Historical Figures

Mao Zedong - Biography of the Great Chinese Helmsman


Mao Zedong (or Mao Tse-tung) was the founder and main leader of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1976. After defeating the supporters of nationalism, Mao seized power and, in 1949, established a communist regime in China. Gradually, it isolates the country from the rest of the world. From 1965, he launched a Great Cultural Revolution of the proletariat in China. It is the fight against the “old four”:old customs, old habits, old culture and old ways of thinking. From this date, every Chinese is required to know and submit to the thoughts of the "Great Helmsman", set forth in the Little Red Book . Responsible for several million deaths in China, he left politics in the early 1970s.

Mao Zedong, from political commitment to guerrilla warfare

Mao Zedong was born in 1893 in the province of Hunan in China. Although from a modest background, he had a sufficient level of education to enter a normal school and obtain a position at the Peking University library, then became a primary school principal. Around the age of 25, he discovered the theory favorable to the people developed by Karl Marx and from then on adhered to communist thought. In 1921, he participated in the creation of the Chinese Communist Party.

It was in his home province of southern China that Mao forged his path to communism:his strategy of "red bases" involves the organization of peasant militias, the sharing of land and the mobilization of the population around the revolutionary cause. Mao's successes forced the party leaders to recognize the validity of his orientations. But it was with the "Long March" (1934-1935), which he undertook to circumvent the offensive of the Kuomintang (National People's Party of Chiang Kai-Shek), that Mao definitively took the helm of the Communist Party.

During this period, he enacted the principles of people's war (Strategic problems of the revolutionary war in China; Protracted war; Strategic problems of the partisan war against Japan ) and launched a campaign of "ideological rectification", advocating the alliance of peasants, workers, middle classes and capitalists.

The Great Leap Forward

The successes of the Communist guerrillas, contrasting with the retreat of the Nationalists, allow the CCP to appear as the defender of the Chinese nation at the time of the capitulation of Japan in August 1945 Mao became a national hero, and the balance of power between the two camps was reversed in favor of the communists. Their relations, which have never ceased to be tense, even during the war, quickly degenerate, and the civil war resumes. Corruption and inflation undermine the little credit of the nationalists. The communists take over almost the entire country and the nationalists take refuge on the island of Taiwan.

On October 1, 1949, Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China in Beijing and became President of the People's Republic of China. The party controls all of the political, economic and social life of the country, and imposes a revolutionary dictatorship. Agrarian reform led to the collectivization of land (1953). Finally, the country has a Constitution, based on the single party and the alliance of peasants and workers (1954). The foundations thus laid, Mao Zedong wishes to skip the stages of economic and social development to quickly make China a great power.

In 1958, Mao implemented the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to replace the bureaucratic state with a system of autonomous local communes (referring to the Paris Commune of 1871). Living together is generalized, and the difference between cities and countryside, united by the same ideology, is destined to disappear. This program ended in serious disappointments. Most major infrastructure projects fail, and famine returns. The break with the USSR in 1960 further accentuated the country's isolation. The "Great Leap Forward", the fruit of Maoist voluntarism, was a bitter failure and caused serious famines throughout the country. Mao then moved away from power.

Mao's Cultural Revolution

The great proletarian Cultural Revolution marked its return to the fore in 1965. Mobilized within the Red Guards, the youth attacked the party leaders. The thoughts of the Supreme Leader, summarized in the “Little Red Book,” Thoughts of Chairman Mao , are broadcast and commented on throughout the country. The book largely contributes to the building of a real cult around Mao, whose face is printed on posters in millions of copies. Revered in China, it is studied in the Third World and taken as a model by certain leftist movements in the West.

Returning to responsibilities in 1966, Mao Zedong undertook to reduce the resistance of Chinese society to communism:this was the meaning of the "cultural revolution" launched in 1966. It targets the moderate wing of the party and, within the population, all the survivals of traditional Chinese culture. The idea, basically, is to create a new man, built ex nihilo:the Chinese Communist. This time again, this ambitious policy comes up against Chinese realities; its realization was accompanied by massive violence on the part of the Red Guards and met with strong resistance.

Chairman Mao is forced to call in the military to restore order and let the Communist Party rebuild itself. It is necessary to return to a more realistic policy and Mao's ideas gradually lose their preeminence. he abandoned the current administration, entrusted to Zhou Enlai from 1972, and did not take part in the struggle between the radicals of the Band of Four and the moderates. Suffering from Parkinson's disease, he retired completely from political life in 1974 and died in Beijing on September 9, 1976.

Presented as the "Great Helmsman" of the Chinese Revolution as part of his personality cult, Mao Zedong embodied the development of an original form of communism in Asia . The impact of his doctrine and his legend on the European generation of 1968 was decisive. And, if China today seems to be heading in a different direction than that set by Mao, the latter's Mausoleum is still standing in Beijing...

Bibliography

- Mao Zedong, biography of Jonathan Spence. Fides, 2002.

- Mao:The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang. Folio History, 2011.