شبكة الدفاع عن السنة - لماذا الكيل بمكيالين الشيخ محممد المنجد و ماو تسى تونغ و ميكي ماوس الفأر

خبر حملة ماوتسي تونغ لمكافحة الفئران في وطنه

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Mao Tse Tung

Background Information

Important Dates

1893
Mao born into a bourgeois farmer's family in Hunan Province.

1904
Mao leaves primary school and starts work on the family farm.

1911
Last emperor overthrown and Republic established. Civil war breaks out. Mao walks to Changsa and enrols in secondary school.

1917
Russian Revolution.

1920
Communist manifesto published in China.

1921
Mao becomes a founder member of the Chinese Communist Party.

1927
Chiang Kai-shek decides to suppress Communist forces.

1934
Communists start the Long March.

1934-49
Civil war between the Communists and Chiang Kai-shek's forces.

1939-45
World War II.

1944
Hiroshima atom bomb ends Japan's role in World War II.

1949
Chiang Kai-shek flees the mainland and sets up a rival republic in Taiwan. The Communists take over.

1957-8
The Great Leap Forward.

1965
100 Flowers Campaign launched.

1966
Start of the Cultural Revolution.

1976
Death of Mao Tse Tung.

Key Terms, People and Events

Chiang Kai-shek
Cult of Personality
Cultural Revolution (1966)
Great Leap Forward (1958)
Long March (1934)
Offshore Islands
Sun Yat-sen

Long March (1934)
The heroic event of the struggle to impose Communism. 100,000 people marched for more than a year, fighting running battles with their enemies all the way. Went from Kiangsi Province to Shensi Province, a distance of some 6,000 miles. Only 30,000 survived.

Great Leap Forward (1958)
An attempt to force Chinese economy to change from mainly agricultural to mainly industrialised, partly with a view to challenging the USSR. Huge communes were set up. But with bad harvests and bad planning, the attempt led to famine and disaster.

Cultural Revolution (1966)
Mao's attempt to regain supreme power after the failure of the Great Leap Forward. He said China must be in constant revolution, and encouraged young supporters (Red Guards) to oppose and overthrow people in authority throughout the system. The Red Guards carried and brandished everywhere Mao's 'Little Red Book' of thoughts. In the end the chaos of the Cultural Revolution was too much even for Mao, and he called it off.

Cult of Personality
Mao operated a powerful 'cult' of his personality, with endless praise for him as father of the nation. This was the overwhelming feature of the rallies which dominated Chinese political life under Mao. His portrait was everywhere, criticism of him was impossible, and his 'thoughts' were the 'bible' of political thinking.

Offshore Islands
When the Communists came to power, their enemy, Chiang Kai-shek, fled to the island of Taiwan, where he set up a republic which was for some time the only 'China' recognised by the rest of the world. The Nationalists still control Taiwan with an economy almost as successful as that of Hong Kong (which until the hand-over in 1997 was ruled by the British who had captured it at the end of the 19th century). Macao is the other offshore territory claimed by Beijing (Peking). It is currently a Portuguese colony which is due to revert to Chinese control in 1999.

Sun Yat-sen
The first president of China (1866-1925), who started to modernise the country after the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in 1911.

Chiang Kai-shek
Succeeded Sun Yat-sen. As a general and leader of the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party), he was Mao's great enemy in the civil war which led to the Communist take-over.

China from 1900 to Cultural Revolution
As the great powers met at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 the minds of most of the leaders were fixed on the question of Germany. However, another important issues was also decided there. Japan and China were arguing over whether Japan should be able to build and control railways in Manchuria. Because of their support in the First World War, Britain, America and France backed Japan.

For China it was yet another slap in the face from the Western powers. In medieval times China had been an advanced but mysterious civilisation. In the 1800s China had been exploited for its pottery, silk and gems by Western merchants. By the early 1900s hatred of the foreign powers (particularly the USA, Britain and France) led to the creation of the Kuomintang or Nationalist Party.

In 1912 the last of the Emperors of China was overthrown. There followed fifteen years of chaos as Chinese warlords divided up much of China into local mini-kingdoms of their own. The Nationalists under Sun fought for many long years to establish a true democracy in China. With the help of the Communist Party which was formed in 1921 (including a young Mao Tse-tung) they began to defeat the warlords one by one. By 1927 that fight was over but another was about to begin. Sun died in 1925 and was succeeded by Chiang Kai-shek.

Chiang was much less keen on Communists that Sun and became alarmed at their growing power. Most of the Kuomintang officers were landlords or came from the business classes. Communism would take away the wealth and power of these people. Under pressure from his important supporters, Chiang turned against the Communists.

From 1931 to 1934 the main Communist forces under Mao, the Red Army, were besieged by Chiang at Kiangsi. In the legendary Long March they broke through Chiang's lines and set up new Communist bases in the Yenan province. The Long March was one of the most extraordinary events in history. Around 100,000 men marched for 6,500 miles, fighting a guerrilla campaign against the Nationalist troops. In many respects it was disaster - the Red Army suffered losses of over 80%. On the other hand, by 1936 everyone had heard of the Long March and of the new Communist leader Mao Tse-tung. Also the Communists spread Communist ideas among Chinese peasants as they marched.

The War against Japan

The Nationalists
In 1936 the Japanese decided to take advantage of the civil war and invade China from the territories they had already conquered in Manchuria. Although most of his officers and his people were alarmed by this, Chiang at first he refused to deal with the Japanese threat as he wanted to destroy the Communists.

In frustration, a number of Chiang's officers kidnapped him and forced him to join with the Communists to drive the Japanese out of China. The well-equipped, modern Japanese armies swept the Nationalist forces aside and penned them into Sichuan province. Chiang was forced to retreat and destroyed crops, villages and equipment as he went so that they would be of no use to the invaders. Chiang failed militarily and his scorched-earth policies not only failed to stop the Japanese, they also brought misery to millions of Chinese.

For much of the rest of the war, Chiang's forces were bottled up in Sichuan - the Japanese could not dislodge him but he achieved little against them. Chiang received millions of tons of supplies from Britain up the Burma Road and, when the Japanese cut this, supplies were airlifted in, mainly by the Americans, who joined the war in 1941. By then, however, Chiang's best troops were tied up in blocking supply routes to the Communists rather than fighting the Japanese. Instead of using it against the Japanese Chiang stored up much of the American aid to use against the Communists after the Japanese were defeated - there were now two wars in China again.

Chiang's people, meanwhile, were beginning to suffer from his harsh and corrupt rule. Enormous amounts of aid and supplies were simply stolen by Nationalist officials and sold on the black market- possibly as much as 30% of the total. Inflation was rife and by 1945 Chinese dollars were virtually worthless. Any protests were dealt with ruthlessly by Chiang's right-hand man Tai Li, and despite all of their hardships the Nationalists still expected peasants to pay their taxes.

The Communist war effort
The war record of the Communists contrasted sharply with the Nationalists' performance. From 1936 to 1939 they built up their forces under the brilliant leadership of Lin Biao. They had virtually no resources - at first they were mainly armed with spears! However, they knew the countryside and the peasants and they made excellent use of guerrilla tactics - cutting telegraph wires, blowing up railways and surprising Japanese troops in ambushes, capturing their weapons. Mao described the Red Army as the 'fish who swam in the sea', the sea being China's peasants.

The peasants supported the Communists from the start. Unlike Chiang, Mao seemed determined to take positive action to drive the Japanese out. Also unlike Chiang, the Red Army generally treated the peasants with courtesy and respect. At the same time as they fought the Japanese, the Communists also taught the peasants about communist beliefs and ideas.

The Japanese responded to the guerrilla tactics with vicious reprisals. Villages and crops were burned and millions of peasants were slaughtered. Others were forced to work in dreadful conditions in the mines and factories to produce materials for the Japanese war effort. Torture, beatings and murders became commonplace. Theses tactics only strengthened the Communists and confirmed the hatred of the Japanese.

By 1945 Mao had effectively driven the Japanese out of large areas of the countryside, confining the intruders to their secure bases and the major cities. Estimates vary but Mao probably held 300,000 square miles and had the loyalty of over 100 million Chinese.

The Civil War
Japan surrendered in August 1945 after the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities. The end of the war took the Communists and the Nationalists by surprise and Chiang was concerned that the Japanese troops (along with their vital weapons and equipment) would surrender to the Communists instead of the Nationalists troops, because his own forces were stuck in the mountains. This of course was exactly what Mao had in mind.

Despite the obvious support for the Communists, the Allies decided that Chiang should be reinstated as ruler of China. Even Stalin agreed to this, despite the fact that Mao was the Communist leader and some historians believe that Stalin did not want a rival as the world's leading Communist figure. Allied planes ferried Nationalist forces to the cities and military bases where they accepted the surrender of the Japanese troops and set about re-establishing Nationalist rule.

The American General George Marshall tried to get the two sides to co-operate but within a short time a new civil war began in China. This time it was a fight to the finish. At first Chiang was confident - he had far more men, masses of American equipment and he was expecting American aid.

Mao simply used the same tactics that worked against the Japanese, and because the Nationalists were seen as a party of landlords, the Red Army kept the support of the peasants. By 1947, the Red Army was known as the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the tide of civil war was beginning to turn in favour of the Communists. Although Chiang captured Mao's base at Yenan, Mao had in fact already abandoned it. Crucially, the Americans refused to continue supplying Chiang because they did not feel it was appropriate to take sides in a civil war.

Even Chiang's advantages in troops and equipment began to disappear. Huge numbers of nationalist troops and officers began defecting to the PLA, taking their equipment with them, They were no longer prepared to put up with the misery and corruption of Chiang's rule. The PLA doubled in size and now it had the jeeps, armoured cars and artillery to fight the Nationalist troops in the open. By mid-1948 many of the important eastern provinces were in Communist hands. By the end of 1949 Shanghai fell to the Communists and the Nationalists were driven out of China altogether, Taking a vast amount of treasure, with him, Chiang fled to Formosa (now called Taiwan) with a small but loyal group of advisers and soldiers. China was now a Communist Republic.

China under the Communists 1949-1965

Mao the leader
In October 1949 Mao made a speech in the centre of Beijing.

We announce the setting up of the People's Republic of China. Our nation will from now on enter the large family of peace loving and freedom loving nations of the world. It will work bravely to create its own civilisation and happiness and will at the same time promote world peace and freedom. Our nation will never again be insulted. We have stood up.

For over twenty years Mao had been at war or on the run and he had lost his wife, children and many of his dear comrades. The Chinese people had died in their millions from the civil war and foreign invasion. Mao was sure why this had happened. The Chinese people were backward and they disliked change - Mao had many arguments with his own father about this when he was a boy. Now that he was in power he planned to build a new China with a new agriculture, new industries but above all a new attitude.

In theory, the new republic was governed by a coalition of the Communists with a number of smaller parties. In practice, power lay with Chairman Mao and the Communist Prime Minister Chou En Lai. Though local Communist cadres they put their plans into operation at ground level. It was their job to rebuild China.

This was a huge challenge. China was backward and its system of government was now in chaos. The little industry it had was in the former area of Manchuria and was either damaged or had been stolen by the Russians when they 'liberated' the region from the Japanese. Unemployment was high and there were food shortages. There was also raging inflation. Nevertheless, Mao had already worked wonders with the willing and hardworking Chinese people. If he could keep their loyalty then he felt he could achieve anything.

New Agriculture
Unlike Lenin in 1947, Mao had little opposition to deal with inside China, but one possible opposition group was the landlords. Mao sent Communist Party workers to put his new Agrarian Reform Law of 1950 into operation. In practice, this meant two things. First, the lands of the village were divided between the peasants. Second, the landlords were put on trial in people's courts. They were accused of such things as charging high rents, or mistreating their tenants. Many landlords were let off, lost their land and became peasants with their share of the village's land. Many others were imprisoned or executed. Although Party officials helped with the ********************istration, it was the peasants who carried out the process, and this increased support for Mao further.

Land reform made Mao popular but it did not solve his problems. The reforms did not increase production and China's population was rising alarmingly. To avoid famine, production had to rise. At first Mao ordered Party workers to encourage workers to form Mutual Aid Teams. Under this scheme, peasants worked on each other's land, fertilising, killing pests, and harvesting, so that each peasant's plot would become more productive. The government supplied the fertiliser and extra tools to productive families. However, there were problems.

Mao was anxious that food production was still not moving quickly enough, so Party officials tried to encourage peasants to form co-operatives. Under this system the land was pooled and was jointly owned. This meant one large crop could be grown efficiently and the resources of the co-operative could be pooled to buy equipment, fertilisers and seeds. There was opposition from many peasants who did not want to give up the private land they had fought for. Nevertheless, by 1957 well over 90% of China's peasants belonged to co-operatives.

New attitudes: The thoughts of Chairman Mao
Mao's early actions as leader concentrated on the countryside, but in the early 1950s he turned his mind to the re-education of the whole of China. Mao was planning revolutionary changes but he wanted them to take place in a controlled way.

In the streets of China's towns and cities huge posters of Mao appeared. At the same time, Communists began to make life difficult for the foreigners - businessmen, missionaries and intellectuals soon found life very unpleasant as Communists yelled out alleged crimes though loudspeakers all night outside their homes. For most it was easier to give in. Many businesses and all banks came under state control. Dissidents (people who criticised the government) often found themselves in labour camps to be re-educated, or were sent to live with the peasants to learn from their ways.

There were other important social changes put into place. The filth and squalor of the cities was attacked by making residents form committees for tidying up the streets. Health care became free (although not very advanced) although the emphasis was on prevention. In Shanghai there was a campaign against rats. Each family member had to produce one rat's tail a week as evidence of his/her contribution!

Education also grew rapidly and the percentage of Chinese who could not read or write fell dramatically. One of the main purposes of the literacy drive was to educate people about Maoist Communism. As peasants came to markets they had to pass 'literacy checkpoints' manned by Communist officials. By the mid-1960s over 90% of China's population had a basic grasp of reading and writing.

A further change was in the position of women in China. For centuries, women had virtually no rights. Female babies might be drowned, girls could be sold as servants or into prostitution. Marriages were arranged for them in which they had no choice. Mao wanted to put an end to this inequality but he also wanted to make use of China's female population as extra workers. To achieve his aims he began by banning arranged marriages.

Mao also made divorce easier and made it possible for women to divorce men, not just the other way round. In order to help them work he began plans for nurseries which could leave mothers free for the great work which needed to be done.

Although Mao changed Chinese society and attitudes, it is important to remember that there was a cost. Mao deliberately tried to discourage people from thinking independently by endless use of propaganda on posters and on Chinese radio. He was certainly not afraid to use violent means to achieve his aims either.

New Industry: Five Year Plan 1953-57
Mao believed that, in time, China could and would be a superpower, but to achieve that position China needed to develop its industry. At first, Mao moved slowly. Mao did not take over businesses by force as Stalin did in the USSR. He wanted state control of businesses but he was prepared to be more patient.

Nevertheless, he did squeeze the businesses by making them pay high taxes. In the end the owners handed over their businesses and became managers under the Communists. Mao ordered prices and wages to be fixed at a low rate and then dealt savagely with black marketeers. Along with his take-over of the banks, this enabled him to check the raging inflation which plagued the Chinese people.

But ending problems was not enough - Mao wanted real achievements. With financial help and advice from Russia Mao announce his Five Year Plan in 1953. The plan aimed to transform China into a wealthy industrial country. Thousands of Russian scientists and engineers supervised millions of Chinese in the construction of almost 700 major industrial projects. At the same time thousands of Chinese students left to train in Soviet universities and colleges.

The emphasis was on building up the primary or heavy industries - steel, coal, chemicals. These provided the raw materials for the planes, trains and engines that would bring China together by creating good communications. The new plants tended to be positioned in small towns rather than the old big cities. This was partly because Russian scientists discovered new mineral deposits but also so that Mao could build the new China 'from scratch' with no old ways to interfere with his new ideas.

As in the USSR the results were astounding. The highly motivated Chinese workers actually beat all of the targets for the Five Year Plan. China was criss-crossed with railways which moved the vital goods and raw materials over vast distances. As we have seen, education improved because it was a necessary part of being an industrial worker. The population of China's towns and cities soared as peasants filled the jobs created in the new industries.

The Great Leap Forward 1958
By 1958 Mao was still not satisfied. In 1956 he said 'let a hundred flowers bloom' which meant that he wanted open criticism and debate about how China was being run. He was deeply upset when his government was bombarded with criticisms. Posters, speeches, books overwhelmed the government and so, in June 1957, the Hundred Flowers period ended. Soon large numbers of critics were arrested, re-educated or, in the case of more serious critics, lost their jobs. Mao believed that China had become backward looking again and needed a new revolution to inspire the people. In his words, China needed to make a Great Leap Forward.

Mao wanted to push industry and agriculture forward together by organising the Chinese people into communes. He set ambitious targets for industry and farming but the industry was to be set up on a small scale - the advances would not be made through the construction of huge new industrial plants.

The communes were much larger than the co-operatives and were formed by merging co-operatives together. As well as the size there were other differences. The early communes abolished private land and property altogether. Family life was replaced by canteens, barracks and dormitories. Communes were organised into brigades of 600-1,000 people. Brigades were divided into teams of 50-200 who would plan and carry out the work which needed to be done. This work varied greatly. Some members would continue to work in the fields. Others mined coal or iron ore and others smelted it in crude backyard furnaces. In the meantime, their colleagues were building schools, hospitals and roads, while others improved the land with irrigation or terracing projects. There was opposition and resistance but it could not stop the process. By the end of 1958 most Chinese citizens belonged to one of China's 40,000 communes.

At first it appeared that the Great Leap Forward was another Triumph for Mao. However, it soon became clear that the Great Leap Forward was a disastrous failure. It was too ambitious. The Chinese people were willing, but the technical expertise and resources did not exist. In 1960 Mao quarrelled with the new Soviet leader Khrushchev who pulled out the Soviet advisers and backing. Also, the enormous iron production from backyard furnaces turned out to be brittle, impure and almost unusable. In farming the story was not much better. Peasants were often forced to use methods tried elsewhere in the country, even though these methods did not suit their land. The commune system meant they no longer received more food or pay for working hard, so many simply did less work.

This failure enabled other leading Communists, Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi to edge Mao out of control of China. He remained Chairman of the Party, but had been humiliated by the failure of the Great Leap Forward. Deng and Liu reorganised the communes and made them smaller, as well as handing the land back to the peasants. Mao's reputation was further damaged when China was struck by a devastating series of storms and floods, causing famine in the early 1960s.

The Cultural Revolution
In 1959, after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, Mao resigned as China's President. However, he remained as Chairman of the Communist Party. By the mid-1960s he was becoming concerned about the direction China seemed to be taking. Middle-class experts and townspeople again seemed to be getting wealthy at the expense of the peasants and ordinary people.

He began to take a more active role in China. Posters celebrating Mao's achievements appeared everywhere and millions of copies of Quotations of Chairman Mao - usually known as The Little Red Book - were printed and distributed free. His main targets were the army, still under the command of his friend and ally Lin Biao, and China's young people. To show he was fit and well, in 1966 he swam 24 km down the Chiang River.

Mao then called for the young people to rise up and rid China of the anti-Communist elements within the Party, the schools, the universities and society as a whole. Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi were dismissed from their jobs. Deng was forced to become a waiter while Liu died in 1969 after 3 years in prison. Soon after this the Cultural Revolution began to plunge China deeper and deeper into a state of chaos. Mao told the young students of China to form themselves into Red Guards. These Red Guards then went on a rampage. Schools and colleges were closed and many teachers and lecturers were beaten and abused for being anti-revolutionary - tortures included being made to kneel on broken glass.

As time went on the situation got worse. The Red Guards held huge demonstrations throughout 1967 and 1968, organised by Mao's wife Jian Qing.

Factories, offices and even local Communist Party offices were ransacked by Red Guards. They broke into homes. Everywhere books, works of art, suspect technology - anything which could be considered anti-revolutionary - was smashed or burned. Thousands of innocent people were beaten, tortured or killed, or imprisoned after unfair trials.

Investigation

Why did Mao launch the Cultural Revolution?

Look at these views:

1 Mao was concerned that China was becoming too conservative.

2 Mao wanted to regain power after his failure of 1958.

3 Mao was concerned about US troops in Vietnam - he wanted a committed army in case he had to fight the USA.

4 Mao disliked the other leading Communist leaders and wanted the Chinese people to be loyal to him alone

Which of these views seems to be supported by the evidence?

By 1967 the Cultural Revolution was rapidly spinning out of control. The Red Guards began to divide into rival factions. Using the weapons which Lin Biao's army had provided them with, they began to fight street battles. In other areas Red Guards fought with gangs of peasants or even militia formed from ousted managers and local party officials. By 1968 action was needed and Lin Biao's PLA stepped in to disarm the Red Guards and restore peace and order.

The violent phase of the Cultural Revolution was over. It probably cost around one million lives as well as the damage and personal misery. Despite this, Mao's vision of the Cultural Revolution was not over. He encouraged thousands of Red Guards to move to the countryside to re-educate themselves and learn the ways of the peasants. The Cultural Revolution did not strictly end at a specific date, although by the early 1970s it was certainly over.

All of these events had important consequences for China. The Red Guards were shocked to see how poor Chinese peasants were and how hard their lives were. Communism had not apparently done much for them. Mao established himself in a powerful position, with Lin Biao at his side. Nevertheless, China had suffered - the education of millions of young people had been totally disrupted, and industrial production fell, as some factories had been closed for as much as three years. Above all, the absolute faith of many Chinese people in Mao and the Party was damaged.

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