Fourth Movement of , supporting Chinese nationalism and anti-imperialism. He later adopted Marxism–Leninism while working as a librarian at Peking University, and in was a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party.
After the start of the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and CCP in , Mao led the failed Autumn Harvest Uprising and founded the Jiangxi Soviet. He helped establish the Chinese Red Army and developed a strategy of guerilla warfare. In , Mao became the leader of the CCP during the Long March. Although the CCP allied with the KMT under the Second United Front during the Second Sino-Japanese War, China's civil war resumed after Japan's surrender in ; Mao's forces defeated the Nationalist government, which withdrew to Taiwan in
On 1 October , Mao proclaimed the foundation of the PRC, a one-party state controlled by the CCP.
He initiated campaigns of land redistribution and industrialisation, suppressed counter-revolutionaries, intervened in the Korean War, and began the Hundred Flowers and Anti-Rightist Campaigns. In , Mao launched the Great Leap Forward, which aimed to transform China's economy from agrarian to industrial; it resulted in the Great Chinese Famine.
In , Mao initiated the Cultural Revolution, a campaign to remove "counter-revolutionary" elements, marked by violent class struggle, destruction of historical artifacts, and Mao's cult of personality. From the late s, Mao's foreign policy was dominated by a political split with the Soviet Union, and during the s he began establishing relations with the United States; China was also involved in the Vietnam War and Cambodian Civil War.
In , Mao died after suffering a series of heart attacks. He was succeeded as leader by Hua Guofeng and in by Deng Xiaoping. The CCP's official evaluation of Mao's legacy both praises him and acknowledges he made errors in his later years.
Mao is considered one of the most significant figures of the 20th century. His policies were responsible for a vast number of deaths, with estimates ranging from 40 to 80&#;million victims of starvation, persecution, prison labour, and mass executions, and his regime has been described as totalitarian.
Additionally, he has been credited with transforming China from a semi-colony to a leading world power by advancing literacy, women's rights, basic healthcare, primary education, and life expectancy. Under Mao, China's population grew from about &#;million to more than &#;million. Within China, he is revered as a national hero who liberated the country from foreign occupation and exploitation.
He became an ideological figurehead and a prominent influence within the international communist movement, inspiring various Maoist organisations.
English romanisation of name
During Mao's lifetime, the English-language media universally rendered his name as Mao Tse-tung, using the Wade–Giles system of transliteration though with the circumflex accent in the syllable Tsê dropped.
Due to its recognizability, the spelling was used widely, even by the PRC's foreign ministry after Hanyu Pinyin became the PRC's official romanisation system for Mandarin Chinese in ; the well-known booklet of Mao's political statements was officially entitled Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung in English translations. While the pinyin-derived spelling Mao Zedong is increasingly common, the Wade–Giles-derived spelling Mao Tse-tung continues to be used in modern publications to some extent.[2]
Early life
Main article: Early life of Mao Zedong
Youth and the Xinhai Revolution: –
Mao Zedong was born on 26 December , near Shaoshan village in Hunan, during the Qing dynasty.
His father, Mao Yichang, was a formerly impoverished peasant who had become one of the wealthiest farmers in Shaoshan. Growing up in rural Hunan, Mao described his father as a stern disciplinarian, who would beat him and his three siblings, the boys Zemin and Zetan, as well as an adopted sister/cousin, Zejian.[4] Mao's mother, Wen Qimei, was a devout Buddhist who tried to temper her husband's strict attitude.[5] Mao too became a Buddhist, but abandoned this faith in his mid-teenage years.[5] At age 8, Mao was sent to Shaoshan Primary School.
Learning the value systems of Confucianism, he later admitted that he did not enjoy the classical Chinese texts preaching Confucian morals, instead favouring classic novels like Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin.[6] At age 13, Mao finished primary education, and his father united him in an arranged marriage to the year-old Luo Yixiu, thereby uniting their land-owning families.
Mao tse tung biography cortazar Zemin's son, Mao Yuanxin, was raised by Mao Zedong's family. But his army was racked by corruption, punishing inflation and an incompetent officer corps in which promotion was based entirely on loyalty. The basic problem was to find a way for a guerrilla force to overcome General Chiang's much larger and better equipped army. An image of Mao Zedong.Mao refused to recognise her as his wife, becoming a fierce critic of arranged marriage and temporarily moving away. Luo was locally disgraced and died in at 20 years old.[7]
Working on his father's farm, Mao read voraciously[8] and developed a "political consciousness" from Zheng Guanying's booklet which lamented the deterioration of Chinese power and argued for the adoption of representative democracy.[9] Mao also read translations of works by Western authors including Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Darwin, and Thomas Huxley.[10]:&#;34&#; Interested in history, Mao was inspired by the military prowess and nationalistic fervour of George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte.[11] His political views were shaped by Gelaohui-led protests which erupted following a famine in Changsha, the capital of Hunan; Mao supported the protesters' demands, but the armed forces suppressed the dissenters and executed their leaders.[12] The famine spread to Shaoshan, where starving peasants seized his father's grain.
He disapproved of their actions as morally wrong, but claimed sympathy for their situation.[13] At age 16, Mao moved to a higher primary school in nearby Dongshan,[14] where he was bullied for his peasant background.[15]
In , Mao began middle school in Changsha.[16] Revolutionary sentiment was strong in the city, where there was widespread animosity towards Emperor Puyi's absolute monarchy and many were advocating republicanism.
The republicans' figurehead was Sun Yat-sen, an American-educated Christian who led the Tongmenghui society.[17] In Changsha, Mao was influenced by Sun's newspaper, The People's Independence (Minli bao),[18] and called for Sun to become president in a school essay.[19] As a symbol of rebellion against the Manchu monarch, Mao and a friend cut off their queue pigtails, a sign of subservience to the emperor.[20]
Inspired by Sun's republicanism, the army rose up across southern China, sparking the Xinhai Revolution.
Changsha's governor fled, leaving the city in republican control.[21] Supporting the revolution, Mao joined the rebel army as a private soldier, but was not involved in fighting or combat. The northern provinces remained loyal to the emperor, and hoping to avoid a civil war, Sun—proclaimed "provisional president" by his supporters—compromised with the monarchist general Yuan Shikai.
The monarchy was abolished, creating the Republic of China, but the monarchist Yuan became president.
Mao tse tung biography cortazar wife After a few years there would be 2. His mood at this time was perhaps best suggested by his poem "Snow," written in February shortly after his arrival in the northwest. One of Mao's few steadfast supporters at this time was Teng, whom he was to oust from high position in Tens of millions of peasant households swung into action.With the revolution over, Mao resigned from the army in , after six months as a soldier.[22] Around this time, Mao discovered socialism from a newspaper article; proceeding to read pamphlets by Jiang Kanghu, the student founder of the Chinese Socialist Party, Mao remained interested yet unconvinced by the idea.[23]
Fourth Normal School of Changsha: –
Over the next few years, Mao Zedong enrolled in and dropped out of a police academy, a soap-production school, a law school, an economics school, and the government-run Changsha Middle School.[24] Studying independently, he spent much time in Changsha's library, reading core works of classical liberalism such as Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws, as well as the works of western scientists and philosophers such as Darwin, Mill, Rousseau, and Spencer.[25] Viewing himself as an intellectual, years later he admitted that at this time he thought himself better than working people.
He was inspired by Friedrich Paulsen, a neo-Kantian philosopher and educator whose emphasis on the achievement of a carefully defined goal as the highest value led Mao to believe that strong individuals were not bound by moral codes but should strive for a great goal. His father saw no use in his son's intellectual pursuits, cut off his allowance and forced him to move into a hostel for the destitute.
Mao wanted to become a teacher and enrolled at the Fourth Normal School of Changsha, which soon merged with the First Normal School of Hunan, widely seen as the best in Hunan.[29] Befriending Mao, professor Yang 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 he was a supporter of Chinese nationalism, Chen argued that China must look to the west to cleanse itself of superstition and autocracy. In his first school year, Mao befriended an older student, Xiao Zisheng; together they went on a walking tour of Hunan, begging and writing literary couplets to obtain food.[31]
A popular student, in Mao was elected secretary of the Students' Society.
He organised the Association for Student Self-Government and led protests against school rules.[32] Mao published his first article in New Youth in April , instructing readers to increase their physical strength to serve the revolution.[33] He joined the Society for the Study of Wang Fuzhi (Chuan-shan Hsüeh-she), a revolutionary group founded by Changsha literati who wished to emulate the philosopher Wang Fuzhi.[34] In spring , he was elected to command the students' volunteer army, set up to defend the school from marauding soldiers.[35] Increasingly interested in the techniques of war, he took a keen interest in World War I, and also began to develop a sense of solidarity with workers.
Mao undertook feats of physical endurance with Xiao Zisheng and Cai Hesen, and with other young revolutionaries they formed the Renovation of the People Study Society in April to debate Chen Duxiu's ideas. Desiring personal and societal transformation, the Society gained 70–80 members, many of whom would later join the Communist Party.[37] Mao graduated in June , ranked third in the year.[38]
Early revolutionary activity
Beijing, anarchism, and Marxism: –
Mao moved to Beijing, where his mentor Yang Changji had taken a job at Peking University.[39] Yang thought Mao exceptionally "intelligent and handsome",[40] securing him a job as assistant to the university librarian Li Dazhao, who would become an early Chinese Communist.[41] Li authored a series of New Youth articles on the October Revolution in 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 of Marxism, first developed by the German sociologists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and Li's articles added Marxism to the doctrines in the Chinese revolutionary movement.[42]
Becoming "more and more radical", Mao was initially influenced by Peter Kropotkin's anarchism, which was the most prominent radical doctrine of the day.
Chinese anarchists, such as Cai Yuanpei, Chancellor of Peking University, called for complete social revolution in social relations, family structure, and women's equality, rather than the simple change in the form of government called for by earlier revolutionaries. He joined Li's Study Group and "developed rapidly toward Marxism" during the winter of [43] Paid a low wage, Mao lived in a cramped room with seven other Hunanese students, but believed that Beijing's beauty offered "vivid and living compensation".[44] A number of his friends took advantage of the anarchist-organised Mouvement Travail-Études to study in France, but Mao declined, perhaps because of an inability to learn languages.[45] Mao raised funds for the movement, however.[10]:&#;35&#;
At the university, Mao was snubbed by other students due to his rural Hunanese accent and lowly position.
He joined the university's Philosophy and Journalism Societies and attended lectures and seminars by the likes of Chen Duxiu, Hu Shih, and Qian Xuantong.[46] Mao's time in Beijing ended in the spring of , when he travelled to Shanghai with friends who were preparing to leave for France.[47] He did not return to Shaoshan, where his mother was terminally ill.
She died in October and her husband died in January
New Culture and political protests: –
On 4 May , students in Beijing gathered at Tiananmen to protest the Chinese government's weak resistance to Japanese expansion in China. Patriots were outraged at the influence given to Japan in the Twenty-One Demands in , the complicity of Duan Qirui's Beiyang government, and the betrayal of China in the Treaty of Versailles, wherein Japan was allowed to receive territories in Shandong which had been surrendered by Germany.
These demonstrations ignited the nationwide May Fourth Movement and fuelled the New Culture Movement which blamed China's diplomatic defeats on social and cultural backwardness.[49]
In Changsha, Mao had begun teaching history at the Xiuye Primary School and organising protests against the pro-Duan Governor of Hunan Province, Zhang Jingyao, popularly known as "Zhang the Venomous" due to his corrupt and violent rule.
In late May, Mao co-founded the Hunanese Student Association with He Shuheng and Deng Zhongxia, organising a student strike for June and in July began production of a weekly radical magazine, Xiang River Review. Using vernacular language that would be understandable to the majority of China's populace, he advocated the need for a "Great Union of the Popular Masses", and strengthened trade unions able to wage non-violent revolution.[clarification needed] His ideas were not Marxist, but heavily influenced by Kropotkin's concept of mutual aid.[52]
Zhang banned the Student Association, but Mao continued publishing after assuming editorship of the liberal magazine New Hunan (Xin Hunan) and authored articles in popular local newspaper Ta Kung Pao.
Several of these advocated feminist views, calling for the liberation of women in Chinese society; Mao was influenced by his forced arranged-marriage.[53] In fall , Mao organized a seminar in Changsha studying economic and political issues, as well as ways to unite the people, the feasibility of socialism, and issues regarding Confucianism.[54] During this period, Mao involved himself in political work with manual laborers, setting up night schools and trade unions.[54] In December , Mao helped organise a general strike in Hunan, securing some concessions, but Mao and other student leaders felt threatened by Zhang, and Mao returned to Beijing, visiting the terminally ill Yang Changji.[55] Mao found that his articles had achieved a level of fame among the revolutionary movement, and set about soliciting support in overthrowing Zhang.
Coming across newly translated Marxist literature by Thomas Kirkup, Karl Kautsky, and Marx and Engels—notably The Communist Manifesto—he came under their increasing influence, but was still eclectic in his views.
Mao visited Tianjin, Jinan, and Qufu, before moving to Shanghai, where he worked as a laundryman and met Chen Duxiu, noting that Chen's adoption of Marxism "deeply impressed me at what was probably a critical period in my life".
In Shanghai, Mao met an old teacher of his, Yi Peiji, a revolutionary and member of the Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party, which was gaining increasing support and influence. Yi introduced Mao to General Tan Yankai, a senior KMT member who held the loyalty of troops stationed along the Hunanese border with Guangdong.
Tan was plotting to overthrow Zhang, and Mao aided him by organising the Changsha students. In June , Tan led his troops into Changsha, and Zhang fled.
Mao tse tung biography cortazar and jeremy Mao Tse Tung was the son of a wealthy farmer in Shaoshan, Hunan. Mao continues to have a presence in China and around the world in popular culture, where his face adorns everything from t-shirts to coffee cups. Mao Zedong - The achievements of a single night surpass those of several millennia.In the subsequent reorganisation of the provincial administration, Mao was appointed headmaster of the junior section of the First Normal School. Now receiving a large income, he married Yang Kaihui, daughter of Yang Changji, in the winter of [60]
Founding the Chinese Communist Party: –
The Chinese Communist Party was founded by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao in the Shanghai French Concession in as a study society and informal network.
Mao set up a Changsha branch, also establishing a branch of the Socialist Youth Corps and a Cultural Book Society which opened a bookstore to propagate revolutionary literature throughout Hunan.[61] He was involved in the movement for Hunan autonomy, in the hope that a Hunanese constitution would increase civil liberties and make his revolutionary activity easier.
When the movement was successful in establishing provincial autonomy under a new warlord, Mao forgot his involvement.[62][clarification needed] By , small Marxist groups existed in Shanghai, Beijing, Changsha, Wuhan, Guangzhou, and Jinan; it was decided to hold a central meeting, which began in Shanghai on 23 July The first session of the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was attended by 13 delegates, Mao included.
Mao tse-tung: As Prof. Download PDF. Marriage was not the only instance of a certain willingness on Mao's part to bend the rules for himself. Like many Chinese of the past years, angered by the insults of imperialism, he wanted to tear China down to make it stronger.
After the authorities sent a police spy to the congress, the delegates moved to a boat on South Lake near Jiaxing, in Zhejiang, to escape detection. Although Soviet and Comintern delegates attended, the first congress ignored Lenin's advice to accept a temporary alliance between the Communists and the "bourgeois democrats" who also advocated national revolution; instead they stuck to the orthodox Marxist belief that only the urban proletariat could lead a socialist revolution.
Mao was party secretary for Hunan stationed in Changsha, and to build the party there he followed a variety of tactics.
In August , he founded the Self-Study University, through which readers could gain access to revolutionary literature, housed in the premises of the Society for the Study of Wang Fuzhi, a Qing dynasty Hunanese philosopher who had resisted the Manchus. He joined the YMCA Mass Education Movement to fight illiteracy, though he edited the textbooks to include radical sentiments.
He continued organising workers to strike against the administration of Hunan Governor Zhao Hengti. Yet labour issues remained central. The successful and famous Anyuan coal mines strikes&#;[zh]