The New Democracy Strategy For America 's Political And Economic Recovery

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).

Farmers had to grow crops but also had to work to produce steel and iron in addition to infrastructure projects. This policy led to deaths of millions of Chinese peasants and what came to be known as the biggest famine in history. This was a huge failure for Mao, and threw off his position as leader.

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 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

The Cultural Revolution was based on the belief that school should be simpler, and the more books a person read, the more unintelligent they become. Mao wanted to brainwash Chinese society and create Chinese citizens who would grow up to become uneducated and mindless. According to Jing Chang she wrote that in order to obtain absolute obedience and loyalty, one needed terror. And that's why Mao decided to use young people in their early teens and twenties because they much easier to influence and manipulate. Mao attempted to use young people and influenced them that their democratic system is unfair and succeeded in creating a group of students known as the Red Guards.

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

The Great Leap Forward is a Maoist approach to ruling China; it is distinct from the soviet model. After the hundred flowers Mao started to take criticism negatively and created an “Anti rightest campaign” that targeted intellectuals and anyone with an independent mind. Mao’s Anti rightest campaign allowed him to continue on with GLF plan without any constraints from the party. The Great Leap forward can be seen as a simple intensification of the Big push strategy; there were massive increases in the rate at which resources were transferred from agriculture to industry. Mao implemented the idea of “communes” in the countryside. A commune was a large-scale combination of governmental and economic functions. It was used to mobilize labor for construction projects, provide social series and develop rural small-scale industries. Mao rejected material incentives and monetary rewards, bonuses were eliminated and free markets were shut down. In 1958, there was a spectacular autumn harvest (grain); Leaders were blinded because of growth in industries. Agricultural workers were moved to rural factories and Agricultural workers were told to reduce the acreage

The commencements of the American Revolution and the Chinese Communist Revolution both had their beginnings in new Enlightenment thinking of the 1700s, often called, “The Age of Reason”. The Enlightenment promoted the thought, “that humanity could be improved through rational change.” In China, Karl Marx’s new Enlightenment ideas of social equality and no private property were the main inspirations of Mao Zedong’s political thinking. Introduced in his theory, Marx believed that capitalism, “an economic system in which investment in and ownership in the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is maintained chiefly by private individuals”, was unstable and that in order to prevent a revolution, private property and social classes, maintained by private wealth through capitalism, needed to be eliminated.

Another goal of the revolution was to promote industrialization in the rural areas of China and to narrow the economic gap between the urban and rural people. Because of this many peasants became industrial workers and improved their standard of living. Also, as the Cultural Revolution continued ordinary farmers were empowered and were given more control of the affairs of production teams. The farmers started many committees whose members were democratically elected. With the impute from the elected leaders of these committees production improved.

But some of the promises made to the people were fulfilled. In a few short years Chinese peasants were moved from their small plots of land into large communes and cooperatives. On these communes very had enough to eat, everyone shared the work, and there was a real sense of community.

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.

Mao believed the new policy would be so successful in stimulating output and surplus resources that the government would see a net gain in surplus captured from the countryside. Mao saw that this surplus that could be invested in heavy industry, mining, and infrastructure among other things. This optimism about the potential increases in productivity of rural laborers also encouraged the central government to massively relocate labor from agriculture to industry. It would not appear that Mao nor any of his top aides asked themselves one most important questions: What happens if the productivity estimations are wrong?

In accordance to this, China went on a construction binge. Whole factories were purchased from abroad while others were built with local resources. By 1978, the frenzy for new projects reached a level that reminded some people of the Great Leap Forward. In an effort to promote agricultural production, the government released many of the restrictions on the 'spontaneous capitalist tendencies' of the peasantry. (173) In the late 1980's, the government decided to expand the scope of private marketing. The next step was to increase the amount land assigned to the peasants. The peasants were now not responsible to the government for the use they made to the private plots. They simply could grow what they wished, for the sale to the government or to private markets. This led to furious rebuilding and inflow of foreign investments. All this enabled China to remake itself into Asian's hub of finance, trade and culture.

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).