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Mao Zedong

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Mao Zedong (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976) was a Chinese Communist politician and revolutionary who was the 1st Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from 1943 until his death in 1976, the 1st President of China from 1949 to 1959, and the 1st and 8th Chairman of the Central Military Commission[a]. Mao is criticised for his policies that led to the Great Chinese Famine, causing millions of deaths, and the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in widespread persecution and suffering.

Chairman

Mao Zedong
毛泽东
Mao Zedong in 1959 (cropped).jpg
Official portrait, 1959
1st Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party
In office
20 March 1943 – 9 September 1976
Deputy
Preceded byPosition established;
Zhang Wentian
(as General Secretary)
Succeeded byHua Guofeng
1st President of China
In office
1 October 1949 – 27 April 1959
PremierZhou Enlai
Vice PresidentZhu De
Preceded byOffice established;
Chiang Kai-shek
(as President of the Republic of China)
Succeeded byLiu Shaoqi
1st and 8th Chairman of the Central Military Commission
In office
  • Party Commission: December 1936
  • State Commission: 1 October 1949
 –
  • Party Commission: 9 September 1976
  • State Commission: 27 April 1959
Deputy
Preceded by
  • Zhu De
    (Party Commission)
  • Position established
    (State Commission)
Succeeded by
  • Hua Guofeng
    (Party Commission)
  • Liu Shaoqi
    (State Commission)
Personal details
Born(1893-12-26)26 December 1893
Shaoshan, Hunan, Qing dynasty
Died9 September 1976(1976-09-09) (aged 82)
Beijing, China
Resting placeChairman Mao Memorial Hall, Beijing
NationalityChinese
Political partyChinese Communist Party
(from 1921)
Other political
affiliations		Kuomintang
(1925–1926)
Spouse(s)
Children17
Parents
Alma materHunan First Normal University
Signature

Name

Mao Zedong is the Latin-alphabet version of Mao's name now used by most people. In the romanisation common in his lifetime, it was spelled "Mao Tse-tung".[1] "Mao" is his family name - in China, family names are placed first. Mao is also called Chairman Mao, because he was the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party.

Early life and career

 
Mao's Childhood home

Mao Zedong was born into a loving family on 26 December 1893 in the small village of Shaoshan in the Hunan province. After finishing school, He worked as a librarian where he was exposed to Marxist literature. In 1921, he founded the Chinese Communist Party.

In 1927 KMT members purged members of the Communist Party in Shanghai, thus starting the Chinese Civil War, which lasted from 1927 to 1949. During the Japanese invasion of China during World War II, Mao formed an alliance and cooperated with the KMT against the Japanese.

After Japan's surrender in 1945, Mao fought against the KMT in early 1946. In 1949, Mao's forces successfully defeated the KMT, establishing the People's Republic of China, and unifying China as a single country.

Ruler

 
Mao Zedong declares the beginning of the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949.
 
Mao Meets President Richard Nixon during his visit to China in 1972

In the 1950s, Mao Zedong had many plans for how China could move forward in technology very quickly and catch up with countries like the United Kingdom and United States. Mao was responsible for the Five Year Plan. The Second Five Year Plan included the Great Leap Forward, which was a disaster for the Chinese people. Poor farming practices led to significant crop failure, and cities did not make many of their daily items like clothes and machines. The famine that came as a result killed millions of people via starvation. In the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966 in order to keep his power and position within the Chinese Communist Party. The Cultural Revolution lasted for a decade until Mao's Death in 1976.

A few years after Mao won the civil war in China, Georgy Malenkov became the leader of the Soviet Union. Before this, Joseph Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union. Mao liked Stalin and respected the way he led. China and the Soviet Union became allies with each other. Malenkov was different than Stalin, but kept friendly relations with China. After that came Nikita Khrushchev, who was extremely different than Stalin and Malenkov. He thought Stalin was a criminal dictator, and thus Khrushchev lead the country very differently. Mao and Khrushchev did not like each other because of how Khrushchev viewed Stalin. Thus, the Soviet Union was no longer allies with China. China now had only a few allies like Albania, North Korea, Democratic Kampuchea, and Pakistan. This change of friends was called the Sino-Soviet split[b].

During the 1970s, Mao became more friendly with the United States. In 1972, American president Richard Nixon visited China and met Mao. Mao died in September 1976, and the Cultural Revolution also ended that year. Mao's supporters were imprisoned, and Deng Xiaoping, who followed Mao, revised Mao's economic policies.

Liu Shaoqi

Mao Zedong was afraid that Liu Shaoqi would overthrow him, and take over the CPC. As in the result, Mao blamed Liu Shaoqi for being a capitalist, and placed him in jail. Liu Shaoqi died in prison from brutal treatment, hunger, and terrible conditions.

Lin Biao

After Liu had been removed from leadership, the defence minister Lin Biao was ranked second in the party and hoped to succeed Mao. In 1971, Lin Biao and his wife died in a plane crash after trying to assassinate Mao and seize power for himself.

Death

Mao had been in poor health for several years and had declined visibly for at least six months prior to his death. There are unconfirmed reports that he possibly had ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. Mao's last public appearance was on 27 May 1976,[2] where he met the visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto during the latter's one-day visit to Beijing.

At around 5:00PM on 2 September 1976, Mao suffered a heart attack, far more severe than his previous two and affecting a much larger area of his heart. Three days later, on 5 September, Mao's condition was still critical. On the afternoon of 7 September, Mao's condition completely deteriorated. Mao's organs failed quickly and he fell into a coma shortly before noon where he was put on life support machines. He was taken off life support over 12 hours later, quarter to midnight and was pronounced dead at 12:08 am on 9 September 1976, at the age of 82.

His body lay in state at the Great Hall of the People. There was a three-minute silence observed during this service. His body was later placed into the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, despite his wishes to be cremated and he had been one of the first high-ranking officials to sign the "Proposal that all Central Leaders be Cremated after Death" in November 1956.[3]

Legacy

 
Portrait of Mao in Beijing's Tiananmen Square

Many Chinese people still believe that Mao was a great leader, but they also know that he did unwise and bad things. According to Deng Xiaoping, Mao was "seven parts right and three parts wrong" and his "contributions are primary and his mistakes secondary". Some people think Mao Zedong made China lose its most important ally, or friend, the Soviet Union, in the Sino-Soviet split. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were two of the things that Mao did that many people disliked.

Some historians think that tens of millions of people died because of Mao's bad ideas and neglect. Some people dislike Mao because he did not support family planning, and this caused too many births, so causing rapid population growth. Leaders of China after Mao passed a law called the one child policy. This had the long-term effect of greatly reducing the population.

Mao promoted a personality cult, shown by the widespread use of his "Little Red Book" of quotes. This made it dangerous to disagree with him, and people were expected to follow him without question. This cult of personality meant there was no accountability, leading to many bad policies being implemented without challenge.

Mao also made several changes to the Chinese language, such as switching from the Wade-Giles system of Romanisation to Pinyin. For this reason, Nanking is now called Nanjing on modern maps. Taiwan still uses Wade-Giles, so its capital is called Taipei instead of the pinyin Taibei. Mao also simplified the Chinese characters. In theory it would make them easier to read and write so that more people would be literate. Many of Mao's successors except Xi Jinping had less power than him.

Mao also made an ideology, Maoism. The ideology spread across China and also influenced many people around the world. Lot's of communist parties around the world have this ideology.

Mao Zedong Media

  • Mao Zedong c. 1910s

  • Mao Zedong in 1913

  • 1924年，毛泽东在上海。

  • Mao Zedong in Changsha in April 1919.

  • Students in Beijing rallying during the May Fourth Movement

  • Location of the first Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in July 1921, in Xintiandi, former French Concession, Shanghai

  • Mao giving a speech (no audio)

  • Mao

  • Third Plenum of the KMT Central Executive Committee in March 1927. Mao is third from the right in the second row.

Notes

  1. ↑ 8th Chairman of the Party Commission from 1936 until his death in 1976 and the 8th Chairman of the State Commission from 1949 to 1959.
  2. ↑ "Sino" is another way to say "Chinese".

References

  1. ↑ "Mao Zedong". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 13 July 2016.
  2. ↑ "Last public appearance of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, 1976". 29 December 2016.
  3. ↑ Hays, Jeffrey. "MAO'S DEATH, LEGACY AND DESCENDANTS - Facts and Details". factsanddetails.com.

Sources and other websites

  1. [1] Archived 2006-08-28 at the Wayback Machine Washington State University.
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