Mao Zedong : A Political And Intellectual Portrait

Mao was supposed to make everyone in China equal and yet Li’s family lived in poverty and there were other families such as the Chongs who lived a significantly better lifestyle. Li is exposed to all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds during his time at the Dance Academy. Li meets Xiongjun Chong and they form a friendship. It soon becomes clear that the Chong family did not live as Li’s family did in the commune. “I brought back some Beijing sweets and a bag of jasmine tea from the Chongs as gifts to my family, and some marbles which were an enormous hit among my brothers and friends” (pg 169). Li’s family never had sweets or jasmine tea, yet the Chongs had enough to give away to another family. When Li went to America and saw how the people from the West lived, he finds it unbelievable. “Ben spent nearly $5000 on presents in a couple of hours…My family could live on this amount for over half a century. It was shocking” (pg 277). Everything in America was so different to life in China. It was also different to how China portrayed

The cultural revolution is a strange period in Chinese history laced with intense struggle and anguish. The cultural revolution mobilized the all of society to compete for all opposing factions that they belonged to (Ong, 2016). Mao mobilized the young people of society during a background of political turmoil, which helped Mao to mobilize the students in order to enforce his political legitimacy and ideas (Ong, 2016). Mao’s charismatic authority created his personality cult and most defiantly leant a helping hand in mobilizing the red guard movement (Ong, 2016) (Weber, 1946) (Andreas, 2007). No matter which faction of the red guard they belonged to, they all mobilized against their common enemy; the better off, upper class. (Ong, 2016). Multiple ideologies within the youth led red guard movement explain why the movement gained momentum and became incredibly powerful (Walder, 2009).

Mao had lost power after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to modernize China’s economy by developing agriculture and industry which led to the deaths of nearly 13,000 people due to famine. Mao eventually stood down as Chairman of the People Republic

The Cultural Revolution, which affected China from 1965 to 1968, is the name given to Mao's endeavor to proclaim his convictions in China. Mao Zedong was a Chinese Communist progressive and the establishing father of the People's Republic of China. He had a Marxist-Leninist hypothesis, military procedures, and political approaches which were known as the Mao Zedong Thought. Mao was worried about the traits of post 1959 China. He commented that the unrest had supplanted the old respectability with over again one and expected that these individuals taking in a main part would debilitate Mao's energy inside the gathering and nation. Mao trusted that with the begin of the Cultural Revolution, it would disrupt the decision class and get China to a more equivalent condition of being. August 1966 at a meeting of the Plenum of the Central Committee was the initiation of the Cultural Revolution development.

Today, throughout most of China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is realized as one of the most chaotic and deadly times in chinese history; often referred to as the “ten lost years.” However, during the revolution, many hopeful individuals sought after change and looked toward Mao as

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

Mao was the leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Above everything, he was a communist. His world revolves around him being a communist (Wood, 8, Class Notes). He believed that the world was divided into two separate sides, the communists and the capitalists. This shaped the way in which he conducted matters for mainland China because everything he did was justified by his communist ideologies (Mao, 13). Many of the things he did was because he always thought about communism being his number one priority. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution are two main events that Mao led that shape his worldviews in having an underlying tone of communism which will be discussed later on in the essay. Mao wanted equality within all aspects of life throughout all classes in society. He believed that every individual should be treated the same (Mao, 19).

The Cultural Revolution had an enormous impact on the people of China From 1965 to 1968. The cultural Revolution is the name given to the Chinese Communist party’s attempt, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, to reassert its authority over the Chinese government. The main goal of the revolution was simple: the Chinese Communist party wanted to reform the Chinese people so that they believed and followed the communist ideology of absolute social equality. The group of people that the CCP, under Mao, wanted to help most was the rural people or the peasants. Mao’s man desire was to create a China which had peasants, workers and educated people all working together for the greater good of China. No class of people was more privileged

Mao’s Cultural Revolution was an attempt to create a new culture for China. Through education reforms and readjustments, Mao hoped to create a new generation of Chinese people - a generation of mindless Communists. By eliminating intellectuals via the Down to the Countryside movement, Mao hoped to eliminate elements of traditional Chinese culture and create a new form Chinese culture. He knew that dumbing down the masses would give him more power so his regime would be more stable. This dramatic reform affected youth especially as they were targeted by Mao’s propaganda and influence. Drawing from his experiences as an Educated Youth who was sent down to the countryside Down to the Countryside movement, Ah Cheng wrote The King of

The Great Leap Forward included many of ideas. Mao Zedong wanted to increase production in farm and families. He urged everyone to produce steel to industrialize China as a country. “This breakdown of the Chinese economy caused the government to begin to repeal the Great Leap Forward program.” The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution had negative impacts on the Chinese society. People were persecuted as a way to enforce his ideas on Chinese people. Mao’s biggest goal was to change China's industrial economy into an agrarian one.

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

This constituted China's Great Leap Forward, an attempt by Mao and the State to unify the nation under a common goal in order to overthrow Great Britain and other European giants in agricultural production. Entire communities toiled vigorously in order to drastically increase China's production output and demonstrate the nation's growing prowess against the powers of the West. The Great Leap Forward, despite its disastrous failure which cost over 2 million lives, was a clear denouncement of individual freedom, instead raising the status of communities and 'awarding' collective freedom.

In 1949 a powerful communist leader by the name of Mao Zedong came to power based on his idea for a, “Great Leap Forward.” This idea was meant to bring China’s economy into the twentieth century. He had assembled a revolutionary government using traditional Chinese ideals of filial piety, harmony, and order. Mao's cult of personality, party purges, and political policies reflect Mao's esteem of these traditional Chinese ideals and history. However, the product of this revolution created a massive national shortage in vital materials and initiated a wide scale famine to China’s people (Gabriel).