preview

Mao Zedong Essay

Good Essays

Digna Estrella
HIS 202
Prof. Dehne
November 29, 2017

“War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.” - Mao Zedong
In the early 1900th widespread of nationalism and equality took hold of Europe and Asia. It was a time of hunger for power and land, leading to rivalries between countries which led to World War I. This war was catastrophic and it had a large death toll, it was known as the war to end all wars. Hatred was born after the war, and a new form of ideas arose such as socialism. These political ideas were later a great influence to Mao Zedong. Born into a peasant family, he was most famous for being the leader of the Chinese Communist Revolution and the founding father …show more content…

“He joined in the student demonstration in Changsha against the Qing and clipped off his own queue hair as a symbol of his new reformist elf” (Spence 12). However, those events mentioned above led the way to Mao interest in socialism. After the monarchy was abolished, creating a republic of China, he discovered socialism from reading a newspaper article by Jiang Kangshu. He adopted Marxism-Leninism while working at Peking University. “He believed in his ethics very strongly and tried to imbue his students with the desire to become just, moral, virtuous men, useful in society” (Spence 23). He was so tired of the endless corruption in China, that when he became an educator he wanted his students to be the new rising sun of China.
Aside from Mao’s occupation as educator, he co-founded the Hunanese Student Association. The turning point that led Mao to be part of the communist movement was the endless oppression by General Zhang Jingyao, who was “extraordinary cruelty to farmer’s families in the countryside, his seizure of banks’ assets, and his proven record of massive opium smuggling and the illegal selling of lead-mining rights to German and American businessmen” (Spence 38). Mao argued that citizens like General Zheng made China corrupted and senseless. Therefore, he developed a form of thinking and government that would not only help unite China but their economy so there would be no separation between the rich and the

Get Access