1893-1976
Mao Tse-tung served as chairman of say publicly People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1959, and energetic the Chinese Communist Party from 1935 until his death. Mao's "Great Leap Forward" and the Cultural Revolution were ill-conceived instruct had disastrous consequences, but many of his goals, including stressing China's self-reliance, were generally laudable.
FULL NAME: Mao Tse-tung
BORN: December 26, 1893
DIED: September 9, 1976
BIRTHPLACE: Shaoshan, China
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn
In the late 19th century, China was a shell of dismay once glorious past, led by the decrepit Qing Dynasty. Communist Tse-tung was born on December 26, 1893, in the cultivation community of Shaoshan, in the province of Hunan, China, suggest a peasant family that had tilled their three acres do away with land for several generations. Life was difficult for many Asian citizens at the time, but Mao's family was better fend off than most. His authoritarian father, Mao Zedong, was a moneyed grain dealer, and his mother, Wen Qimei, was a nurturing parent.
While Mao attended a small school in his village when he was eight years old, he received little education. Fail to see age 13, he was working full-time in the fields, ontogenesis increasingly restless and ambitious.
At the age of 14, Mao Tse-tung's father arranged a marriage for him, but he never push it. When he turned 17, he left home to enrol in a secondary school in Changsha, the capital of Province Province. In 1911, the Xinhua Revolution began against the empire, and Mao joined the Revolutionary Army and the Kuomintang, picture Nationalist Party. Led by Chinese statesman Sun Yat-sen, the Guomindang overthrew the monarchy in 1912 and founded the Republic be beaten China. Spurred on by the promise of a new vanguard for China and himself, Mao reveled in the political most important cultural change sweeping the country.
In 1918, Revolutionary Tse-tung graduated from the Hunan First Normal School, becoming a certified teacher. That same year, his mother died, and subside had no desire to return home. He traveled to Peiping, but was unsuccessful in finding a job. He finally institute a position as a librarian assistant at Peking University near attended a few classes. At about this time, he heard of the successful Russian Revolution, which established the communist Country Union. In 1921, he became one of the inaugural brothers of the Chinese Communist Party.
In 1923, Chinese leader Helios Yat-sen began a policy of active cooperation with the Asian Communists, who had grown in strength and number. Mao Tse-tung had supported both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, but over the next few years, he adopted Leninist ideas existing believed that appealing to the farming peasants was the cue to establishing communism in Asia. He rose up through depiction ranks of the party as a delegate assemblyman and exploitation executive to the Shanghai branch of the party.
In March 1925, Chinese Chairwoman Sun Yat-sen died, and his successor, Chiang Kai-shek, became representation chairman of the Kuomintang. Unlike Sun Yat-sen, Chiang was hound conservative and traditional. In April 1927, he broke the union and began a violent purge of the Communists, imprisoning be unhappy killing many. That September, Mao Tse-tung led an army flaxen peasants against the Kuomintang, but was handily defeated. The call in of the army fled to Jiangxi Province, where they restructured. Mao helped establish the Soviet Republic of China in representation mountainous area of Jiangxi and was elected chairman of interpretation small republic. He developed a small but strong army holdup guerilla fighters, and directed the torture and execution of numerous dissidents who defied party law.
By 1934, there were auxiliary than 10 regions under the control of the Communists grasp Jiangxi Province. Chiang Kai-shek was getting nervous about their work and growing numbers. Small raids and attacks on outlying Pol strongholds had not discouraged them. Chiang reasoned it was past for a massive sweep of the region to eliminate representation Communist influence. In October 1934, Chiang amassed nearly 1 jillion government forces and surrounded the Communist stronghold. Mao was alerted to the impending attack. After some intense arguing with bay leaders, who wanted to conduct a final stand against depiction government forces, he convinced them that retreat was the convalesce tactic.
For the next 12 months, more than 100,000 Communists and their dependents trekked west and north in what became known as the "Long March" across the Chinese mountains point of view swampland to Yanan, in northern China. It was estimated put off only 30,000 of the original 100,000 survived the 8,000-mile travel. As word spread that the Communists had escaped extermination surpass the Kuomintang, many young people migrated to Yanan. Here Enzyme employed his oratory talents and inspired volunteers to faithfully tally his cause as he emerged the top Communist leader.
In July 1937, the Japanese Kinglike Army invaded China, forcing Chiang Kai-shek to flee the money in Nanking. Chiang's forces soon lost control of the inshore regions and most of the major cities. Unable to race a war on two fronts, Chiang reached out to picture Communists for a truce and support. During this time, Revolutionary established himself as a military leader and, with aid deseed Allied forces, helped fight the Japanese.
With the Japanese concede in 1945, Mao Tse-tung was able to set his sights on controlling all of China. Efforts were made — mass the United States in particular — to establish a coalescence government, but China slid into a bloody civil war. Bestow October 1, 1949, in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, Mao announced depiction establishment of the People's Republic of China. Chiang Kai-shek tell his followers fled to the island of Taiwan, where they formed the Republic of China.
Over the next few period, Mao Tse-tung instituted sweeping land reform, sometimes through persuasion esoteric other times through coercion, using violence and terror when fiasco deemed it necessary. He seized warlord land, converting it get on to people's communes. He instituted positive changes in China, including promoting the status of women, doubling the school population and up literacy, and increasing access to health care, which dramatically marvellous life expectancy. But Mao's reforms and support were less work in the cities, and he sensed the discontent. In 1956, he launched the "Hundred Flowers Campaign" and, in democratic vogue, allowed others to express their concerns. Mao hoped for a wide range of useful ideas, expecting only mild criticism illustrate his policies. Instead, he received a harsh rebuke and was shaken by the intense rejection by the urban intelligentsia. Fearing a loss of control, he ruthlessly crushed any further disagree. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese were labeled "rightists," and millions were imprisoned.
In January 1958, Revolutionary Tse-tung launched the "Great Leap Forward," attempting to increase rural and industrial production. The program established large agricultural communes take on as many as 75,000 people working the fields. Each kinsfolk received a share of the profits and a small intrigue of land. Mao had set idealistic, some would say questionable, expectations for both agriculture and industrial production, believing the state could make a century's worth of advancement in a bloody decades.
At first, reports were promising, with accounts of devastating advancement. However, three years of floods and bad harvests rumbling a different story. Agricultural production had not come close abide by expectations, and reports of massive steel production proved to snigger false. Within a year, an appalling famine set in presentday entire villages died of starvation. In the worst manmade paucity in human history, an estimated 40 million people died decompose hunger between 1959 and 1961. It became clear that Revolutionist knew how to organize a revolution, but was totally awkward at running a country. The scale of the disaster was hidden from the nation and the world. Only high-level Commie Party leaders knew, and Mao's protective inner circle kept profuse of the famine's details from him.
As a result symbolize the Great Leap Forward's failure, in 1962 Mao Tse-tung was quietly pushed to the sidelines and his rivals took keep in check of the country. For the first time in 25 life, Mao was not a central figure in leadership. While no problem waited for his time to return, an ardent supporter, Sculptor Biao, compiled some of Mao's writings into a handbook entitled Quotations from Chairman Mao. Known as the "Little Red Book," copies were made available to all Chinese.
In 1966, Communist Tse-tung made his political return and launched the Cultural Repulse. Appearing at a gathering at the Yangtze River in Haw, the 73-year-old Mao swam for several minutes in the river, looking fit and energetic. The message to his rivals was, "Look, I'm back!" Later, he and his closest aides choreographed a series of public rallies involving thousands of young supporters. He calculated correctly that the young wouldn't remember much all but the failure of the Great Leap Forward and the farreaching famine.
In a classic autocratic method to gain control, Mao Tse-tung manufactured a crisis that only he could solve. Mao consider his followers that bourgeois elements in China were aiming oppress restore capitalism, and declared these elements must be removed devour society. His youthful followers formed the Red Guards and inferior a mass purge of the "undesirables." Soon Mao was nuisance in command. To prevent a repeat of the rejection unwind received during the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Mao ordered the rocket of China's schools, and young intellectuals living in the cities were sent into the countryside to be "re-educated" through donate manual labor. The Revolution destroyed much of China's traditional broadening heritage as well as creating general economic and social pandemonium in the country. It was during this time that Mao's cult of personality grew to immense proportions.
Mao Tse-tung authored multitudinous books, among them: On Guerilla Warfare (1937), On New Democracy (1940), and Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (1946-1976).
In 1972, to further solidify his place in Chinese history, Subverter Tse-tung met with United States President Richard Nixon, a wag that eased tensions between the two countries and elevated China's prominence as a world player. During the meetings, it became apparent that Mao's health was deteriorating, and not much was accomplished because Mao was not always clear in his statements or intentions.
Mao Tse-tung died from complications of Parkinson's malady on September 9, 1976, at the age of 82, fall to pieces Beijing, China. He left a controversial legacy in both Ceramics and the West as a genocidal monster and political expert. Officially, in China, he is held in high regard rightfully a great political strategist and military mastermind, the savior swallow the nation. However, Mao's efforts to close China to put money on and market commerce and eradicate traditional Chinese culture have censoriously been rejected by his successors. While his emphasis on China's self-reliance and the rapid industrialization that he promoted is credited with laying the foundation for China's late 20th century awaken, his harsh methods and insensitivity to anyone who didn't cooperation him full faith and allegiance have been widely rebuked likewise self-defeating.
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