MAO S METHOD Simon Tan Registry 0409 Modern World 1 Mods 17/18 May 11, 2001
Mao s Method In all history, there were great leaders and there were poor leaders. Yet, all of them were leaders for a reason, and all had their moment of glory where everything seemed in their favor. However, poor leadership qualities were always discovered, and the ruler to blame may have been forced to take responsibility for his/her actions. One example was the case of Mao Zedong, head of state of the People s Republic of China from 1949-1976 and leader of the Chinese Communist Party. China s deterioration after the 1950 s was due to Mao Zedong s closeminded policies. The Mao era began like a legend. It started after the defeat of the Nationalists and the proclamation of the People s Republic of China at Beijing on October 1, 1949. After a long but heroic war, communism had finally taken hold all across China, and Mao Zedong went to work as the new Chairman. During the early stages of his rule, he performed feats worthy of praise from his people. Mao made land reforms, stabilized hyperinflation, created a rationing system, extended human rights, etc. However, Mao s reputation swiftly went sour with the enactment of several of his later plans. The destruction of China s economy that resulted was enough to show Mao s weakness as a leader. Mao s various economic and political policies showed how his stubbornness brought China down. For example, the famous Great Leap Forward (Rectification Campaign) that he initiated in 1958 was a Great Big Disaster. In this plan, Mao had tried to use ideological indoctrination and mass movements to drastically boost China s economic production. 1
(Loescher, 121) Mao went so far as ordering iron and steel blast furnaces in the backyard of every home, believing that China s iron/steel production would skyrocket if every family in China were producing. Unfortunately, Mao did not factor in the truth of the matter: Not every Chinese family was an expert at making iron and steel, so the product they produced was worthless. Mao also set unrealistic goals when he extended the workers workday without increasing their pay and forced farmers to grow a high amount of crops on a small amount of farmland. Mao s idea behind all this was simple: He believed that mass enthusiasm rather than material rewards could inspire efforts towards higher production and achieve the impossible. (Dunster, 27) However, Mao s dreams far overestimated reality, and the results were disastrous. People were forced to report false production statistics for fear of punishment, and goods were exported according to those false reports. The consequence was that China exported more than it really had produced, which resulted in a shortage of food for the Chinese people. (Chang) This crisis combined with droughts throughout the country made for a period of hard times in China. In addition to closing his mind to the realities of the Great Leap Forward, Mao also closed his mind to the Russians. Historically, the Chinese Communist Party had always taken advice from the Russian government, since the success of the Bolshevik Revolution was proof that the Russians knew what they were doing and could lead China to become a great Communist power. However, when the Russians disagreed with Mao on some policies (such as trusting peasants for revolution), Mao began to stray farther and farther from Russia s ideas, until he abolished them from his plans altogether. He came to believe that China could not indefinitely rely on the Soviet experts and he sent all Russian ambassadors back home. (Meisner, 161) When Khrushchev came to power in Russia in 1956 and denounced China as a third-rate country, Mao s answer amounted to Goodbye and good riddance. (Lawson, 150) Russia and 2
China broke their bond and Mao ran his country without any more aid from China s big brother. Both the Russian conflict and the Great Leap Forward ended up heavily costing China, but their effects could have been suppressed if Mao had accepted alternative ideas and scientific reality. The Cultural Revolution (May, 1966-October, 1976) was another example of how obstinate Mao Zedong could be. In this attempt to revive the revolution of the past, Mao went overboard in his efforts. For example, one of his goals in the Cultural Revolution was to eliminate all social classes and forms of authority. Mao s utopian belief that everyone was equal was pushed to the limit during the Cultural Revolution, his war against oppression, aimed to consolidate the Chinese Communist Party. (Meisner, 293) One of the strict orders he had the Red Guards enforce was the corporal punishment and embarrassment of professors, the elite, intellectuals, aristocrats, scholars, and any others who showed authority and power over anyone else, sometimes called capitalist roaders or imperialists for their lean towards a society class system. (Perl, 62) Sometimes even parents were targeted! Mao considered capitalist roaders to be counterrevolutionaries who were enemies of his, and wanted to exterminate them and the threat they brought to communism. Mao also believed that communism was threatened by the education system, which produced many of these capitalist roaders. Mao strongly believed that the purpose of education was to serve the people and no more. (McLenighan, 67) Therefore, Mao created his Red Guard out of school students, and eradicated many universities in China. In addition, he changed the entire learning structure of school systems throughout the country. He believed that the current education at the time was irrelevant to China s needs, [and that] students must also learn industry, agriculture, military science, and how to criticize the bourgeoisie along with regular schoolwork. (Loescher, 125) Consequently, there came to be 3
vocational education in all schools, where students not only studied, but worked labor in school farms and factories as well. The educators roles in society gradually diminished until they became worthless people. As a result of the education revolution and the persecuting of intellectuals, China saw little scientific development during the Cultural Revolution, now often called the lost decade in Chinese history. This decade was not the only one lost in the Cultural Revolution, however. During this time, Mao also underwent a plan to eliminate all traces of China s past before communism. As part of the Cultural Revolution (and how the Cultural Revolution got its name), Mao also wanted to do away with anything related to Old China. Specifically, this meant the obliteration of any item, artifact, antique, idea, art, tradition, behavior, or language that had any connection with the time before the People s Republic of China. Mao wanted this done because he believed that such old things were against the revolution he had created, and against communism in general. Confucianism was one of the main things to be dismissed. In Mao s eyes, it promoted a class system and was therefore counterrevolutionary. He also claimed Confucianism looked to the past [but] Marxism [progressed] toward the future. (Loescher, 121) In destroying Confucianism, however, Mao was also losing many of the values that had given China greatness in the past, such as honor and intellect. Mao s persistent elimination policies in the Cultural Revolution gravely brought China down. With the demolition of the class system, the education system, and the history of China, the Chinese people were the ones to pay the final price. Mao losing touch with his people showed his narrow-mindedness more than anything else. Although he was promoting a government system that was to have society function as a community with everyone equal, he was ironically betraying it by isolating himself and protecting his own views and ideas. One example of this was the Hundred Flowers Campaign, 4
which Mao launched in the May of 1956, believing that all of China supported his ideas at the time. The thought/slogan behind the campaign (and its name) was to let a hundred flowers bloom, and a hundred schools of thought [points of view] contend. (McLenighan, 56) Mao had originally wanted to use this policy to eliminate the secret-police methods in China, but he expanded on the idea to lessen restriction on free ideas. He believed that relaxed censorship and freedom in media, speech, etc. would be good for the Chinese people, and that they may be able to give sound advice to him. However, the result was the complete opposite of what he had predicted. In less than a year, protests arose, claiming that Mao was a poor leader and that he had made many errors. When riots started to become frequent, Mao reversed the campaign, saying that the flowers had turned into poisonous weeds. The Anti-Rightist Campaign followed, punishing all those that had spoken out against Mao during the Hundred Flowers Campaign with 20 or more years in prison. From then on, the Chinese developed a natural apprehension about speaking out about communism or Mao. Mao s fear of criticism lost him valuable ideas that could have helped him later in his term, as well as his connection to his people. Mao was pushed even farther from his people through his idolization as a political icon. His ideas and policies were so strictly enforced that Mao eventually became a daily part of Chinese life, with schoolchildren forced to chant, Long live Mao Zedong! to Mao Zedong s portrait being copied over and over again to be posted in any place eyes may have wandered. During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards would all enthusiastically wave The Little Red Book of quotations by Mao, as if it was the Bible to them and Mao Zedong their god. Many of them memorized the entire manuscript, similar behavior to some mysterious cult. But as all of China fell into the Cult of Mao, Mao Zedong himself did nothing about it. Instead, he soaked it all in, as if it was a form of praise for him. Don Lawson said it best: nothing so much proved 5
that Mao was a human being as his acceptance of this attempt to deify him. (Lawson, 152) This godly remoteness from his people let him do most of his political work alone, with little assistance from anyone else, similar to what he did with the Anti-Rightist Campaign. In both cases, he shunned his people as he was trying to figure out what was best for them, without letting them have a say in his decisions. Mao Zedong s ignorance of all else clearly led China straight down the economy drain. His policies, his Cultural Revolution, and his utter seclusion from his people and their ideas showed that he was a leader unwilling to compromise with any proposal but his own. Mao Zedong was not all bad, however. Early in his term as Chairman, he brought great land reform to peasants, and stabilized a China that was in chaos. Mao Zedong did perform feats that qualified him to be a strong and capable leader for China, but even the strongest and most capable leader has his faults. Mao Zedong s fault was the lack of the big picture. 6
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