Mao Tse-tung became both the political and spiritual leader of China, and the Cult of Mao developed as he led the Chinese people first in the Chinese Revolution and then in building a new and different China after 1949. The Chinese have a history of mythologizing their heroes and of making them into near-gods, and Mao benefited from this tendency and used of it to solidify his position and to develop his power.
Mao's thought developed during the early years of the decade prior to 1920, a period of great turmoil, with growing conflict between traditional Chinese thought and new ideas from the West. Mao became an active local leader in the May Fourth Movement of 1919, and he retained his revolutionary fervor. However, he also became convinced that what was needed was more than mass enthusiasm, that what was also required was an organization of dedicated revolutionaries. The Russian revolution was a model, and Mao attended the founding of the CCP in Shanghai in 1921 and organized the Hunan branch. Two parties developed in the 1920s, the CCP and the KNT (Kuomintang). The KMT-CCP United Front had formed first and then divided into the two separate units. Mao had encouraged peasant activities against landlords, and this had hastened the split. The KIT was allied with the warlords and was thus stronger militarily than the CCP, leaving the CCP struggling in the rural areas. This was one of the reasons for Mao's developing his rural strategy for the Chinese revolution. This involved more than surrounding the cities from the countryside, and instead it became a complex and interdependent synthesis of military, political, and economic elements, utilizing techniques of guerrilla warfare (Townsend and Womack 11-12). One measure of the effectiveness of Mao's thought is the degree to which it served to resolve the intellectual conflict underlying it:
The importance of the May Fourth Movement should by now be apparent. Intellectually, the Chinese Revolution originated in the challenging of China's cultural heritage by Western civilization. May Fourth was the culmination of that challenge: the brutal, wholesale repudiation of Confucianism, the symbol of Chinese culture and Chinese history (Bianco 28).
Mao made use of the changes involved in this movement and built his own base of leadership on it.
J.E. Wills emphasizes that China was never a country that could be held together by force alone. Mao fulfilled a need:
By 1920 many were groping for new ways to control the military and reunite the country. Among the pieces of a solution were discipline of troops and their indoctrination in one form or another of nationalism and public spirit; mobilization of ordinary tradespeople, farmers, and workers as active participants in politics; and new ways of disciplining and indoctrinating a civil and bureaucratic elite. (Wills 335)
Mao's form of Communism was one of the answers offered, and his ideas mobilized the people as other doctrines had not.
Mao became the heart of the CCP at the Tsunyi Conference in 1935. This was the culmination of the split between the CCP and the KMT. The political structures of China developed after this time and in keeping with certain traditional Chinese ideas along with some imports from the Soviet model. The Chinese model as scholars have identified it is really a Maoist model with the following elements. First, the model aimed at national independence and self-reliance. Second, the model sought all around development with an emphasis on the agricultural sector, in keeping with the rural policies of Mao. It also favored decentralization to stimulate local growth and initiative and to direct the transferral of resources. Third, the model emphasized the use of mass mobilization and participation as techniques for achieving social, economic, and political goals, the "mass line" approach. Fourth, the model insists on continuing the revolution, arguing that repeated and possibly violent struggles are necessary...
Moreover, in the wake of the Shanghai massacre, the more radical idea that Chinese communism should actually pursue its own independent path began to take root. For example, while Mao continued to favor the creation of soviets (councils) and the land redistribution policy, he began to militarize the dialogue by highlighting the need to arm the masses and accelerate the process of change through the creation of a wave-like
He also contends that guerilla warfare is not a tactic that is practiced without discipline or structure. The structure and adherence to rules or laws, as Guevara, suggests, are elements that directly contribute to the efficacy of guerilla warfare as used by terrorist organizations and small countries. It is often said that guerrilla warfare is primitive. This generalization is dangerously misleading…it can be conducted in any terrain, in any climate,
During his first few months in Paris, Marx became a communist and put forth his views in a plethora of writings known as the Economic and philosophical Manuscripts, that remained unpublished until the 1930s. It was also in Paris that Marx developed his life long association with Friedrich Engels. (Karl Marx, 1818-1883) At the end of 1844 Marx was debarred from Paris and with Engels migrated to Brussels. In the
I do not approve of reading so many books. The method of examination is a method of dealing with the enemy. It is most harmful and should be stopped" (Johnson 1992:552). Mao wanted control of China's destiny -- and he wanted that destiny out of the hands of the religionists, whose doctrine was not formulated by him but by an outside body. Thus, places like Sacred Heart convent in
built between the U.S.S.R. And China following World War Two. The writer focuses on the issue of Nuclear technology and the tensions between the two because of it. Stalin, Mao and broken promises are examined and put together in a story of history. There were eight sources used to complete this paper. Currently the world is focused on disarming itself from a nuclear standpoint. America has invaded Iraq on the
" The withdrawal was supposed to aid the Communists in controlling the areas vacated by the Japanese, who had succeeded in controlling vast portions of Manchuria. Stalin's efforts were aimed at forcing "the GMD [Guomindang or Chinese Nationalist Party] to make economic concessions, to prevent a united China from allying with the United States, and to placate Washington on the international arena by giving in to American demands for withdrawal," but in
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