Mao tse tung brief biography of prophet

Stefanie Lamb
December
available in PDF format ( KB )

Excerpt from China's Cultural Revolution

The “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” usually known simply as the Cultural Revolution (or the Great Cultural Revolution), was a “complex social upheaval that began as a struggle between Mao Zedong and other top party leaders for dominance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and went on to affect all of China with its call for “continuing revolution.” This social upheaval lasted from to and left deep scars upon Chinese society.

Background

The roots of the Cultural Revolution date back to the early s. After the catastrophic Great Leap Forward, in which more than 20 million people died, Chairman Mao Zedong decided to take a less active role in governing the country. More practical, moderate leaders, such as Vice-Chairman Liu Shaoqi and Premier Zhou Enlai, introduced economic reforms based on individual incentives—such as allowing families to farm their own plots of land—in an effort to revive the battered economy. Mao detested such policies, as they went against the principles of pure communism in which he so firmly believed. Nevertheless, China’s economy grew strongly from to with the more conservative economic policies in place.

At the same time, Mao started to worry that local party officials were taking advantage of their positions to benefit themselves. Rather than resolving such cases internally to preserve the prestige of the CCP, Mao favored open criticism and the involvement of the people to expose and punish the members of the ruling class who disagreed with him; he framed this as a genuine socialist campaign involving the central struggle of the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie.

Buildup to the Cultural Revolution

Overall, Mao began to fear that the CCP was becoming too bureaucratic and that Party officials and planners were abandoning their commitment to the values of communism and revolutio

Mao Zedong (or Mao Tse-tung in Wade-Giles; Simplified Chinese: 毛泽东; Traditional Chinese: 毛澤東; December 26, – September 9, ) was the Chairman of the Communist Party of China from until his death. He was also a founder of the People's Republic of China.

Quotes

s

• 中国政府的“阁议”，真是又敏捷又爽快，洋大人打一个屁都是好的“香气”，洋大人要拿棉花去，阁议就把禁棉出口令取消；洋大人要送纸烟来，阁议就“电令各该省停止征收纸烟税”。再请四万万同胞想一想，中国政府是洋大人的账房这句话到底对不对？
  • The "Cabinet meeting" of the Chinese government is really quick in yielding. Even the fart of foreigners can be taken as "fragrance." The Cabinet meeting lifts the cotton export ban because foreigners want cotton; it orders "all provinces to stop collecting the cigarette tax" because foreigners want to import cigarettes. Let the million compatriots again think it over: Isn't it correct to say that the Chinese government is the bookkeeper of foreigners?

Changsha ()

• 独立寒秋，湘江北去，橘子洲头。看万山红遍，层林尽染；漫江碧透，百舸争流。鹰击长空，鱼翔浅底，万类霜天竞自由。怅寥廓，问苍茫大地，谁主沉浮？
  • Alone I stand in the autumn cold
    On the tip of Orange Island,
    Xiang flowing northward;
    I see a thousand hills crimsoned through
    By their serried woods deep-dyed,
    And a hundred barges vying
    Over crystal blue waters.
    Eagles cleave the air,
    Fish glide under the shallow water;
    Under freezing skies a million creatures contend in freedom.
    Brooding over this immensity,
    I ask, on this bondless land
    Who rules over man's destiny?
  • I stand alone in cold autumn.
    The River Xiang goes north
    around the promontory of Orange Island.
    I see the thousand mountains gone red
    and rows of stained forests.
    The great river is glassy jade
    swarming with one hundred boats.
    Eagles flash over clouds
    and fish float near the clear bottom.
    In the freezing air a million creatures compete for freedom.
    In this immensity
    I ask the huge greenblue earth,
    who is master of nature?
    • translated by Willis Barnstone

Yellow Crane Tower ()

• 茫茫九派流中国，沉沉一线穿南北。烟雨莽苍苍，龟蛇锁大江。黄鹤知何去？剩有游人处。把酒酹滔滔，心潮逐浪高！
  • Wide, wide flow the nine s

In the latter half of , the first kmt-ccp united front split apart and the kmt crushed most of the urban strength of the ccp. Corre&#;spondingly, Mao&#;s concerns changed from problems of the nation&#;al revolution&#;s orientation to the difficulties of survival in the rural crevices of a hostile environment. In retrospect, it may have been Mao&#;s chief contribution to the Chinese revolution to turn this di&#;sastrous fallback to the starting point of revolutionary power into the beginning of a new type of rural revolution and a style of lead&#;ership which was novel and uniquely appropriate for Chinese con&#;ditions. Mao&#;s new political paradigm began in the scramble for survival on the mountainous border of Hunan and Jiangxi. The paradigm itself would not be formulated for ten years, but the suc&#;cessful political practice which formed its contents were creative responses to the problems of survival.

The movement which Mao found necessary for survival was an integrated political, economic, and military effort with the ef&#;fective mobilization of the peasantry as its chief concern and re&#;source. Although related to Marxist and Chinese precedents, Mao&#;s strategy for a protracted, self-sufficient, rural struggle con&#;stituted a major innovation within both traditions. The major con&#;tribution to Chinese tradition was the transformation of the eco&#;nomic, social, and political structure of the village. This was a social accomplishment equivalent to splitting the atom: the most difficult, most basic, and most energy-releasing task. Mao&#;s most prominent contribution to Marxism was a theory of leadership adequate to this task, one built on the principles of flexible close&#;ness to the masses and maximum effective mobilization.

More than any other location, Mao&#;s first guerrilla base at ccp as the collapse of the First United Front, the major pol&#;icy changes of &#; were not as original or basi