Mao Zedong (Mao
Tse-Tung), the son of a peasant farmer, was born in Chaochan, China,
in 1893. He became a Marxist while working
as a library assistant at Peking University and served in the revolutionary
army during the 1911 Chinese Revolution.
Inspired by the
Russian Revolution the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) was established in Shanghai by Chen
Duxiu and Li Dazhao in
June 1921.
Early members included Mao, Zhou
Enlai, Zhu
De and Lin Biao. Following instructions
from the Comintern
members also joined
the Kuomintang.
Over the next
few years Mao, Zhu De and Zhou
Enlai
adapted the ideas of Lenin who had successfully
achieved a revolution in Russia. They argued
that in Asia it was important to concentrate on the countryside rather
than the towns, in order to create a revolutionary elite.
Mao worked as
a Kuomintang
political organizer in Shanghai. With the help of advisers from the
Soviet Union the Kuomintang (Nationalist
Party) gradually increased its power in China. Its leader, Sun
Yat-sen died on 12th March 1925. Chiang
Kai-Shek emerged
as the new leader of the Kuomintang. He now carried out a purge that
eliminated the communists from the organization. Those
communists who survived managed to established the Jiangxi Soviet.
The nationalists now imposed
a blockade and Mao
Zedong decided
to evacuate the area and establish a new stronghold in the north-west
of China. In October 1934 Mao, Lin
Biao, Zhu
De, and some
100,000 men and their dependents headed west through mountainous areas.
The marchers experienced
terrible hardships. The most notable passages included the crossing
of the suspension bridge over a deep gorge at Luting (May, 1935),
travelling over the Tahsueh Shan mountains (August, 1935) and the
swampland of Sikang (September, 1935).
The marchers covered about
fifty miles a day and reached Shensi on 20th October 1935. It is estimated
that only around 30,000 survived the 8,000-mile Long
March.
When the Japanese
Army invaded the heartland of China in 1937, Chiang
Kai-Shek was
forced to move his capital from Nanking to Chungking. He lost control
of the coastal regions and most of the major cities to Japan. In an
effort to beat the Japanese he agreed to collaborate with Mao
Zedong and
his communist army.
During the Second
World War Mao's well-organized guerrilla forces were well led
by Zhu
De and Lin Biao. As
soon as the Japanese surrendered, Communist forces began a war against
the Nationalists led by Chaing
Kai-Shek. The
communists gradually gained control of the country and on 1st October,
1949, Mao announced the establishment of People's Republic of China.
In 1958 Mao announced the
Great Leap Forward, an attempt to
increase agricultural and industrial production. This reform programme
included the establishment of large agricultural communes containing
as many as 75,000 people. The communes ran their own
collective farms and factories. Each family received a share of the
profits and also had a small private plot of land. However, three
years of floods and bad harvests severely damaged levels of production.
The scheme was also hurt by the decision of the Soviet Union to withdraw
its large number of technical experts working in the country. In 1962
Mao's reform programme came to an end and the country resorted to
a more traditional form of economic production.
As a result of
the failure on the Great Leap Forward, Mao retired from the post of
chairman of the People's Republic of China. His place as head of state
was taken by Liu Shaoqi. Mao remained important
in determining overall policy. In the early 1960s Mao became highly
critical of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. He
was for example appalled by the way Nikita
Khrushchev backed
down over the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
Mao became openly
involved in politics in 1966 when with Lin
Biao he
initiated the Cultural Revolution.
On 3rd September, 1966, Lin Biao made a speech where he urged pupils
in schools and colleges to criticize those party officials who had
been influenced by the ideas of Nikita
Khrushchev.
Mao was concerned
by those party leaders such as Liu Shaoqi,
who favoured the introduction of piecework,
greater wage differentials and measures that sought to undermine collective
farms and factories. In
an attempt to dislodge those in power who favoured the Soviet model
of communism, Mao galvanized students and young workers as his Red
Guards to attack revisionists in the party. Mao told them the
revolution was in danger and that they must do all they could to stop
the emergence of a privileged class in China. He argued this is what
had happened in the Soviet Union under Joseph
Stalin and Nikita
Khrushchev.
Lin
Biao compiled some of Mao's writings into the handbook, The
Quotations of Chairman Mao, and arranged for a copy of
what became known as the Little Red Book,
to every Chinese citizen.
Zhou
Enlai
at first gave his support to the campaign but became concerned when
fighting broke out between the Red Guards
and the revisionists. In order to achieve peace at the end of 1966
he called for an end to these attacks on party officials. Mao remained
in control of the Cultural Revolution and with the support of the
army was able to oust the revisionists.
The Cultural
Revolution came to an end when Liu Shaoqi
resigned from all his posts on 13th October 1968. Lin
Biao now
became Mao's designated successor.
Mao now gave his support
to the Gang of Four: Jiang
Qing (Mao's fourth wife), Wang Hongwen, Yao Wenyuan and Zhange
Chungqiao. These four radicals occupied powerful positions in the
Politburo after the Tenth Party Congress of 1973.
Mao Zedong
died in Beijing on 9th September, 1976.
(1)
Mao Zedong, interviewed by Edgar Snow in
Red Star Over China (1936)
My father had had two
years of schooling and he could read enough
to keep books. My mother was wholly illiterate. Both were from peasant
families. I was the family 'scholar.' I knew the Classics, but disliked
them. What I enjoyed were the romances of old China, and especially
stories of rebellions. I read the Yue Fei Zhuan (Jing Zhong Zhuan),
Shui Hu Zhuan, Fan Tang, San Guo, and Xi You, while still very young,
and despite the vigilance of my old teacher, who hated these outlawed
books and called them wicked. I used to read them in school, covering
them up with a Classic when the teacher walked past. So also did
most of my schoolmates. We learned many of the stories almost by heart,
and discussed and re-discussed them many times. We knew more of
them than the old men of the village, who also loved them and used
to exchange stories
with us. I believe that perhaps I was much influenced by
such books, read at an impressionable age.
I finally left the primary
school when I was thirteen and began to work long hours on the farm,
helping the hired labourer, doing the full labour of a man during
the day and at night keeping books for my father.
Nevertheless, I succeeded in continuing my reading, devouring everything
I could find except the Classics. This annoyed my father, who wanted
me to master the Classics, especially after he was defeated in a lawsuit
due to an apt Classical quotation used by his adversary in the Chinese
court. I used to cover up the window of my room late at night so
that my father would not see the light.
My father was in his early
days, and in middle age, a sceptic, but my mother devoutly worshipped
Buddha. She gave her children religious instruction, and we were all
saddened that our father was an unbeliever. When I was nine years
old I seriously discussed the problem of my father's lack of piety
with my mother. We made many attempts then and later on to convert
him, but without success. He only cursed us and, overwhelmed by his
attacks, we withdrew to devise new plans. But he would have nothing
to do with the gods.
My reading gradually began
to influence me, however; I myself became more and more sceptical.
My mother became concerned about me, and scolded me for my indifference
to the requirements of the faith, but my father made no comment. Then
one day he went out on the road to collect some money, and on his
way he met a tiger. The tiger was surprised at the encounter and fled
at once, but my father was even more astonished and afterwards reflected
a good deal on his miraculous escape. He began to wonder if he had
not offended the gods. From then on he showed more respect to Buddhism
and burned incense now and then. Yet, when my own backsliding grew
worse, the old man did not interfere. He only prayed to the gods when
he was in difficulties.
In the winter of 1920,
I organized workers politically, for the first time, and began to
be guided in this by the influence of Marxist theory and the history
of the Russian Revolution. During my second visit to Beijing I had
read much about the events in Russia, and had eagerly sought out what
little Communist literature was then available in Chinese. Three books
especially deeply carved my mind, and built up in me a faith in Marxism,
from which, once I had accepted it as the correct interpretation of
history, I did not afterwards waver. These books were the Communist
Manifesto, translated by Chen Wangdao, and the first Marxist book
ever published in Chinese; Class Struggle, by Kautsky; and
a History of Socialism, by Kirkupp. By the summer of 1920 I
had become, in theory and to some extent in action, a Marxist, and
from this time on I considered myself a Marxist.
(2)
Su Kaiming, Modern China (1985)
To help artists and writers
find some answers, the Communist Party in May 1942 held a forum on
literature and art in Yan'an. Mao Zedong spoke twice at this historic
meeting, in part summing up the thinking of the most progressive artists
and setting forth conclusions reached through discussion and argument.
He reminded artists that they had a very important role to play in
the ongoing struggle. The revolution needed armed forces to fight
the battle of the sword, but that was not enough. The revolution also
needed a cultural army - fighters armed with pens - to educate and
unite the people and promote the liberation of the country.
To accomplish this task,
writers and artists must first shift their class stand and become
one with the masses, seeing things from their viewpoint. No artist
can write convincingly of what he doesn't know. "China's revolutionary
writers and artists, writers and artists of promise," he said,
"must go among the masses ... in order to observe, experience,
study and analyze all the different kinds of people, all the classes,
all the masses,
all the vivid patterns of life and struggle, all the raw materials
of literature and art." They must also learn the language of
the masses. Only then can they proceed to do creative work.
(3)
Qi Wen, China (1979)
At that time (1931) Wang
Ming, who had assumed leadership of the Party Central Committee, pursued
his policy of "Left" adventurism, causing great losses to
the revolutionary forces: The Red Army soldiers were reduced from
300,000 to 30,000 and Communist Party members from 300,000 to about
40,000. Under these, circumstances, the Red Army had to move out.
In October. 1934, it began its world-famous Long March from Jiangxi.
In January 1935, the Political
Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee held an enlarged
meeting at Zunyi in Guizhou Province. Militarily and organizationally
it rectified Wang Ming's "Left" adventurist line and established
Mao Zedong's leadership over the whole Party. From then on, the Chinese
revolution advanced along a victorious road. In October 1935, the
Red Army triumphantly arrived at the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border
Region. Later it smashed the encirclement campaigns of Chiang Kai-shek.
As the Chinese Communist Party fought for the establishment of a
national united front against
Japanese imperialist aggression, it established its base in the northern
Shaanxi city of Yan'an.
(4)
Zhong Wenxian, Mao Zedong (1986)
Mao Zedong worked in Guangzhou
as acting Head of the Central Propaganda Department of the Kuomintang,
edited the Political Weekly and directed the Sixth Class at the Peasant
Movement Institute. In November 1926 he was appointed Secretary of
the Peasant Movement Commission of the Chinese Communist Party Central
Committee. Published between the winter of 1925 and the spring of
1927, his works Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society and Report
on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, dealt with the
fundamental problems relating to the Chinese revolution and set forth
some of Mao's basic ideas on the New Democratic Revolution in China.
In these treatises Mao Zedong underlined the great significance of
the peasant problem to the Chinese revolution and the paramount importance
of the leadership of the proletariat over the peasant movement. Critical
of Chen Duxiu the Party's principal leader at that time, for the compromises
and concessions he made in dealing with the right wing of the Kuomintang
Mao denounced Chen's Right deviation in denying the proletariat their
rightful leadership of the Democratic Revolution.
In April 1928, he joined
with the insurgent forces of Zhu De to form the Fourth Army of the
Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army (later renamed the Chinese
Workers' and Peasants' Red Army), with Mao Zedong as Party representative
and Secretary of the Front Committee, and Zhu De as Army Commander.
In January 1929, he and Zhu De led the main body of the Fourth Red
Army down the Jinggang Mountains to southern Jiangxi and western Fujian,
where more revolutionary bases were set up (these were later to become
the Central Revolutionary Base Area). With Mao Zedong as their chief
representative, the Chinese Communists proceeded from the reality
of China. Conducting armed struggles in rural areas where the forces
of reactionary rule were weak, the Communists opened up China's characteristic
revolutionary road to the final seizure of the country's political
power by encircling cities from rural areas and then capturing them.
(5)
Zhou
Enlai, Mao Zedong (1978)
During the Great Revolution,
Chairman Mao was already aware that the peasants were the largest
ally and that the people's revolution could not triumph without them.
And sure enough, the revolution suffered defeat because his views
weren't listened to. Later, when we got to the countryside. Chairman
Mao saw that in order to carry out the revolution it is necessary
not only to rely on the peasants, but also to win over the middle
and petty bourgeoisie. As Chiang Kai-shek's counter-revolutionary
treachery became further exposed, only the comprador-bureaucrat and
feudal landlord classes supported him. But a group of people inside
the Communist Party made "Left" deviationist mistakes and
were very narrow in their outlook, holding that the middle and petty
bourgeoisie were unreliable. They didn't listen to Chairman Mao, and
the result was that the revolution suffered another setback and we
had to march 25,000 li. Then Chairman Mao proposed that we
unite with Chiang Kai-shek and other members of the upper strata to
resist Japanese aggression. But some people said that if we wanted
unity, there shouldn't be any struggle. Chairman Mao replied that
Chiang and the others were our domestic enemy; we were uniting with
them in order to fight the national enemy. But they were not reliable
partners or allies, and we must guard against them; otherwise, they
might turn on us. We took measures to avert Right deviations and to
prevent unqualified compromises. During the present War of Liberation,
"Left" deviationist mistakes were made in agrarian reform
in the countryside. In order to eliminate the landlord class, landlords
were given poor land or
no land at all so that they could not eke out a living; or too many
people were classified as feudal rich peasants or landlords. Moreover,
on the question of executions,
it was stipulated that no one should be executed except for those
who had committed serious crimes, refused to mend their ways' and
were bitterly hated by the people. But, sometimes,
when the people were filled with wrath, these distinctions were
not made, and the leadership did not attempt to persuade the masses,
so too many people were put to death. This had an adverse effect on
our united front with the peasantry, and particularly with the middle
peasants. This mistake
was also corrected by Chairman Mao.
(6)
Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong Thought (1978)
Comrade Mao Zedong wrote
a four-word motto for the Central Party School in Yanan: "Seek
truth from facts." These four words are the quintessence of Mao
Zedong Thought. In the final analysis,
Comrade Mao's greatness and his success in guiding the Chinese revolution
to victory rest on just this approach. Marx and Lenin never mentioned
the encirclement of the cities from the countryside - a strategic
principle that had not been formulated anywhere in the world in their
lifetime. Nonetheless, Comrade Mao Zedong pointed it out as the specific
road for the revolution in China's concrete conditions. At a time
when the country was split up into separatist warlord domains, he
led the people in the fight to establish revolutionary bases in areas
where the enemy's control was weak, to encircle the cities from the
countryside and ultimately to seize political power. Just as the Bolshevik
Party led by Lenin made its revolution at a weak link in the chain
of the imperialist world, we made our revolution in areas where the
enemy was weak. In principle, the two courses were the same. But instead
of trying to take the cities first, we began with the rural areas,
then gradually encircled the cities. If we had not applied the fundamental
principle of seeking truth from facts, how could we have raised and
solved this problem of strategy?
(7)
Chen Changfeng was Mao Zedong's orderly. He wrote an account of Mao
Zedong and the Long March in 1973.
A comrade named Wu took
me to the Commissar. He lived in a typical Jiangxi wooden house with
two rooms, one a bedroom and the other an office. We entered through
the bedroom. In it was an ordinary wooden bed covered with a cotton
sheet. It didn't even have a pillow. I grew less nervous. Judging
from the room, the Commissar must be living as simply as all of us,
I thought. Two men were talking together in the office. Comrade Wu
indicated the man in the chair and whispered: "That's Commissar
Mao." I looked at him curiously. His grey uniform was the same
as ours. The only difference was that the pockets on his coat seemed
to be especially large. His black hair contrasted sharply with his
fair complexion. Maybe he was a bit too thin. His eyes seemed to be
very big and keen. He seemed to be about
forty at most. Talking to a man opposite him, he gesticulated with
his hands; his voice was gentle. Although I didn't understand what
he was talking about, I felt he was very sincere.
Commissar Mao's life was
very simple and I soon got to know his habits. His personal possessions
included only two blankets, one cotton sheet, two grey uniforms, just
as we privates wore, a worn overcoat, and one grey woollen sweater.
Then he had a broken umbrella, a bowl for eating and a knapsack with
nine compartments for his maps, documents and books. When we were
campaigning or on the march, he carried the knapsack and umbrella
himself. I would carry the rest. When we came to our camp site, I
would find two wooden boards, put them together and spread the blankets
and sheet on them, folding up his uniforms to make a pillow. This
was his bed.
He slept very little.
We had a small lamp; during the march this was used as a torch to
light the way, but when in camp it was set on a brick or stone for
use in his office. After supper he would light this lamp, open up
his knapsack and take out his maps, documents and books, papers, and
writing brush and sometimes work till dawn.
(8)
Anna Louise Strong, An Interview With Chairman Mao Zedong (1960)
I raised the question
about the threat of war between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. The Chairman
said that the talk of war was at present largely a smoke-screen which
the reactionaries created to cover up the many immediate contradictions
facing U.S. imperialism. American monopoly capital of course dreamed
of destroying the U.S.S.R. but this aim was not so immediate. They
must first wear down the American people's opposition to war, and
then they must bring other capitalist countries under American control.
Any war against the U.S.S.R. had to be done through other countries'
territory, through Britain, France and China. So the American reactionaries
used all this talk about fighting the U.S.S.R. to give excuse for
attacking the American people's civil rights and living standards
and for bringing the other capitalist lands under American control.
He pointed out how, under this pretext, the U.S.A. was setting up
military bases in many places and had already taken a very large area
under American control.
Chairman Mao laughingly
illustrated his point with the tea-cups and little white wine cups
on the table, placing a big cup for American imperialism and surrounding
it with a circle of little wine cups for the American people, with
a long zigzag line filled up with match-boxes and cigarettes to represent
other countries all separating American imperialism from the Soviet
Union, a big cup at the other side. The cooperation of the people,
he said, was strong enough, if properly
aroused, to prevent a third world war. But this cooperation against
world war must be aroused, otherwise the war would come.
The metaphor of "paper-tiger"
was used during this talk and I was especially impressed, not only
by the metaphor but by the way in which Chairman Mao, without knowing
English, was able to correct the exact translation of his words. When
he first said that reactionary rulers are paper-tigers, the word-was
translated "scare-crow." Chairman Mao immediately stopped
the talk and asked me to tell him just what a "scarecrow"
is. When I replied that it is a figure like a man which peasants put
up in a field to scare away crows, he at once expressed dissatisfaction,
and said that this was not his meaning. A paper tiger, he said, is
not something dead to scare crows. It scares children. It looks like
a terrible tiger but actually, being made of pressed paper, it softens
when damp and is washed away in a heavy rain.
After this Chairman Mao
used the "paper-tiger" in English, laughing at the sound
of English words in a sentence, the rest of which was Chinese. Before
the February Revolution in Russia, he said, the tsar looked very strong
and terrible. But a February rain washed him away. Hitler also was
washed away by the storms of history. So were the Japanese imperialists.
They were paper-tigers all. The same thing would happen to all imperialists
and reactionaries. Their strength lay only in the unconsciousness
of the people. The consciousness of the people is the basic question.
Not explosives of atom bombs but the man who handles them. He is still
to be educated. After a moment, he added: Communist Parties have real
power, because they awaken the people's consciousness.
(9)
Mao Zedong's son was killed fighting in the Korean
War. Another son, Mao Anqing, wrote
about the impact that the death had on his father in the article Recollections
of Our Father (1983).
Father particularly adored
brother Anying, who was a lieutenant in the Soviet Red Army much admired
by Stalin and who was killed on the battlefield in Korea. After brother
Anying died, for a long time Father alone endured the deep grief of
an old man who had lost his dear son and hid the sad news from sister
Songlin so as to let her keep her mind on her studies. During this
period he several times counted on his fingers and told sister Songlin
about the deeds of martyrs, relating to her how five members of our
family had died heroically. At that time sister Songlin was completely
in the dark, not knowing what he meant. Later, when she finally knew
the sad news, she was extremely grieved; she and brother Anying were
separated by death after just one year of marriage. In order not to
arouse Father's sadness, she hid herself in her own room to sob, but
Father still discovered her two swollen red eyes when she sat at the
table for supper. Chopsticks in hand, he was in deep thought for a
long while, then, putting the chopsticks down, he left the dining
room slowly without eating a thing. After that sister Songlin suppressed
her grief in her heart and swallowed down her tears. However, Father
understood her feelings well. Looking at her face becoming thinner
each passing day, he consoled her by saying, "It's war, and war
will take people's lives. Don't think that Anying should not have
died for the people of China and Korea because he was my son."
After the news of brother Anying's death was made public. Father said
to Songlin, "From now on you are my own eldest daughter."
From that time on, he showed special loving care for her, often personally
inquiring about her clothing, food and other things and calling her
"my own eldest daughter" in their correspondence.
Once sister Songlin asked
Father for permission to bring brother Anying's remains back to China,
but he shook his head and said, "Martyrs can be buried anywhere.
Why should we bring their remains home? Aren't there thousands and
thousands of martyrs among the Chinese
Volunteers who have been buried in Korea?" Father's mind was
as broad as the boundless
ocean. He took the people's interest as the criterion
of his own love and hatred. The U.S. imperialists killed thousands
of the best sons and daughters of the Chinese nation including
his own dear young son, but for the fundamental interest of the
Chinese people and for friendship between the Chinese and American
peoples he set aside old wrongs and opened the door with his own
hands to establish diplomatic relations between China and the United
States.
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