Essay about History of China under Mao Zedong

Through out all of history we have seen so many heroes and villains all over the world. But one place in particular was in China, with a leader who goes by the name of Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong was a well-known communist leader in china who actually lead the Chinese Communist Party. He is one of the most important people/historical figures in history. At first he was helping China at the beginning of his ruling, nut then his actions had cause China to completely fall and breakout into violence and complete chaos!! Changing the views of his people because whatever good he had done did not matter anymore from his great down fall. During his ruling though some believed that Mao

The Chinese communist party had a great influence on the peasants, this sparked a sense of nationalism between the two classes this is shown in documents 1 and 2. Mao Zedong stated in document 1 that “peasants will rise like a mighty storm” and that “they will smash all chains that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation”. Here Zedong’s tone is intimidating and determined. Zedong shows confidence in the peasants and their abilities

It called for huge communes in rural areas, which ended private property in the countryside. The Liang family experienced this both by the hunger they felt while still in Changsha, and later on when they joined the countryside.

This document shows how living conditions and independence did not improve for landowners. Landowners only lost their land and homes. It wasn’t fair how low classes were able to make more money when landowners couldn’t have better living conditions. Document 9 by an unknown person who was an economist made a line graph for people interested in China’s GDP to see how China’s GDP was at that time. This line graph shows how the quality of people’s life wasn’t improving because there wasn’t any jobs for them. The economy was very weak since there wasn’t enough jobs. Factories didn’t improve either they stayed the same because of the value of the materials. People couldn’t afford things because since there wasn’t jobs they didn’t have enough money to be able to buy things. The Communist China notes talks about the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward began from 1958 and ended in 1960. During 1959 through 1961 about 50 million people died of starvation. Mao forced people to work and it

In 1958, soon after the Anti-Rightist Movement, Mao Zedong announced "The Great Leap Forward" movement in attempt to increase agricultural and industrial production and modernize China's economy. The author of the book doesn't talk much

The begins of Mao’s Cultural Revolution begins with the Hundred Flowers Campaign which took place during 1956-1957, the government embarks on this campaign with the hope that the tension between government and scholars can end, but this approach does not work and backfires. The next event which takes place in the Anti-Rights Campaign (1957-1958), this campaign disciplines those who spoke out during the Hundred flowers Campaign, a significant amount of people lots many jobs due to this and are sent away by government. This leads into the Great Leap Forward (1958-1959), this just happens to be one of Mao’s more intense programs of economic reform, in this program Mao’s main attempt was to modernize China’s economy, the consequence of this resulted in Mao’s having a temporary loss of power. He believed that all he needed to develop was agriculture and industry and believed that both

Mao ZeDong is one of the greatest leaders in the history of New China. The influence of Mao’s theory is profound and lasting. He is a great thinker, poet, and a highly intelligent military strategist. Under his leadership and the actions he performed during The Long March, Chinese Civil War then defeating the Kuomintang Party to built the New China are the main epic episodes. Mao ZeDong's extravagant actions made two of the many changes to China. They are the shift from a capitalist system to a socialist system and the achievement of China's independence against Japanese imperialism (Somo, 2013a). The influence of Mao’s theory has been widespread to the world up until this day. Especially, in the countries of the third world have

On October 1st 1949, Mao Zedong proclaims the foundation of the People Republic of China on Great of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen) in Beijing (Source from: Lecture notes). In January 1958, Mao started a variety of economic, agricultural and cultural reforms. One of the many reforms started by Mao Zedong launched "The Great Leap forward". This began in 1958 to help change China. Mao proposed the land reform and suggested to develop city. The reform makes women, industry workers and peasant became winners. However, Peasant also got land and change to owner. As far as women’s literacy is concerned. There are not women in class when Mao did not launch reforms. After that, women can go to school have a class. The plan was to originally keep China communist, and increase production of agriculture. Mao Zedong put much emphasis on economic growth, which was very important to China.

This process began with Mao encouraging peasants to rebel against their landlords through the ‘speak bitterness campaign’, which allowed for the redistribution of land to the proletariat. However, individual land ownership was not truly communist; thus followed the gradual transition to farming collectives, and finally centralised communes in 1958, where land ownership was abolished. In addition to land reform, there were campaigns of mass suppression targeting counter-revolutionaries. Following the elimination of the landlord class, Mao began two movements aimed at corruption and enemies of the state, known as the 3-anti and 5-anti campaigns. The 3-anti campaign (1951), aimed at bureaucracy and waste, was succeeded by the 5-anti campaign (1952), which was aimed at theft, cheating, bribery and tax evasion. The result was an atmosphere of fear and suspicion, which served to strengthen Mao’s power base.

Over the course of Mao’s leadership from 1949 until his death in 1976 we can see the significance of his leadership and what made him a good and bad leader. Mao had made some very good decisions to help certain groups but also made some very bad decisions that paid the price, in some cases killing millions. Due to the social and economic changes that then followed by a significant increase in the population and weak leadership that led to rebellions from 1911 that saw the end of 3500years of rule by the Chinese imperial dynasties. The social and economic chaos then led to the formation of two political parties. The CCP, led by Mao Zedong and the GMD led by Chiang Kai Shek. Mao and his party defeated the GMD in 1949 bringing Mao into power. Mao’s main goal was to turn China into a pure communist country. Over the course of Mao’s leadership he did this by making significant social, economic and political changes to the Chinese way of life. However due to his poor leadership and the faults that he made it caused people to oppose him and get in the way of his goal. That is why in 1966 Mao decided to assert his beliefs through a series of decisions, which came to be known as the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution was a hard time for many people throughout China as Mao enforced many things upon them to achieve his aim of removing capitalism. Mao used the youth of China to be that

The Communist fervor that gripped mainland China under Mao Zedong’s rule had lasting effects on the economy and culture. In particular, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution devastated rural and peasant populations, leading to fatal consequences for a large portion of the chinese demographic. The Great Leap Forward was an attempt at socializing the chinese economy almost ten years after the People's Republic of China was established in 1949. Property and businesses were stripped from private owners by the government and given to community leaders to run with the help of community members. Unfortunately, revolutionary passion blinded community leaders and the government. The former over reported food production while the latter continued to support a failing economic structure and policy. This lead to the Great Chinese Famine, and a decline in economic productivity and revolutionary zeal. The Great Cultural Revolution was meant to reinvigorate the revolutionary spirit. Launched several years after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution targeted the youth. A successful propaganda campaign mobilized groups of mostly disadvantaged youth (red guards) and the working class to purge those antithetical to the movement. Millions were killed in the resulting class warfare which targeted capitalists, rightists, and landlords. The effects of these influential events are still explored in modern chinese cinema many years after their occurrence. An

In Mao's era, there was also little room for free speech due to the immense censorship that pervaded the period. Individual thinking and Confucian philosophy were renounced with a youth movement, The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, to criticize everything and to revive the spirit of the revolution. Until his death in 1976, when Deng Xiao Ping took control of the Communist Party, Mao accentuated maintaining the revolutionary ideals of communal 'freedom' and the ultimate sacrifice of the individual for the enhancement of China.

As public services such as health and education suffered under the GMD and living conditions in rural areas worsened, civilians rapidly joined the Communist party. Many soldiers who fought for the Nationals changed sides and began fighting for communism. The essential focus of Mao’s revolution revolved solely around the peasants who made up 85% of the population. His new land reforms meant taking land from rich landlords and dividing it amongst poorer peasants. Mao also introduced national health care as 95% of individuals in China had never seen a doctor

Though Mao Zedong would argue the people wield the power to change history, they do not. Perhaps they should, but that concerns epistemological questions. And while elements of Mao’s perspective—that the people comprise the “motive force in the making of world history”—wafted around in compelling the U.S. to intervene in Iraq in 2003, it is not a sufficient explanation. The people did not form the chief reason for the Iraqi campaign, and certainly did not originate the intervention “alone”, as Mao’s philosophy would suggest. Alternatively, Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle contends, “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” He rightly locates the locus of watershed moments in history: great men. At the very least, a few powerful men ultimately control the people’s destiny—both near to and far from home. In reality, a small, elite group of individuals set the agenda for world order. As evidenced by the 2003 Iraq War, a tight circle of plutocrats—the president, his advisors, and those with skin in the financial game—can steer the course for two entire nations for a decade.

The Great Leap Forward was a creative yet disastrous interruption in Chinese economic development. It is one of those "moments" in Chinese history that is the epitome of Mao Zedong's willingness to experiment, as well as his political genius in seizing control of the forms of government out of the hands of his intellectual and political adversaries within the Communist Party of China. Given that more conservative leaders, such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, were not in agreement with Mao on the policies of the Great Leap Forward. The implementation of these policies resulted in disaster, generating a crisis in Chinese society as well as a massive famine that would in the end be resolved in ways unfavorable to Mao's political, economic,