Mao Tse Tung Zedong On Practice First English Edition Peking China 1952

$890.00 Buy It Now, $25.00 Shipping, 30-Day Returns, eBay Money Back Guarantee
Seller: levant-fair ✉️ (615) 100%, Location: Rishon Lezion, IL, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 224962503032 MAO TSE TUNG ZEDONG ON PRACTICE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION PEKING CHINA 1952.

MAO TSE TUNG - ON PRACTICE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION PEKING CHINA 1952
This is an extremely rare first English Edition of Mao Tse Tung essay - ON PRACTICE on the relation between knowledge and practice between knowing and doing. This book was  published by Foreign Languages Press in Peking in 1952. This book contains 24 pages, In overall good condition, softcover, pages browning by time. Size:7.25x5.25 inch (18.5x13cm).
 On Practice is one of Mao Zedong's most important philosophical works. explains Mao Zedong's philosophy concerning the acquisition of knowledge. In this text, Mao follows in the footsteps of Marx and Lenin, endorsing the dialectical-materialist philosophy that knowledge is wrought through practice. Mao stresses the understanding of political and cultural life, in addition to the material focus of Marx. With the help of historical and other examples, Mao explains the dialectial-materialist process, breaking it down into comprehensible parts.

Winning bidder pays $25.00 Postage International Express airmail. Authenticity 100% Guaranteed 

Please have a look at my other listings.

Good Luck!

On Practice (simplified Chinese: 实践论; traditional Chinese: 實踐論; pinyin: Shíjiànlùn) is one of Mao Zedong's most important philosophical works. Along with On Contradiction, this essay is a part of lectures Mao gave in 1937. It expresses Mao's support for Marxism and attempts to establish a distinctly Chinese brand of communist philosophy.[1] At the time it was written, the Communist Party of China had just endured the Long March and their nationalist foes were still at large. Plus, China was facing a tremendous Japanese threat. Mao hoped to establish himself as the leader of China's communist party in order to unite China and vanquish the Japanese. On Practice was written as a part of this mission, for it gave Mao a more legitimate claim to lead by creating the basis for his communist philosophy, Maoism.[1] Philosophical argument On Practice explains Mao Zedong's philosophy concerning the acquisition of knowledge. In this text, Mao follows in the footsteps of Marx and Lenin, endorsing the dialectical-materialist philosophy that knowledge is wrought through practice. Mao stresses the understanding of political and cultural life, in addition to the material focus of Marx. With the help of historical and other examples, Mao explains the dialectial-materialist process, breaking it down into comprehensible parts. The process begins with the acquisition of logical knowledge, which happens in three stages, perception, cognition, and conception. Once these steps finish, people must apply their logical knowledge to reality through practice in order to verify the truth-value of their conceptions. True knowledge is logical knowledge that, when practiced, successfully directs people to their desired end. According to Mao, other philosophies fail to recognize the importance of practice, and only through this dialectical-materialism can the Chinese people experience progress. According to Mao, logical knowledge results from the process of perceiving, cognizing, and conceptualizing.[2]: 4–5  During the stage of perception individuals spend time interacting with the subject of their enquiry, and they merely absorb the impressions their senses are giving them. This stage allows people to become familiar with the matter they are interested in, for as they gather impressions individuals begin to recognize the essential elements of their subject. For instance, an individual observing trees comes to understand that trees do not always bear leaves. They realize birds use some trees as their home. Additionally, useful impressions can be derived from indirect experiences of a phenomenon. According to Mao, an indirect experience is just a direct experience of some other person's impressions.[2]: 9  Therefore, indirect impressions still gather genuine information about a subject. Impressions eventually lead to the second step toward rational knowledge, cognition. At this point, individuals establish some general notions about their subject using the essential aspects that were impressed upon them. From there individuals begin conceptualizing; they use their reason to make judgments with the general notions their impressions supplied. These judgments are pieces of logical knowledge. They can be as mundane as judging that many trees lose their leaves during the winter, and as significant as Mao's example, the Communist Party of China can defeat their Japanese opposition.[2]: 5  All logical knowledge must be put to practice in order to substantiate its truth-value. Logical knowledge requires this testing because of its circumstantial founding. Impressions, the origin of logical knowledge, are based upon the circumstances someone experiences. Circumstances change. Therefore, logical knowledge is subject to error. However, by putting their logically founded judgments into practice an individual can address the errors in their ideas. Practice does this by presenting individuals with new impressions, for practice involves interacting with the phenomenon being examined. These new impressions are used in the same way the older ones were. They inform judgments. The only difference is that these judgments are about the truth-value of the original logical knowledge. True knowledge leads to the successful completion of an objective, and is derived from the continual amendment of logical knowledge. A piece of logical knowledge usually undergoes many changes before it can be called true knowledge, for the circumstances surrounding a certain objective can always change. These changes conjure new impressions that disprove older judgments. For instance, a married couple will have to adjust their plan to buy a house according to the strength of the housing market. The fiscal requirements for buying the house will change with the market, so the couple's plan will have to adhere to those changes. However, once the couple understands the fiscal requirements and their financial means are able, they can buy the house. In the same way all logical knowledge can become true knowledge. Said simply, for this to happen an individual must cognize the correct circumstances. This reliance on circumstances is exactly why practice is such an essential element of knowledge, for through practice an individual's ideas are constantly accounting for more circumstances while testing the assumptions of prior knowledge. Therefore, they can eventually encounter the circumstances that can catalyze true knowledge. According to Mao, rationalists and empiricists do not follow the real path to knowledge, and he challenges these dissenters inability to recognize the proper use of practice.[2]: 12  Rationalists do not recognize that interacting with reality is essential to understanding it. Without sensory impressions and tests how can you be sure a theory corresponds to reality? A rationalist might say because the theory makes sense. However, it makes sense that a bird walking across the street prefers walking to flying. The only way to reveal the true reason for the creature walking, a broken wing, is by observing it. An empiricist understands the importance of observing phenomenon. Mao thinks, they know that practice is important, but they do not know what to do with the information they have gathered from practice. Therefore, they cannot extract the essence of their impressions and therefore, cannot make useful judgments. Dialectical-materialism combines the perception empiricists hold dear with the cognition rationalists rely on, and as a result is the proper philosophy for attaining knowledge. Knowledge that the Chinese and all the peoples of the world can use to progress communism. 在中国共产党内,曾经有一部分教条主义的同志长期拒绝中国革命的经验,否认“马克思主义不是教条而是行动的指南”这个真理,而只生吞活剥马克思主义书籍中的只言片语,去吓唬人们。还有另一部分经验主义的同志长期拘守于自身的片断经验,不了解理论对于革命实践的重要性,看不见革命的全局,虽然也是辛苦地——但却是盲目地在工作。这两类同志的错误思想,特别是教条主义思想,曾经在一九三一年至一九三四年使得中国革命受了极大的损失,而教条主义者却是披着马克思主义的外衣迷惑了广大的同志。毛泽东的《实践论》,是为着用马克思主义的认识论观点去揭露党内的教条主义和经验主义——特别是教条主义这些主观主义的错误而写的。因为重点是揭露看轻实践的教条主义这种主观主义,故题为《实践论》。毛泽东曾以这篇论文的观点在延安的抗日军事政治大学作过讲演。   马克思以前的唯物论,离开人的社会性,离开人的历史发展,去观察认识问题,因此不能了解认识对社会实践的依赖关系,即认识对生产和阶级斗争的依赖关系。   首先,马克思主义者认为人类的生产活动是最基本的实践活动,是决定其它一切活动的东西。人的认识,主要地依赖于物质的生产活动,逐渐地了解自然的现象、自然的性质、自然的规律性、人和自然的关系;而且经过生产活动,也在各种不同程度上逐渐地认识了人和人的一定的相互关系。一切这些知识,离开生产活动是不能得到的。在没有阶级的社会中,每个人以社会一员的资格,同其它社会成员协力,结成一定的生产关系,从事生产活动,以解决人类物质生活问题。在各种阶级的社会中,各阶级的社会成员,则又以各种不同的方式,结成一定的生产关系,从事生产活动,以解决人类物质生活问题。这是人的认识发展的基本来源。   人的社会实践,不限于生产活动一种形式,还有多种其它的形式,阶级斗争,政治生活,科学和艺术的活动,总之社会实际生活的一切领域都是社会的人所参加的。因此,人的认识,在物质生活以外,还从政治生活文化生活中(与物质生活密切联系),在各种不同程度上,知道人和人的各种关系。其中,尤以各种形式的阶级斗争,给予人的认识发展以深刻的影响。在阶级社会中,每一个人都在一定的阶级地位中生活,各种思想无不打上阶级的烙印。   马克思主义者认为人类社会的生产活动,是一步又一步地由低级向高级发展,因此,人们的认识,不论对于自然界方面,对于社会方面,也都是一步又一步地由低级向高级发展,即由浅入深,由片面到更多的方面。在很长的历史时期内,大家对于社会的历史只能限于片面的了解,这一方面是由于剥削阶级的偏见经常歪曲社会的历史,另方面,则由于生产规模的狭小,限制了人们的眼界。人们能够对于社会历史的发展作全面的历史的了解,把对于社会的认识变成了科学,这只是到了伴随巨大生产力——大工业而出现近代无产阶级的时候,这就是马克思主义的科学。   马克思主义者认为,只有人们的社会实践,才是人们对于外界认识的真理性的标准。实际的情形是这样的,只有在社会实践过程中(物质生产过程中,阶级斗争过程中,科学实验过程中),人们达到了思想中所预想的结果时,人们的认识才被证实了。人们要想得到工作的胜利即得到预想的结果,一定要使自己的思想合于客观外界的规律性,如果不合,就会在实践中失败。人们经过失败之后,也就从失败取得教训,改正自己的思想使之适合于外界的规律性,人们就能变失败为胜利,所谓“失败者成功之母”,“吃一堑长一智”,就是这个道理。辩证唯物论的认识论把实践提到第一的地位,认为人的认识一点也不能离开实践,排斥一切否认实践重要性、使认识离开实践的错误理论。列宁这样说过:“实践高于(理论的)认识,因为它不但有普遍性的品格,而且还有直接现实性的品格。”[1]马克思主义的哲学辩证唯物论有两个最显着的特点:一个是它的阶级性,公然申明辩证唯物论是为无产阶级服务的;再一个是它的实践性,强调理论对于实践的依赖关系,理论的基础是实践,又转过来为实践服务。判定认识或理论之是否真理,不是依主观上觉得如何而定,而是依客观上社会实践的结果如何而定。真理的标准只能是社会的实践。实践的观点是辩证唯物论的认识论之第一的和基本的观点[2]。   然而人的认识究竟怎样从实践发生,而又服务于实践呢?这只要看一看认识的发展过程就会明了的。   原来人在实践过程中,开始只是看到过程中各个事物的现象方面,看到各个事物的片面,看到各个事物之间的外部联系。例如有些外面的人们到延安来考察,头一二天,他们看到了延安的地形、街道、屋宇,接触了许多的人,参加了宴会、晚会和群众大会,听到了各种说话,看到了各种文件,这些就是事物的现象,事物的各个片面以及这些事物的外部联系。这叫做认识的感性阶段,就是感觉和印象的阶段。也就是延安这些各别的事物作用于考察团先生们的感官,引起了他们的感觉,在他们的脑子中生起了许多的印象,以及这些印象间的大概的外部的联系,这是认识的第一个阶段。在这个阶段中,人们还不能造成深刻的概念,作出合乎论理(即合乎逻辑)的结论。   社会实践的继续,使人们在实践中引起感觉和印象的东西反复了多次,于是在人们的脑子里生起了一个认识过程中的突变(即飞跃),产生了概念。概念这种东西已经不是事物的现象,不是事物的各个片面,不是它们的外部联系,而是抓着了事物的本质,事物的全体,事物的内部联系了。概念同感觉,不但是数量上的差别,而且有了性质上的差别。循此继进,使用判断和推理的方法,就可产生出合乎论理的结论来。《三国演义》上所谓“眉头一皱计上心来”,我们普通说话所谓“让我想一想”,就是人在脑子中运用概念以作判断和推理的工夫。这是认识的第二个阶段。外来的考察团先生们在他们集合了各种材料,加上他们“想了一想”之后,他们就能够作出“共产党的抗日民族统一战线的政策是彻底的、诚恳的和真实的”这样一个判断了。在他们作出这个判断之后,如果他们对于团结救国也是真实的的话,那末他们就能够进一步作出这样的结论:“抗日民族统一战线是能够成功的。”这个概念、判断和推理的阶段,在人们对于一个事物的整个认识过程中是更重要的阶段,也就是理性认识的阶段。认识的真正任务在于经过感觉而到达于思维,到达于逐步了解客观事物的内部矛盾,了解它的规律性,了解这一过程和那一过程间的内部联系,即到达于论理的认识。重复地说,论理的认识所以和感性的认识不同,是因为感性的认识是属于事物之片面的、现象的、外部联系的东西,论理的认识则推进了一大步,到达了事物的全体的、本质的、内部联系的东西,到达了暴露周围世界的内在的矛盾,因而能在周围世界的总体上,在周围世界一切方面的内部联系上去把握周围世界的发展。   这种基于实践的由浅入深的辩证唯物论的关于认识发展过程的理论,在马克思主义以前,是没有一个人这样解决过的。马克思主义的唯物论,第一次正确地解决了这个问题,唯物地而且辩证地指出了认识的深化的运动,指出了社会的人在他们的生产和阶级斗争的复杂的、经常反复的实践中,由感性认识到论理认识的推移的运动。列宁说过:“物质的抽象,自然规律的抽象,价值的抽象以及其它等等,一句话,一切科学的(正确的、郑重的、非瞎说的)抽象,都更深刻、更正确、更完全地反映着自然。”[3]马克思列宁主义认为:认识过程中两个阶段的特性,在低级阶段,认识表现为感性的,在高级阶段,认识表现为论理的,但任何阶段,都是统一的认识过程中的阶段。感性和理性二者的性质不同,但又不是互相分离的,它们在实践的基础上统一起来了。我们的实践证明:感觉到了的东西,我们不能立刻理解它,只有理解了的东西才更深刻地感觉它。感觉只解决现象问题,理论才解决本质问题。这些问题的解决,一点也不能离开实践。无论何人要认识什么事物,除了同那个事物接触,即生活于(实践于)那个事物的环境中,是没有法子解决的。不能在封建社会就预先认识资本主义社会的规律,因为资本主义还未出现,还无这种实践。马克思主义只能是资本主义社会的产物。马克思不能在自由资本主义时代就预先具体地认识帝国主义时代的某些特异的规律,因为帝国主义这个资本主义最后阶段还未到来,还无这种实践,只有列宁和斯大林才能担当此项任务。马克思、恩格斯、列宁、斯大林之所以能够作出他们的理论,除了他们的天才条件之外,主要地是他们亲自参加了当时的阶级斗争和科学实验的实践,没有这后一个条件,任何天才也是不能成功的。“秀才不出门,全知天下事”,在技术不发达的古代只是一句空话,在技术发达的现代虽然可以实现这句话,然而真正亲知的是天下实践着的人,那些人在他们的实践中间取得了“知”,经过文字和技术的传达而到达于“秀才”之手,秀才乃能间接地“知天下事”。如果要直接地认识某种或某些事物,便只有亲身参加于变革现实、变革某种或某些事物的实践的斗争中,才能触到那种或那些事物的现象,也只有在亲身参加变革现实的实践的斗争中,才能暴露那种或那些事物的本质而理解它们。这是任何人实际上走着的认识路程,不过有些人故意歪曲地说些反对的话罢了。世上最可笑的是那些“知识里手”[4],有了道听途说的一知半解,便自封为“天下第一”,适足见其不自量而已。知识的问题是一个科学问题,来不得半点的虚伪和骄傲,决定地需要的倒是其反面——诚实和谦逊的态度。你要有知识,你就得参加变革现实的实践。你要知道梨子的滋味,你就得变革梨子,亲口吃一吃。你要知道原子的组织同性质,你就得实行物理学和化学的实验,变革原子的情况。你要知道革命的理论和方法,你就得参加革命。一切真知都是从直接经验发源的。但人不能事事直接经验,事实上多数的知识都是间接经验的东西,这就是一切古代的和外域的知识。这些知识在古人在外人是直接经验的东西,如果在古人外人直接经验时是符合于列宁所说的条件“科学的抽象”,是科学地反映了客观的事物,那末这些知识是可靠的,否则就是不可靠的。所以,一个人的知识,不外直接经验的和间接经验的两部分。而且在我为间接经验者,在人则仍为直接经验。因此,就知识的总体说来,无论何种知识都是不能离开直接经验的。任何知识的来源,在于人的肉体感官对客观外界的感觉,否认了这个感觉,否认了直接经验,否认亲自参加变革现实的实践,他就不是唯物论者。“知识里手”之所以可笑,原因就是在这个地方。中国人有一句老话:“不入虎穴,焉得虎子。”这句话对于人们的实践是真理,对于认识论也是真理。离开实践的认识是不可能的。   为了明了基于变革现实的实践而产生的辩证唯物论的认识运动——认识的逐渐深化的运动,下面再举出几个具体的例子。   无产阶级对于资本主义社会的认识,在其实践的初期——破坏机器和自发斗争时期,他们还只在感性认识的阶段,只认识资本主义各个现象的片面及其外部的联系。这时,他们还是一个所谓“自在的阶级”。但是到了他们实践的第二个时期——有意识有组织的经济斗争和政治斗争的时期,由于实践,由于长期斗争的经验,经过马克思、恩格斯用科学的方法把这种种经验总结起来,产生了马克思主义的理论,用以教育无产阶级,这样就使无产阶级理解了资本主义社会的本质,理解了社会阶级的剥削关系,理解了无产阶级的历史任务,这时他们就变成了一个“自为的阶级”。   中国人民对于帝国主义的认识也是这样。第一阶段是表面的感性的认识阶段,表现在太平天国运动和义和团运动等笼统的排外主义的斗争上[5]。第二阶段才进到理性的认识阶段,看出了帝国主义内部和外部的各种矛盾,并看出了帝国主义联合中国买办阶级和封建阶级以压榨中国人民大众的实质,这种认识是从一九一九年五四运动[6]前后才开始的。   我们再来看战争。战争的领导者,如果他们是一些没有战争经验的人,对于一个具体的战争(例如我们过去十年的土地革命战争)的深刻的指导规律,在开始阶段是不了解的。他们在开始阶段只是身历了许多作战的经验,而且败仗是打得很多的。然而由于这些经验(胜仗,特别是败仗的经验),使他们能够理解贯串整个战争的内部的东西,即那个具体战争的规律性,懂得了战略和战术,因而能够有把握地去指导战争。此时,如果改换一个无经验的人去指导,又会要在吃了一些败仗之后(有了经验之后)才能理会战争的正确的规律。   常常听到一些同志在不能勇敢接受工作任务时说出来的一句话:没有把握。为什么没有把握呢?因为他对于这项工作的内容和环境没有规律性的了解,或者他从来就没有接触过这类工作,或者接触得不多,因而无从谈到这类工作的规律性。及至把工作的情况和环境给以详细分析之后,他就觉得比较地有了把握,愿意去做这项工作。如果这个人在这项工作中经过了一个时期,他有了这项工作的经验了,而他又是一个肯虚心体察情况的人,不是一个主观地、片面地、表面地看问题的人,他就能够自己做出应该怎样进行工作的结论,他的工作勇气也就可以大大地提高了。只有那些主观地、片面地和表面地看问题的人,跑到一个地方,不问环境的情况,不看事情的全体(事情的历史和全部现状),也不触到事情的本质(事情的性质及此一事情和其它事情的内部联系),就自以为是地发号施令起来,这样的人是没有不跌交子的。   由此看来,认识的过程,第一步,是开始接触外界事情,属于感觉的阶段。第二步,是综合感觉的材料加以整理和改造,属于概念、判断和推理的阶段。只有感觉的材料十分丰富(不是零碎不全)和合于实际(不是错觉),才能根据这样的材料造出正确的概念和论理来。   这里有两个要点必须着重指明。第一个,在前面已经说过的,这里再重复说一说,就是理性认识依赖于感性认识的问题。如果以为理性认识可以不从感性认识得来,他就是一个唯心论者。哲学史上有所谓“唯理论”一派,就是只承认理性的实在性,不承认经验的实在性,以为只有理性靠得住,而感觉的经验是靠不住的,这一派的错误在于颠倒了事实。理性的东西所以靠得住,正是由于它来源于感性,否则理性的东西就成了无源之水,无本之木,而只是主观自生的靠不住的东西了。从认识过程的秩序说来,感觉经验是第一的东西,我们强调社会实践在认识过程中的意义,就在于只有社会实践才能使人的认识开始发生,开始从客观外界得到感觉经验。一个闭目塞听、同客观外界根本绝缘的人,是无所谓认识的。认识开始于经验——这就是认识论的唯物论。   第二是认识有待于深化,认识的感性阶段有待于发展到理性阶段——这就是认识论的辩证法[7]。如果以为认识可以停顿在低级的感性阶段,以为只有感性认识可靠,而理性认识是靠不住的,这便是重复了历史上的“经验论”的错误。这种理论的错误,在于不知道感觉材料固然是客观外界某些真实性的反映(我这里不来说经验只是所谓内省体验的那种唯心的经验论),但它们仅是片面的和表面的东西,这种反映是不完全的,是没有反映事物本质的。要完全地反映整个的事物,反映事物的本质,反映事物的内部规律性,就必须经过思考作用,将丰富的感觉材料加以去粗取精、去伪存真、由此及彼、由表及里的改造制作工夫,造成概念和理论的系统,就必须从感性认识跃进到理性认识。这种改造过的认识,不是更空虚了更不可靠了的认识,相反,只要是在认识过程中根据于实践基础而科学地改造过的东西,正如列宁所说乃是更深刻、更正确、更完全地反映客观事物的东西。庸俗的事务主义家不是这样,他们尊重经验而看轻理论,因而不能通观客观过程的全体,缺乏明确的方针,没有远大的前途,沾沾自喜于一得之功和一孔之见。这种人如果指导革命,就会引导革命走上碰壁的地步。   理性认识依赖于感性认识,感性认识有待于发展到理性认识,这就是辩证唯物论的认识论。哲学上的“唯理论”和“经验论”都不懂得认识的历史性或辩证性,虽然各有片面的真理(对于唯物的唯理论和经验论而言,非指唯心的唯理论和经验论),但在认识论的全体上则都是错误的。由感性到理性之辩证唯物论的认识运动,对于一个小的认识过程(例如对于一个事物或一件工作的认识)是如此,对于一个大的认识过程(例如对于一个社会或一个革命的认识)也是如此。   然而认识运动至此还没有完结。辩证唯物论的认识运动,如果只到理性认识为止,那末还只说到问题的一半。而且对于马克思主义的哲学说来,还只说到非十分重要的那一半。马克思主义的哲学认为十分重要的问题,不在于懂得了客观世界的规律性,因而能够解释世界,而在于拿了这种对于客观规律性的认识去能动地改造世界。在马克思主义看来,理论是重要的,它的重要性充分地表现在列宁说过的一句话:“没有革命的理论,就不会有革命的运动。”[8]然而马克思主义看重理论,正是,也仅仅是,因为它能够指导行动。如果有了正确的理论,只是把它空谈一阵,束之高阁,并不实行,那末,这种理论再好也是没有意义的。认识从实践始,经过实践得到了理论的认识,还须再回到实践去。认识的能动作用,不但表现于从感性的认识到理性的认识之能动的飞跃,更重要的还须表现于从理性的认识到革命的实践这一个飞跃。抓着了世界的规律性的认识,必须把它再回到改造世界的实践中去,再用到生产的实践、革命的阶级斗争和民族斗争的实践以及科学实验的实践中去。这就是检验理论和发展理论的过程,是整个认识过程的继续。理论的东西之是否符合于客观真理性这个问题,在前面说的由感性到理性之认识运动中是没有完全解决的,也不能完全解决的。要完全地解决这个问题,只有把理性的认识再回到社会实践中去,应用理论于实践,看它是否能够达到预想的目的。许多自然科学理论之所以被称为真理,不但在于自然科学家们创立这些学说的时候,而且在于为尔后的科学实践所证实的时候。马克思列宁主义之所以被称为真理,也不但在于马克思、恩格斯、列宁、斯大林等人科学地构成这些学说的时候,而且在于为尔后革命的阶级斗争和民族斗争的实践所证实的时候。辩证唯物论之所以为普遍真理,在于经过无论什么人的实践都不能逃出它的范围。人类认识的历史告诉我们,许多理论的真理性是不完全的,经过实践的检验而纠正了它们的不完全性。许多理论是错误的,经过实践的检验而纠正其错误。所谓实践是真理的标准,所谓“生活、实践底观点,应该是认识论底首先的和基本的观点”[9],理由就在这个地方。斯大林说得好:“理论若不和革命实践联系起来,就会变成无对象的理论,同样,实践若不以革命理论为指南,就会变成盲目的实践。”[10]   说到这里,认识运动就算完成了吗?我们的答复是完成了,又没有完成。社会的人们投身于变革在某一发展阶段内的某一客观过程的实践中(不论是关于变革某一自然过程的实践,或变革某一社会过程的实践),由于客观过程的反映和主观能动性的作用,使得人们的认识由感性的推移到了理性的,造成了大体上相应于该客观过程的法则性的思想、理论、计划或方案,然后再应用这种思想、理论、计划或方案于该同一客观过程的实践,如果能够实现预想的目的,即将预定的思想、理论、计划、方案在该同一过程的实践中变为事实,或者大体上变为事实,那末,对于这一具体过程的认识运动算是完成了。例如,在变革自然的过程中,某一工程计划的实现,某一科学假想的证实,某一器物的制成,某一农产的收获,在变革社会过程中某一罢工的胜利,某一战争的胜利,某一教育计划的实现,都算实现了预想的目的。然而一般地说来,不论在变革自然或变革社会的实践中,人们原定的思想、理论、计划、方案,毫无改变地实现出来的事,是很少的。这是因为从事变革现实的人们,常常受着许多的限制,不但常常受着科学条件和技术条件的限制,而且也受着客观过程的发展及其表现程度的限制(客观过程的方面及本质尚未充分暴露)。在这种情形之下,由于实践中发现前所未料的情况,因而部分地改变思想、理论、计划、方案的事是常有的,全部地改变的事也是有的。即是说,原定的思想、理论、计划、方案,部分地或全部地不合于实际,部分错了或全部错了的事,都是有的。许多时候须反复失败过多次,才能纠正错误的认识,才能到达于和客观过程的规律性相符合,因而才能够变主观的东西为客观的东西,即在实践中得到预想的结果。但是不管怎样,到了这种时候,人们对于在某一发展阶段内的某一客观过程的认识运动,算是完成了。   然而对于过程的推移而言,人们的认识运动是没有完成的。任何过程,不论是属于自然界的和属于社会的,由于内部的矛盾和斗争,都是向前推移向前发展的,人们的认识运动也应跟着推移和发展。依社会运动来说,真正的革命的指导者,不但在于当自己的思想、理论、计划、方案有错误时须得善于改正,如同上面已经说到的,而且在于当某一客观过程已经从某一发展阶段向另一发展阶段推移转变的时候,须得善于使自己和参加革命的一切人员在主观认识上也跟着推移转变,即是要使新的革命任务和新的工作方案的提出,适合于新的情况的变化。革命时期情况的变化是很急速的,如果革命党人的认识不能随之而急速变化,就不能引导革命走向胜利。   然而思想落后于实际的事是常有的,这是因为人的认识受了许多社会条件的限制的缘故。我们反对革命队伍中的顽固派,他们的思想不能随变化了的客观情况而前进,在历史上表现为右倾机会主义。这些人看不出矛盾的斗争已将客观过程推向前进了,而他们的认识仍然停止在旧阶段。一切顽固党的思想都有这样的特征。他们的思想离开了社会的实践,他们不能站在社会车轮的前头充任向导的工作,他们只知跟在车子后面怨恨车子走得太快了,企图把它向后拉,开倒车。   我们也反对“左”翼空谈主义。他们的思想超过客观过程的一定发展阶段,有些把幻想看作真理,有些则把仅在将来有现实可能性的理想,勉强地放在现时来做,离开了当前大多数人的实践,离开了当前的现实性,在行动上表现为冒险主义。   唯心论和机械唯物论,机会主义和冒险主义,都是以主观和客观相分裂,以认识和实践相脱离为特征的。以科学的社会实践为特征的马克思列宁主义的认识论,不能不坚决反对这些错误思想。马克思主义者承认,在绝对的总的宇宙发展过程中,各个具体过程的发展都是相对的,因而在绝对真理的长河中,人们对于在各个一定发展阶段上的具体过程的认识只具有相对的真理性。无数相对的真理之总和,就是绝对的真理[11]。客观过程的发展是充满着矛盾和斗争的发展,人的认识运动的发展也是充满着矛盾和斗争的发展。一切客观世界的辩证法的运动,都或先或后地能够反映到人的认识中来。社会实践中的发生、发展和消灭的过程是无穷的,人的认识的发生、发展和消灭的过程也是无穷的。根据于一定的思想、理论、计划、方案以从事于变革客观现实的实践,一次又一次地向前,人们对于客观现实的认识也就一次又一次地深化。客观现实世界的变化运动永远没有完结,人们在实践中对于真理的认识也就永远没有完结。马克思列宁主义并没有结束真理,而是在实践中不断地开辟认识真理的道路。我们的结论是主观和客观、理论和实践、知和行的具体的历史的统一,反对一切离开具体历史的“左”的或右的错误思想。   社会的发展到了今天的时代,正确地认识世界和改造世界的责任,已经历史地落在无产阶级及其政党的肩上。这种根据科学认识而定下来的改造世界的实践过程,在世界、在中国均已到达了一个历史的时节——自有历史以来未曾有过的重大时节,这就是整个儿地推翻世界和中国的黑暗面,把它们转变过来成为前所未有的光明世界。无产阶级和革命人民改造世界的斗争,包括实现下述的任务:改造客观世界,也改造自己的主观世界——改造自己的认识能力,改造主观世界同客观世界的关系。地球上已经有一部分实行了这种改造,这就是苏联。他们还正在促进这种改造过程。中国人民和世界人民也都正在或将要通过这样的改造过程。所谓被改造的客观世界,其中包括了一切反对改造的人们,他们的被改造,须要通过强迫的阶段,然后才能进入自觉的阶段。世界到了全人类都自觉地改造自己和改造世界的时候,那就是世界的共产主义时代。   通过实践而发现真理,又通过实践而证实真理和发展真理。从感性认识而能动地发展到理性认识,又从理性认识而能动地指导革命实践,改造主观世界和客观世界。实践、认识、再实践、再认识,这种形式,循环往复以至无穷,而实践和认识之每一循环的内容,都比较地进到了高一级的程度。这就是辩证唯物论的全部认识论,这就是辩证唯物论的知行统一观。 Mao Zedong[a][b] (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founding father of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which he ruled as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until his death in 1976. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, his theories, military strategies, and political policies are collectively known as Maoism. Mao was the son of a prosperous peasant in Shaoshan, Hunan. He supported Chinese nationalism and had an anti-imperialist outlook early in his life, and was particularly influenced by the events of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and May Fourth Movement of 1919. He later adopted Marxism–Leninism while working at Peking University and became a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), leading the Autumn Harvest Uprising in 1927. During the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the CCP, Mao helped to found the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, led the Jiangxi Soviet's radical land policies, and ultimately became head of the CCP during the Long March. Although the CCP temporarily allied with the KMT under the Second United Front during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), China's civil war resumed after Japan's surrender, and Mao's forces defeated the Nationalist government, which withdrew to Taiwan in 1949. On October 1, 1949, Mao proclaimed the foundation of the PRC, a Marxist–Leninist single-party state controlled by the CCP. In the following years he solidified his control through the Chinese Land Reform against landlords, the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, the "Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns", and through a psychological victory in the Korean War, which altogether resulted in the deaths of several million Chinese. From 1953 to 1958, Mao played an important role in enforcing planned economy in China, constructing the first Constitution of the PRC, launching the industrialisation program, and initiating the "Two Bombs, One Satellite" project. In 1955, Mao launched the Sufan movement, and in 1957 he launched the Anti-Rightist Campaign, in which at least 550,000 people, mostly intellectuals and dissidents, were persecuted. In 1958, he launched the Great Leap Forward that aimed to rapidly transform China's economy from agrarian to industrial, which led to the deadliest famine in history and the deaths of 15–55 million people between 1958 and 1962. In 1963, Mao launched the Socialist Education Movement, and in 1966 he initiated the Cultural Revolution, a program to remove "counter-revolutionary" elements in Chinese society which lasted 10 years and was marked by violent class struggle, widespread destruction of cultural artifacts, and an unprecedented elevation of Mao's cult of personality. Tens of millions of people were persecuted during the Revolution, while the estimated number of deaths ranges from hundreds of thousands to millions. After years of ill health, Mao suffered a series of heart attacks in 1976 and died at the age of 82. During Mao's era, China's population grew from around 550 million to over 900 million while the government did not strictly enforce its family planning policy. A controversial figure, Mao is regarded as one of the most important individuals in the twentieth century. He is also known as a political intellect, theorist, military strategist, and poet. During Mao's era, China was involved in the Korean War, the Sino-Soviet split, the Vietnam War, and the rise of Khmer Rouge. He ruled China through an autocratic and totalitarian regime responsible for mass repression as well as destruction of religious and cultural artifacts and sites.[2] The government was responsible for vast numbers of deaths with estimates ranging from 40 to 80 million victims through starvation, persecution, prison labour, and mass executions.[3][4][5][6] Mao transformed China from a semicolony to a powerful sovereign state, with increased literacy and life expectancy.[7][8][9] Contents 1 English romanization of name 2 Early life 2.1 Youth and the Xinhai Revolution: 1893–1911 2.2 Fourth Normal School of Changsha: 1912–1919 3 Early revolutionary activity 3.1 Beijing, anarchism, and Marxism: 1917–1919 3.2 New Culture and political protests, 1919–1920 3.3 Founding the Chinese Communist Party: 1921–1922 3.4 Collaboration with the Kuomintang: 1922–1927 4 Civil War 4.1 Nanchang and Autumn Harvest Uprisings: 1927 4.2 Base in Jinggangshan: 1927–1928 4.3 Jiangxi Soviet Republic of China: 1929–1934 4.4 Long March: 1934–1935 4.5 Alliance with the Kuomintang: 1935–1940 4.6 Resuming civil war: 1940–1949 5 Leadership of China 5.1 Great Leap Forward 5.2 Consequences 5.3 Split from Soviet Union 5.4 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 6 State visits 7 Death and aftermath 8 Legacy 8.1 Public image 9 Genealogy 9.1 Ancestors 9.2 Wives 9.3 Siblings 9.4 Children 10 Personal life 11 Writings and calligraphy 11.1 Literary works 12 Portrayal in film and television 13 See also 14 Notes 15 References 16 Bibliography 17 Further reading 18 External links 18.1 General 18.2 Commentary English romanization of name During Mao's lifetime, the English-language media universally rendered his name as Mao Tse-tung, using the Wade-Giles system of transliteration for Standard Chinese though with the circumflex accent in the syllable Tsê dropped. Due to its recognizability, the spelling was used widely, even by the Foreign Ministry of the PRC after pinyin (Hanyu Pinyin) became the PRC's official romanization system for Mandarin Chinese in 1958; the well-known booklet of Mao's political statements, The Little Red Book, was officially entitled Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung in English translations. While the pinyin-derived spelling Mao Zedong is increasingly common, the Wade-Giles-derived spelling Mao Tse-tung continues to be used in modern publications to some extent.[10] Early life Main article: Early life of Mao Zedong Youth and the Xinhai Revolution: 1893–1911 Mao was born on December 26, 1893, in Shaoshan village, Hunan.[11] His father, Mao Yichang, was a formerly impoverished peasant who had become one of the wealthiest farmers in Shaoshan. Growing up in rural Hunan, Mao described his father as a stern disciplinarian, who would beat him and his three siblings, the boys Zemin and Zetan, as well as an adopted girl, Zejian.[12] Mao's mother, Wen Qimei, was a devout Buddhist who tried to temper her husband's strict attitude.[13] Mao too became a Buddhist, but abandoned this faith in his mid-teenage years.[13] At age 8, Mao was sent to Shaoshan Primary School. Learning the value systems of Confucianism, he later admitted that he did not enjoy the classical Chinese texts preaching Confucian morals, instead favouring classic novels like Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin.[14] At age 13, Mao finished primary education, and his father united him in an arranged marriage to the 17-year-old Luo Yixiu, thereby uniting their land-owning families. Mao refused to recognise her as his wife, becoming a fierce critic of arranged marriage and temporarily moving away. Luo was locally disgraced and died in 1910.[15] Mao Zedong's childhood home in Shaoshan, in 2010, by which time it had become a tourist destination While working on his father's farm, Mao read voraciously[16] and developed a "political consciousness" from Zheng Guanying's booklet which lamented the deterioration of Chinese power and argued for the adoption of representative democracy.[17] Interested in history, Mao was inspired by the military prowess and nationalistic fervour of George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte.[18] His political views were shaped by Gelaohui-led protests which erupted following a famine in Changsha, the capital of Hunan; Mao supported the protesters' demands, but the armed forces suppressed the dissenters and executed their leaders.[19] The famine spread to Shaoshan, where starving peasants seized his father's grain. He disapproved of their actions as morally wrong, but claimed sympathy for their situation.[20] At age 16, Mao moved to a higher primary school in nearby Dongshan,[21] where he was bullied for his peasant background.[22] In 1911, Mao began middle school in Changsha.[23] Revolutionary sentiment was strong in the city, where there was widespread animosity towards Emperor Puyi's absolute monarchy and many were advocating republicanism. The republicans' figurehead was Sun Yat-sen, an American-educated Christian who led the Tongmenghui society.[24] In Changsha, Mao was influenced by Sun's newspaper, The People's Independence (Minli bao),[25] and called for Sun to become president in a school essay.[26] As a symbol of rebellion against the Manchu monarch, Mao and a friend cut off their queue pigtails, a sign of subservience to the emperor.[27] Inspired by Sun's republicanism, the army rose up across southern China, sparking the Xinhai Revolution. Changsha's governor fled, leaving the city in republican control.[28] Supporting the revolution, Mao joined the rebel army as a private soldier, but was not involved in fighting. The northern provinces remained loyal to the emperor, and hoping to avoid a civil war, Sun—proclaimed "provisional president" by his supporters—compromised with the monarchist general Yuan Shikai. The monarchy was abolished, creating the Republic of China, but the monarchist Yuan became president. The revolution over, Mao resigned from the army in 1912, after six months as a soldier.[29] Around this time, Mao discovered socialism from a newspaper article; proceeding to read pamphlets by Jiang Kanghu, the student founder of the Chinese Socialist Party, Mao remained interested yet unconvinced by the idea.[30] Fourth Normal School of Changsha: 1912–1919 Over the next few years, Mao Zedong enrolled and dropped out of a police academy, a soap-production school, a law school, an economics school, and the government-run Changsha Middle School.[31] Studying independently, he spent much time in Changsha's library, reading core works of classical liberalism such as Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws, as well as the works of western scientists and philosophers such as Darwin, Mill, Rousseau, and Spencer.[32] Viewing himself as an intellectual, years later he admitted that at this time he thought himself better than working people.[33] He was inspired by Friedrich Paulsen, whose liberal emphasis on individualism led Mao to believe that strong individuals were not bound by moral codes but should strive for the greater good, and that the "end justifies the means" conclusion of Consequentialism.[34] His father saw no use in his son's intellectual pursuits, cut off his allowance and forced him to move into a hostel for the destitute.[35] Mao in 1913 Mao desired to become a teacher and enrolled at the Fourth Normal School of Changsha, which soon merged with the First Normal School of Hunan, widely seen as the best in Hunan.[36] Befriending Mao, professor Yang Changji urged him to read a radical newspaper, New Youth (Xin qingnian), the creation of his friend Chen Duxiu, a dean at Peking University. Although he was a supporter of Chinese nationalism, Chen argued that China must look to the west to cleanse itself of superstition and autocracy.[37] In his first school year, Mao befriended an older student, Xiao Zisheng; together they went on a walking tour of Hunan, begging and writing literary couplets to obtain food.[38] A popular student, in 1915 Mao was elected secretary of the Students Society. He organized the Association for Student Self-Government and led protests against school rules.[39] Mao published his first article in New Youth in April 1917, instructing readers to increase their physical strength to serve the revolution.[40] He joined the Society for the Study of Wang Fuzhi (Chuan-shan Hsüeh-she), a revolutionary group founded by Changsha literati who wished to emulate the philosopher Wang Fuzhi.[41] In spring 1917, he was elected to command the students' volunteer army, set up to defend the school from marauding soldiers.[42] Increasingly interested in the techniques of war, he took a keen interest in World War I, and also began to develop a sense of solidarity with workers.[43] Mao undertook feats of physical endurance with Xiao Zisheng and Cai Hesen, and with other young revolutionaries they formed the Renovation of the People Study Society in April 1918 to debate Chen Duxiu's ideas. Desiring personal and societal transformation, the Society gained 70–80 members, many of whom would later join the Communist Party.[44] Mao graduated in June 1919, ranked third in the year.[45] Early revolutionary activity Main article: Early revolutionary activity of Mao Zedong Beijing, anarchism, and Marxism: 1917–1919 Mao moved to Beijing, where his mentor Yang Changji had taken a job at Peking University.[46] Yang thought Mao exceptionally "intelligent and handsome",[47] securing him a job as assistant to the university librarian Li Dazhao, who would become an early Chinese Communist.[48] Li authored a series of New Youth articles on the October Revolution in Russia, during which the Communist Bolshevik Party under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin had seized power. Lenin was an advocate of the socio-political theory of Marxism, first developed by the German sociologists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and Li's articles added Marxism to the doctrines in Chinese revolutionary movement.[49] Becoming "more and more radical", Mao was initially influenced by Peter Kropotkin's anarchism, which was the most prominent radical doctrine of the day. Chinese anarchists, such as Cai Yuanpei, Chancellor of Peking University, called for complete social revolution in social relations, family structure, and women's equality, rather than the simple change in the form of government called for by earlier revolutionaries. He joined Li's Study Group and "developed rapidly toward Marxism" during the winter of 1919.[50] Paid a low wage, Mao lived in a cramped room with seven other Hunanese students, but believed that Beijing's beauty offered "vivid and living compensation".[51] At the university, Mao was snubbed by other students due to his rural Hunanese accent and lowly position. He joined the university's Philosophy and Journalism Societies and attended lectures and seminars by the likes of Chen Duxiu, Hu Shih, and Qian Xuantong.[52] Mao's time in Beijing ended in the spring of 1919, when he travelled to Shanghai with friends who were preparing to leave for France.[53] He did not return to Shaoshan, where his mother was terminally ill. She died in October 1919 and her husband died in January 1920.[54] New Culture and political protests, 1919–1920 On May 4, 1919, students in Beijing gathered at the Tiananmen to protest the Chinese government's weak resistance to Japanese expansion in China. Patriots were outraged at the influence given to Japan in the Twenty-One Demands in 1915, the complicity of Duan Qirui's Beiyang Government, and the betrayal of China in the Treaty of Versailles, wherein Japan was allowed to receive territories in Shandong which had been surrendered by Germany. These demonstrations ignited the nationwide May Fourth Movement and fueled the New Culture Movement which blamed China's diplomatic defeats on social and cultural backwardness.[55] In Changsha, Mao had begun teaching history at the Xiuye Primary School[56] and organizing protests against the pro-Duan Governor of Hunan Province, Zhang Jingyao, popularly known as "Zhang the Venomous" due to his corrupt and violent rule.[57] In late May, Mao co-founded the Hunanese Student Association with He Shuheng and Deng Zhongxia, organizing a student strike for June and in July 1919 began production of a weekly radical magazine, Xiang River Review (Xiangjiang pinglun). Using vernacular language that would be understandable to the majority of China's populace, he advocated the need for a "Great Union of the Popular Masses", strengthened trade unions able to wage non-violent revolution.[clarification needed] His ideas were not Marxist, but heavily influenced by Kropotkin's concept of mutual aid.[58] Students in Beijing rallying during the May Fourth Movement Zhang banned the Student Association, but Mao continued publishing after assuming editorship of the liberal magazine New Hunan (Xin Hunan) and offered articles in popular local newspaper Justice (Ta Kung Po). Several of these advocated feminist views, calling for the liberation of women in Chinese society; Mao was influenced by his forced arranged-marriage.[59] In December 1919, Mao helped organise a general strike in Hunan, securing some concessions, but Mao and other student leaders felt threatened by Zhang, and Mao returned to Beijing, visiting the terminally ill Yang Changji.[60] Mao found that his articles had achieved a level of fame among the revolutionary movement, and set about soliciting support in overthrowing Zhang.[61] Coming across newly translated Marxist literature by Thomas Kirkup, Karl Kautsky, and Marx and Engels—notably The Communist Manifesto—he came under their increasing influence, but was still eclectic in his views.[62] Mao visited Tianjin, Jinan, and Qufu,[63] before moving to Shanghai, where he worked as a laundryman and met Chen Duxiu, noting that Chen's adoption of Marxism "deeply impressed me at what was probably a critical period in my life". In Shanghai, Mao met an old teacher of his, Yi Peiji, a revolutionary and member of the Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party, which was gaining increasing support and influence. Yi introduced Mao to General Tan Yankai, a senior KMT member who held the loyalty of troops stationed along the Hunanese border with Guangdong. Tan was plotting to overthrow Zhang, and Mao aided him by organizing the Changsha students. In June 1920, Tan led his troops into Changsha, and Zhang fled. In the subsequent reorganization of the provincial administration, Mao was appointed headmaster of the junior section of the First Normal School. Now receiving a large income, he married Yang Kaihui in the winter of 1920.[64] Founding the Chinese Communist Party: 1921–1922 Location of the first Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in July 1921, in Xintiandi, former French Concession, Shanghai The Chinese Communist Party was founded by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao in the French concession of Shanghai in 1921 as a study society and informal network. Mao set up a Changsha branch, also establishing a branch of the Socialist Youth Corps and a Cultural Book Society which opened a bookstore to propagate revolutionary literature throughout Hunan.[65] He was involved in the movement for Hunan autonomy, in the hope that a Hunanese constitution would increase civil liberties and make his revolutionary activity easier. When the movement was successful in establishing provincial autonomy under a new warlord, Mao forgot his involvement.[66] By 1921, small Marxist groups existed in Shanghai, Beijing, Changsha, Wuhan, Guangzhou, and Jinan; it was decided to hold a central meeting, which began in Shanghai on July 23, 1921. The first session of the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was attended by 13 delegates, Mao included. After the authorities sent a police spy to the congress, the delegates moved to a boat on South Lake near Jiaxing, in Zhejiang, to escape detection. Although Soviet and Comintern delegates attended, the first congress ignored Lenin's advice to accept a temporary alliance between the Communists and the "bourgeois democrats" who also advocated national revolution; instead they stuck to the orthodox Marxist belief that only the urban proletariat could lead a socialist revolution.[67] Mao was now party secretary for Hunan stationed in Changsha, and to build the party there he followed a variety of tactics.[68] In August 1921, he founded the Self-Study University, through which readers could gain access to revolutionary literature, housed in the premises of the Society for the Study of Wang Fuzhi, a Qing dynasty Hunanese philosopher who had resisted the Manchus.[68] He joined the YMCA Mass Education Movement to fight illiteracy, though he edited the textbooks to include radical sentiments.[69] He continued organizing workers to strike against the administration of Hunan Governor Zhao Hengti.[70] Yet labor issues remained central. The successful and famous Anyuan coal mines strikes [zh] (contrary to later Party historians) depended on both "proletarian" and "bourgeois" strategies. Liu Shaoqi and Li Lisan and Mao not only mobilised the miners, but formed schools and cooperatives and engaged local intellectuals, gentry, military officers, merchants, Red Gang dragon heads and even church clergy.[71] Mao claimed that he missed the July 1922 Second Congress of the Communist Party in Shanghai because he lost the address. Adopting Lenin's advice, the delegates agreed to an alliance with the "bourgeois democrats" of the KMT for the good of the "national revolution". Communist Party members joined the KMT, hoping to push its politics leftward.[72] Mao enthusiastically agreed with this decision, arguing for an alliance across China's socio-economic classes. Mao was a vocal anti-imperialist and in his writings he lambasted the governments of Japan, the UK and US, describing the latter as "the most murderous of hangmen".[73] Collaboration with the Kuomintang: 1922–1927 File:Chairman Mao-1.webm Mao giving speeches to the masses At the Third Congress of the Communist Party in Shanghai in June 1923, the delegates reaffirmed their commitment to working with the KMT. Supporting this position, Mao was elected to the Party Committee, taking up residence in Shanghai.[74] At the First KMT Congress, held in Guangzhou in early 1924, Mao was elected an alternate member of the KMT Central Executive Committee, and put forward four resolutions to decentralise power to urban and rural bureaus. His enthusiastic support for the KMT earned him the suspicion of Li Li-san, his Hunan comrade.[75] In late 1924, Mao returned to Shaoshan, perhaps to recuperate from an illness. He found that the peasantry were increasingly restless and some had seized land from wealthy landowners to found communes. This convinced him of the revolutionary potential of the peasantry, an idea advocated by the KMT leftists but not the Communists.[76] He returned to Guangzhou to run the 6th term of the KMT's Peasant Movement Training Institute from May to September 1926.[77][78] The Peasant Movement Training Institute under Mao trained cadre and prepared them for militant activity, taking them through military training exercises and getting them to study basic left-wing texts.[79] In the winter of 1925, Mao fled to Guangzhou after his revolutionary activities attracted the attention of Zhao's regional authorities.[80] Mao Zedong around the time of his work at Guangzhou's PMTI in 1925 When party leader Sun Yat-sen died in May 1925, he was succeeded by Chiang Kai-shek, who moved to marginalise the left-KMT and the Communists.[81] Mao nevertheless supported Chiang's National Revolutionary Army, who embarked on the Northern Expedition attack in 1926 on warlords.[82] In the wake of this expedition, peasants rose up, appropriating the land of the wealthy landowners, who were in many cases killed. Such uprisings angered senior KMT figures, who were themselves landowners, emphasizing the growing class and ideological divide within the revolutionary movement.[83] In March 1927, Mao appeared at the Third Plenum of the KMT Central Executive Committee in Wuhan, which sought to strip General Chiang of his power by appointing Wang Jingwei leader. There, Mao played an active role in the discussions regarding the peasant issue, defending a set of "Regulations for the Repression of Local Bullies and Bad Gentry", which advocated the death penalty or life imprisonment for anyone found guilty of counter-revolutionary activity, arguing that in a revolutionary situation, "peaceful methods cannot suffice".[84][85] In April 1927, Mao was appointed to the KMT's five-member Central Land Committee, urging peasants to refuse to pay rent. Mao led another group to put together a "Draft Resolution on the Land Question", which called for the confiscation of land belonging to "local bullies and bad gentry, corrupt officials, militarists and all counter-revolutionary elements in the villages". Proceeding to carry out a "Land Survey", he stated that anyone owning over 30 mou (four and a half acres), constituting 13% of the population, were uniformly counter-revolutionary. He accepted that there was great variation in revolutionary enthusiasm across the country, and that a flexible policy of land redistribution was necessary.[86] Presenting his conclusions at the Enlarged Land Committee meeting, many expressed reservations, some believing that it went too far, and others not far enough. Ultimately, his suggestions were only partially implemented.[87] Civil War Main articles: Chinese Civil War and Chinese Communist Revolution Nanchang and Autumn Harvest Uprisings: 1927 Flag of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army Fresh from the success of the Northern Expedition against the warlords, Chiang turned on the Communists, who by now numbered in the tens of thousands across China. Chiang ignored the orders of the Wuhan-based left KMT government and marched on Shanghai, a city controlled by Communist militias. As the Communists awaited Chiang's arrival, he loosed the White Terror, massacring 5000 with the aid of the Green Gang.[85][88] In Beijing, 19 leading Communists were killed by Zhang Zuolin.[89][90] That May, tens of thousands of Communists and those suspected of being communists were killed, and the CCP lost approximately 15,000 of its 25,000 members.[90] The CCP continued supporting the Wuhan KMT government, a position Mao initially supported,[90] but by the time of the CCP's Fifth Congress he had changed his mind, deciding to stake all hope on the peasant militia.[91] The question was rendered moot when the Wuhan government expelled all Communists from the KMT on July 15.[91] The CCP founded the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army of China, better known as the "Red Army", to battle Chiang. A battalion led by General Zhu De was ordered to take the city of Nanchang on August 1, 1927, in what became known as the Nanchang Uprising. They were initially successful, but were forced into retreat after five days, marching south to Shantou, and from there they were driven into the wilderness of Fujian.[91] Mao was appointed commander-in-chief of the Red Army and led four regiments against Changsha in the Autumn Harvest Uprising, in the hope of sparking peasant uprisings across Hunan. On the eve of the attack, Mao composed a poem—the earliest of his to survive—titled "Changsha". His plan was to attack the KMT-held city from three directions on September 9, but the Fourth Regiment deserted to the KMT cause, attacking the Third Regiment. Mao's army made it to Changsha, but could not take it; by September 15, he accepted defeat and with 1000 survivors marched east to the Jinggang Mountains of Jiangxi.[92][93] Jung Chang and Jon Halliday claim that the uprising was in fact sabotaged by Mao to allow him to prevent a group of KMT soldiers from defecting to any other CCP leader.[94] Chang and Halliday also claim that Mao talked the other leaders (including Russian diplomats at the Soviet consulate in Changsha who, Chang and Halliday claim, had been controlling much of the CCP activity) into striking only at Changsha, then abandoning it. Chang and Halliday report a view sent to Moscow by the secretary of the Soviet Consulate in Changsha that the retreat was "the most despicable treachery and cowardice."[94] Base in Jinggangshan: 1927–1928 Mao in 1927 革命不是請客吃飯,不是做文章,不是繪畫繡花,不能那樣雅緻,那樣從容不迫,文質彬彬,那樣溫良恭讓。革命是暴動,是一個階級推翻一個階級的暴烈的行動。 Revolution is not a dinner party, nor an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another. — Mao, February 1927[95] The CCP Central Committee, hiding in Shanghai, expelled Mao from their ranks and from the Hunan Provincial Committee, as punishment for his "military opportunism", for his focus on rural activity, and for being too lenient with "bad gentry". They nevertheless adopted three policies he had long championed: the immediate formation of Workers' councils, the confiscation of all land without exemption, and the rejection of the KMT. Mao's response was to ignore them.[96] He established a base in Jinggangshan City, an area of the Jinggang Mountains, where he united five villages as a self-governing state, and supported the confiscation of land from rich landlords, who were "re-educated" and sometimes executed. He ensured that no massacres took place in the region, and pursued a more lenient approach than that advocated by the Central Committee.[97] He proclaimed that "Even the lame, the deaf and the blind could all come in useful for the revolutionary struggle", he boosted the army's numbers,[98] incorporating two groups of bandits into his army, building a force of around 1,800 troops.[99] He laid down rules for his soldiers: prompt obedience to orders, all confiscations were to be turned over to the government, and nothing was to be confiscated from poorer peasants. In doing so, he molded his men into a disciplined, efficient fighting force.[98] 敵進我退, 敵駐我騷, 敵疲我打, 敵退我追。 When the enemy advances, we retreat. When the enemy rests, we harass him. When the enemy avoids a battle, we attack. When the enemy retreats, we advance. — Mao's advice in combating the Kuomintang, 1928[100][101] Chinese Communist revolutionaries in the 1920s In spring 1928, the Central Committee ordered Mao's troops to southern Hunan, hoping to spark peasant uprisings. Mao was skeptical, but complied. They reached Hunan, where they were attacked by the KMT and fled after heavy losses. Meanwhile, KMT troops had invaded Jinggangshan, leaving them without a base.[102] Wandering the countryside, Mao's forces came across a CCP regiment led by General Zhu De and Lin Biao; they united, and attempted to retake Jinggangshan. They were initially successful, but the KMT counter-attacked, and pushed the CCP back; over the next few weeks, they fought an entrenched guerrilla war in the mountains.[100][103] The Central Committee again ordered Mao to march to south Hunan, but he refused, and remained at his base. Contrastingly, Zhu complied, and led his armies away. Mao's troops fended the KMT off for 25 days while he left the camp at night to find reinforcements. He reunited with the decimated Zhu's army, and together they returned to Jinggangshan and retook the base. There they were joined by a defecting KMT regiment and Peng Dehuai's Fifth Red Army. In the mountainous area they were unable to grow enough crops to feed everyone, leading to food shortages throughout the winter.[104][105] Jiangxi Soviet Republic of China: 1929–1934 Mao in Yan'an In January 1929, Mao and Zhu evacuated the base with 2,000 men and a further 800 provided by Peng, and took their armies south, to the area around Tonggu and Xinfeng in Jiangxi.[106] The evacuation led to a drop in morale, and many troops became disobedient and began thieving; this worried Li Lisan and the Central Committee, who saw Mao's army as lumpenproletariat, that were unable to share in proletariat class consciousness.[107][108] In keeping with orthodox Marxist thought, Li believed that only the urban proletariat could lead a successful revolution, and saw little need for Mao's peasant guerrillas; he ordered Mao to disband his army into units to be sent out to spread the revolutionary message. Mao replied that while he concurred with Li's theoretical position, he would not disband his army nor abandon his base.[108][109] Both Li and Mao saw the Chinese revolution as the key to world revolution, believing that a CCP victory would spark the overthrow of global imperialism and capitalism. In this, they disagreed with the official line of the Soviet government and Comintern. Officials in Moscow desired greater control over the CCP and removed Li from power by calling him to Russia for an inquest into his errors.[110][111][112] They replaced him with Soviet-educated Chinese Communists, known as the "28 Bolsheviks", two of whom, Bo Gu and Zhang Wentian, took control of the Central Committee. Mao disagreed with the new leadership, believing they grasped little of the Chinese situation, and he soon emerged as their key rival.[111][113] Military parade on the occasion of the founding of a Chinese Soviet Republic in 1931 In February 1930, Mao created the Southwest Jiangxi Provincial Soviet Government in the region under his control.[114] In November, he suffered emotional trauma after his wife and sister were captured and beheaded by KMT general He Jian.[105][111][115] Mao then married He Zizhen, an 18-year-old revolutionary who bore him five children over the following nine years.[112][116] Facing internal problems, members of the Jiangxi Soviet accused him of being too moderate, and hence anti-revolutionary. In December, they tried to overthrow Mao, resulting in the Futian incident, during which Mao's loyalists tortured many and executed between 2000 and 3000 dissenters.[117][118][119] The CCP Central Committee moved to Jiangxi which it saw as a secure area. In November it proclaimed Jiangxi to be the Soviet Republic of China, an independent Communist-governed state. Although he was proclaimed Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Mao's power was diminished, as his control of the Red Army was allocated to Zhou Enlai. Meanwhile, Mao recovered from tuberculosis.[120][121] The KMT armies adopted a policy of encirclement and annihilation of the Red armies. Outnumbered, Mao responded with guerrilla tactics influenced by the works of ancient military strategists like Sun Tzu, but Zhou and the new leadership followed a policy of open confrontation and conventional warfare. In doing so, the Red Army successfully defeated the first and second encirclements.[122][123] Angered at his armies' failure, Chiang Kai-shek personally arrived to lead the operation. He too faced setbacks and retreated to deal with the further Japanese incursions into China.[120][124] As a result of the KMT's change of focus to the defence of China against Japanese expansionism, the Red Army was able to expand its area of control, eventually encompassing a population of 3 million.[123] Mao proceeded with his land reform program. In November 1931 he announced the start of a "land verification project" which was expanded in June 1933. He also orchestrated education programs and implemented measures to increase female political participation.[125] Chiang viewed the Communists as a greater threat than the Japanese and returned to Jiangxi, where he initiated the fifth encirclement campaign, which involved the construction of a concrete and barbed wire "wall of fire" around the state, which was accompanied by aerial bombardment, to which Zhou's tactics proved ineffective. Trapped inside, morale among the Red Army dropped as food and medicine became scarce. The leadership decided to evacuate.[126] Long March: 1934–1935 An overview map of the Long March On October 14, 1934, the Red Army broke through the KMT line on the Jiangxi Soviet's south-west corner at Xinfeng with 85,000 soldiers and 15,000 party cadres and embarked on the "Long March". In order to make the escape, many of the wounded and the ill, as well as women and children, were left behind, defended by a group of guerrilla fighters whom the KMT massacred.[127][128] The 100,000 who escaped headed to southern Hunan, first crossing the Xiang River after heavy fighting,[128][129] and then the Wu River, in Guizhou where they took Zunyi in January 1935. Temporarily resting in the city, they held a conference; here, Mao was elected to a position of leadership, becoming Chairman of the Politburo, and de facto leader of both Party and Red Army, in part because his candidacy was supported by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. Insisting that they operate as a guerrilla force, he laid out a destination: the Shenshi Soviet in Shaanxi, Northern China, from where the Communists could focus on fighting the Japanese. Mao believed that in focusing on the anti-imperialist struggle, the Communists would earn the trust of the Chinese people, who in turn would renounce the KMT.[130] From Zunyi, Mao led his troops to Loushan Pass, where they faced armed opposition but successfully crossed the river. Chiang flew into the area to lead his armies against Mao, but the Communists outmanoeuvred him and crossed the Jinsha River.[131] Faced with the more difficult task of crossing the Tatu River, they managed it by fighting a battle over the Luding Bridge in May, taking Luding.[132] Marching through the mountain ranges around Ma'anshan,[133] in Moukung, Western Szechuan, they encountered the 50,000-strong CCP Fourth Front Army of Zhang Guotao, and together proceeded to Maoerhkai and then Gansu. Zhang and Mao disagreed over what to do; the latter wished to proceed to Shaanxi, while Zhang wanted to retreat east to Tibet or Sikkim, far from the KMT threat. It was agreed that they would go their separate ways, with Zhu De joining Zhang.[134] Mao's forces proceeded north, through hundreds of kilometres of Grasslands, an area of quagmire where they were attacked by Manchu tribesman and where many soldiers succumbed to famine and disease.[135][136] Finally reaching Shaanxi, they fought off both the KMT and an Islamic cavalry militia before crossing the Min Mountains and Mount Liupan and reaching the Shenshi Soviet; only 7,000–8000 had survived.[136][137] The Long March cemented Mao's status as the dominant figure in the party. In November 1935, he was named chairman of the Military Commission. From this point onward, Mao was the Communist Party's undisputed leader, even though he would not become party chairman until 1943.[138] Jung Chang and Jon Halliday offered an alternative account on many events during this period in their book Mao: The Unknown Story.[139] According to Jung and Hailliday, there was no battle at Luding and the CCP crossed the bridge unopposed, the Long March was not a strategy of the CCP but devised by Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao and other top CCP leaders did not walk the Long March but were carried on litters.[140] Although it was well received in the popular press, Chang and Halliday's work has been highly criticized by professional historians.[141] Alliance with the Kuomintang: 1935–1940 Main article: Second Sino-Japanese War Mao Zedong, Zhang Guotao in Yan'an, 1937 Mao's troops arrived at the Yan'an Soviet during October 1935 and settled in Pao An, until spring 1936. While there, they developed links with local communities, redistributed and farmed the land, offered medical treatment, and began literacy programs.[136][142][143] Mao now commanded 15,000 soldiers, boosted by the arrival of He Long's men from Hunan and the armies of Zhu De and Zhang Guotao returned from Tibet.[142] In February 1936, they established the North West Anti-Japanese Red Army University in Yan'an, through which they trained increasing numbers of new recruits.[144] In January 1937, they began the "anti-Japanese expedition", that sent groups of guerrilla fighters into Japanese-controlled territory to undertake sporadic attacks.[145][146] In May 1937, a Communist Conference was held in Yan'an to discuss the situation.[147] Western reporters also arrived in the "Border Region" (as the Soviet had been renamed); most notable were Edgar Snow, who used his experiences as a basis for Red Star Over China, and Agnes Smedley, whose accounts brought international attention to Mao's cause.[148] In an effort to defeat the Japanese, Mao (left) agreed to collaborate with Chiang (right). Mao in 1938, writing On Protracted War On the Long March, Mao's wife He Zizen had been injured by a shrapnel wound to the head. She traveled to Moscow for medical treatment; Mao proceeded to divorce her and marry an actress, Jiang Qing.[116][149] Mao moved into a cave-house and spent much of his time reading, tending his garden and theorizing.[150] He came to believe that the Red Army alone was unable to defeat the Japanese, and that a Communist-led "government of national defence" should be formed with the KMT and other "bourgeois nationalist" elements to achieve this goal.[151] Although despising Chiang Kai-shek as a "traitor to the nation",[152] on May 5, he telegrammed the Military Council of the Nanking National Government proposing a military alliance, a course of action advocated by Stalin.[153] Although Chiang intended to ignore Mao's message and continue the civil war, he was arrested by one of his own generals, Zhang Xueliang, in Xi'an, leading to the Xi'an Incident; Zhang forced Chiang to discuss the issue with the Communists, resulting in the formation of a United Front with concessions on both sides on December 25, 1937.[154] The Japanese had taken both Shanghai and Nanking (Nanjing)—resulting in the Nanking Massacre, an atrocity Mao never spoke of all his life—and was pushing the Kuomintang government inland to Chungking.[155] The Japanese's brutality led to increasing numbers of Chinese joining the fight, and the Red Army grew from 50,000 to 500,000.[156][157] In August 1938, the Red Army formed the New Fourth Army and the Eighth Route Army, which were nominally under the command of Chiang's National Revolutionary Army.[158] In August 1940, the Red Army initiated the Hundred Regiments Campaign, in which 400,000 troops attacked the Japanese simultaneously in five provinces. It was a military success that resulted in the death of 20,000 Japanese, the disruption of railways and the loss of a coal mine.[157][159] From his base in Yan'an, Mao authored several texts for his troops, including Philosophy of Revolution, which offered an introduction to the Marxist theory of knowledge; Protracted Warfare, which dealt with guerilla and mobile military tactics; and New Democracy, which laid forward ideas for China's future.[160] Mao with Kang Sheng in Yan'an, 1945 Resuming civil war: 1940–1949 In 1944, the Americans sent a special diplomatic envoy, called the Dixie Mission, to the Chinese Communist Party. According to Edwin Moise, in Modern China: A History 2nd Edition: "Most of the Americans were favourably impressed. The CPC seemed less corrupt, more unified, and more vigorous in its resistance to Japan than the KMT. United States fliers shot down over North China ... confirmed to their superiors that the CPC was both strong and popular over a broad area. In the end, the contacts which the USA developed with the CPC led to very little."After the end of World War II, the U.S. continued their military assistance to Chiang Kai-shek and his KMT government forces against the People's Liberation Army (PLA) led by Mao Zedong during the civil war. Likewise, the Soviet Union gave quasi-covert support to Mao by their occupation of north east China, which allowed the PLA to move in en masse and take large supplies of arms left by the Japanese's Kwantung Army.[citation needed] PLA troops, supported by captured M5 Stuart light tanks, attacking the Nationalist lines in 1948 To enhance the Red Army's military operations, Mao as the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, named his close associate General Zhu De to be its Commander-in-Chief.[citation needed] In 1948, under direct orders from Mao, the People's Liberation Army starved out the Kuomintang forces occupying the city of Changchun. At least 160,000 civilians are believed to have perished during the siege, which lasted from June until October. PLA lieutenant colonel Zhang Zhenglu, who documented the siege in his book White Snow, Red Blood, compared it to Hiroshima: "The casualties were about the same. Hiroshima took nine seconds; Changchun took five months."[161] On January 21, 1949, Kuomintang forces suffered great losses in decisive battles against Mao's forces.[162] In the early morning of December 10, 1949, PLA troops laid siege to Chongqing and Chengdu on mainland China, and Chiang Kai-shek fled from the mainland to Formosa (Taiwan).[162][163] Leadership of China Mao Zedong declares the founding of the modern People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949 Mao proclaimed the establishment of The People's Republic of China from the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tian'anmen) on October 1, 1949, and later that week declared "The Chinese people have stood up" (中国人民从此站起来了).[164] Mao went to Moscow for long talks in the winter of 1949–50. Mao initiated the talks which focused on the political and economic revolution in China, foreign policy, railways, naval bases, and Soviet economic and technical aid. The resulting treaty reflected Stalin's dominance and his willingness to help Mao.[165][166] Mao with his fourth wife, Jiang Qing, called "Madame Mao", 1946 Mao pushed the Party to organize campaigns to reform society and extend control. These campaigns were given urgency in October 1950, when Mao made the decision to send the People's Volunteer Army, a special unit of the People's Liberation Army, into the Korean War and fight as well as to reinforce the armed forces of North Korea, the Korean People's Army, which had been in full retreat. The United States placed a trade embargo on the People's Republic as a result of its involvement in the Korean War, lasting until Richard Nixon's improvements of relations. At least 180 thousand Chinese troops died during the war.[167] Mao directed operations to the minutest detail. As the Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), he was also the Supreme Commander in Chief of the PLA and the People's Republic and Chairman of the Party. Chinese troops in Korea were under the overall command of then newly installed Premier Zhou Enlai, with General Peng Dehuai as field commander and political commissar.[168] During the land reform campaigns, large numbers of landlords and rich peasants were beaten to death at mass meetings organised by the Communist Party as land was taken from them and given to poorer peasants, which significantly reduced economic inequality.[169][170] The Campaign to Suppress Counter-revolutionaries[171] targeted and publicly executed former Kuomintang officials, businessmen accused of "disturbing" the market, former employees of Western companies and intellectuals whose loyalty was suspect.[172] In 1976, the U.S. State department estimated as many as a million were killed in the land reform, and 800,000 killed in the counter-revolutionary campaign.[173] Mao himself claimed that a total of 700,000 people were killed in attacks on "counter-revolutionaries" during the years 1950–1952.[174] Because there was a policy to select "at least one landlord, and usually several, in virtually every village for public execution",[175] the number of deaths range between 2 million[175][176][171] and 5 million.[177][178] In addition, at least 1.5 million people,[179] perhaps as many as 4 to 6 million,[180] were sent to "reform through labour" camps where many perished.[180] Mao played a personal role in organizing the mass repressions and established a system of execution quotas,[181] which were often exceeded.[171] He defended these killings as necessary for the securing of power.[182] Mao at Joseph Stalin's 70th birthday celebration in Moscow, December 1949 The Mao government is generally credited with eradicating both consumption and production of opium during the 1950s using unrestrained repression and social reform.[citation needed] Ten million addicts were forced into compulsory treatment, dealers were executed, and opium-producing regions were planted with new crops. Remaining opium production shifted south of the Chinese border into the Golden Triangle region.[183] Starting in 1951, Mao initiated two successive movements in an effort to rid urban areas of corruption by targeting wealthy capitalists and political opponents, known as the three-anti/five-anti campaigns. Whereas the three-anti campaign was a focused purge of government, industrial and party officials, the five-anti campaign set its sights slightly broader, targeting capitalist elements in general.[184] Workers denounced their bosses, spouses turned on their spouses, and children informed on their parents; the victims were often humiliated at struggle sessions, where a targeted person would be verbally and physically abused until they confessed to crimes. Mao insisted that minor offenders be criticised and reformed or sent to labour camps, "while the worst among them should be shot". These campaigns took several hundred thousand additional lives, the vast majority via suicide.[185] Mao and Zhou Enlai meeting with Dalai Lama (right) and Panchen Lama (left) to celebrate Tibetan New Year, Beijing, 1955 In Shanghai, suicide by jumping from tall buildings became so commonplace that residents avoided walking on the pavement near skyscrapers for fear that suicides might land on them.[186] Some biographers have pointed out that driving those perceived as enemies to suicide was a common tactic during the Mao-era. In his biography of Mao, Philip Short notes that Mao gave explicit instructions in the Yan'an Rectification Movement that "no cadre is to be killed" but in practice allowed security chief Kang Sheng to drive opponents to suicide and that "this pattern was repeated throughout his leadership of the People's Republic".[187] Photo of Mao Zedong sitting, published in "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung", ca. 1955 Following the consolidation of power, Mao launched the First Five-Year Plan (1953–1958), which aimed to end Chinese dependence upon agriculture in order to become a world power. With the Soviet Union's assistance, new industrial plants were built and agricultural production eventually fell[clarification needed] to a point where industry was beginning to produce enough capital that China no longer needed the USSR's support.[citation needed] The declared success of the First-Five Year Plan was to encourage Mao to instigate the Second Five-Year Plan in 1958. Mao also launched a phase of rapid collectivization. The CCP introduced price controls as well as a Chinese character simplification aimed at increasing literacy. Large-scale industrialization projects were also undertaken. Programs pursued during this time include the Hundred Flowers Campaign, in which Mao indicated his supposed willingness to consider different opinions about how China should be governed. Given the freedom to express themselves, liberal and intellectual Chinese began opposing the Communist Party and questioning its leadership. This was initially tolerated and encouraged. After a few months, Mao's government reversed its policy and persecuted those who had criticised the party, totaling perhaps 500,000,[188] as well as those who were merely alleged to have been critical, in what is called the Anti-Rightist Movement. Authors such as Jung Chang have alleged that the Hundred Flowers Campaign was merely a ruse to root out "dangerous" thinking.[189] Li Zhisui, Mao's physician, suggested that Mao had initially seen the policy as a way of weakening opposition to him within the party and that he was surprised by the extent of criticism and the fact that it came to be directed at his own leadership.[190] It was only then that he used it as a method of identifying and subsequently persecuting those critical of his government. The Hundred Flowers movement led to the condemnation, silencing, and death of many citizens, also linked to Mao's Anti-Rightist Movement, resulting in deaths possibly in the millions.[citation needed] Great Leap Forward Main article: Great Leap Forward Mao with Nikita Khrushchev, Ho Chi Minh and Soong Ching-ling during a state dinner in Beijing, 1959 In January 1958, Mao launched the second Five-Year Plan, known as the Great Leap Forward, a plan intended to turn China from an agrarian nation to an industrialized one[191] and as an alternative model for economic growth to the Soviet model focusing on heavy industry that was advocated by others in the party. Under this economic program, the relatively small agricultural collectives that had been formed to date were rapidly merged into far larger people's communes, and many of the peasants were ordered to work on massive infrastructure projects and on the production of iron and steel. Some private food production was banned, and livestock and farm implements were brought under collective ownership.[citation needed] Under the Great Leap Forward, Mao and other party leaders ordered the implementation of a variety of unproven and unscientific new agricultural techniques by the new communes. The combined effect of the diversion of labour to steel production and infrastructure projects, and cyclical natural disasters led to an approximately 15% drop in grain production in 1959 followed by a further 10% decline in 1960 and no recovery in 1961.[192] In an effort to win favour with their superiors and avoid being purged, each layer in the party exaggerated the amount of grain produced under them. Based upon the falsely reported success, party cadres were ordered to requisition a disproportionately high amount of that fictitious harvest for state use, primarily for use in the cities and urban areas but also for export. The result, compounded in some areas by drought and in others by floods, was that farmers were left with little food for themselves and many millions starved to death in the Great Chinese Famine. The people of urban areas in China were given food stamps each month, but the people of rural areas were expected to grow their own crops and give some of the crops back to the government. The death count in rural parts of China surpassed the deaths in the urban centers. Additionally, the Chinese government continued to export food that could have been allocated to the country's starving citizens.[193] The famine was a direct cause of the death of some 30 million Chinese peasants between 1959 and 1962.[194] Furthermore, many children who became malnourished during years of hardship died after the Great Leap Forward came to an end in 1962.[192] The extent of Mao's knowledge of the severity of the situation has been disputed. Mao's physician believed that he may have been unaware of the extent of the famine, partly due to a reluctance of local officials to criticise his policies, and the willingness of his staff to exaggerate or outright fake reports.[195] Upon learning of the extent of the starvation, Mao vowed to stop eating meat, an action followed by his staff.[196] Hong Kong-based historian Frank Dikötter,[197] in his book Mao's Great Famine, challenged the notion that Mao did not know about the famine throughout the country until it was too late as "largely a myth—at most partially true for the autumn of 1958 only." At a secret meeting in the Jinjiang Hotel in Shanghai dated March 25, 1959, Dikötter continues, Mao specifically ordered the party to procure up to one third of all the grain, and announced that "To distribute resources evenly will only ruin the Great Leap Forward. When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill."[198][199] Thomas P. Bernstein of Columbia University offered his view that Mao's statement in the March 25, 1959, meeting was "an instance of Mao's use of hyperbole, another being his casual acceptance of death of half the population during a nuclear war." In other contexts, Bernstein went on, Mao did not in fact accept mass death. In October 1958, Mao expressed real concern that 40,000 people in Yunnan had starved to death and shortly after the March 25 meeting, he worried about 25.2 million people who were at risk of starvation.[200] From late summer on, Mao forgot about this issue until the Xinyang Incident came to light in October 1960.[201] Anthony Garnaut says that Dikötter's juxtaposition and sampling techniques fall short of academic best practice. He also posits that Dikötter's interpretation of Mao's quotation ("It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill") not only ignores the substantial commentary on the conference by other scholars and several of its key participants but defies the very plain wording of the archival document in his possession on which he hangs his case.[202] There is a discussion about Dikötter's misuse of Mao's quotation in H-Net.[203] Early in the Great Leap Forward, commune members were encouraged to eat their fill in communal canteens, but many canteens shut down as they ran out of food and fuel.[204] In late autumn 1958, Mao condemned cadres for tactics such as requiring exhausting labour ackowledge that anti-rightist pressures were a major cause of "production at the expense of livelihood." He refused to abandon the GLF to solve these difficulties, but he did demand that they be confronted. After the July 1959 clash at Lushan Conference with Peng Dehuai, Mao launched a new anti-rightist campaign along with the radical policies that he previously abandoned. Mao expressed concern about abnormal deaths and other abuses in the spring of 1960, but did not move to stop them. Bernstein concludes that the Chairman "wilfully ignored the lessons of the first radical phase for the sake of achieving extreme ideological and developmental goals".[200] Jasper Becker notes that Mao was dismissive of reports he received of food shortages in the countryside and refused to change course, believing that peasants were lying and that rightists and kulaks were hoarding grain. He refused to open state granaries,[205] and instead launched a series of "anti-grain concealment" drives that resulted in numerous purges and suicides.[206] Other violent campaigns followed in which party leaders went from village to village in search of hidden food reserves, and not only grain, as Mao issued quotas for pigs, chickens, ducks and eggs. Many peasants accused of hiding food were tortured and beaten to death.[207] Whatever the cause of the disaster, Mao lost esteem among many of the top party cadres. He was eventually forced to abandon the policy in 1962, and he lost political power to moderate party leaders such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Supported by national propaganda, Mao claimed that he was only partly to blame for the famine, and was forced to step down as President of the Chinese Communist Party on April 27, 1959; however, Mao was able to remain in his top position as Chairman of the Communist Party, with the Presidency of the party and the state transferred to Liu Shaoqi.[citation needed] The Great Leap Forward was a tragedy for the vast majority of the Chinese. Although the steel quotas were officially reached, almost all of the supposed steel made in the countryside was iron, as it had been made from assorted scrap metal in home-made furnaces with no reliable source of fuel such as coal. This meant that proper smelting conditions could not be achieved. According to Zhang Rongmei, a geometry teacher in rural Shanghai during the Great Leap Forward: "We took all the furniture, pots, and pans we had in our house, and all our neighbours did likewise. We put everything in a big fire and melted down all the metal".[citation needed] The worst of the famine was steered towards enemies of the state.[208] Jasper Becker explains: "The most vulnerable section of China's population, around five per cent, were those whom Mao called 'enemies of the people'. Anyone who had in previous campaigns of repression been labeled a 'black element' was given the lowest priority in the allocation of food. Landlords, rich peasants, former members of the nationalist regime, religious leaders, rightists, counter-revolutionaries and the families of such individuals died in the greatest numbers."[209] At a large Communist Party conference in Beijing in January 1962, dubbed the "Seven Thousand Cadres Conference", State Chairman Liu Shaoqi denounced the Great Leap Forward, attributing the project to widespread famine in China.[210] The overwhelming majority of delegates expressed agreement, but Defense Minister Lin Biao staunchly defended Mao.[210] A brief period of liberalization followed while Mao and Lin plotted a comeback.[210] Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping rescued the economy by disbanding the people's communes, introducing elements of private control of peasant smallholdings and importing grain from Canada and Australia to mitigate the worst effects of famine.[211] Consequences Mao with Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai, Beijing, 1972 At the Lushan Conference in July/August 1959, several ministers expressed concern that the Great Leap Forward had not proved as successful as planned. The most direct of these was Minister of Defence and Korean War veteran General Peng Dehuai. Following Peng's criticism of the Great Leap Forward, Mao orchestrated a purge of Peng and his supporters, stifling criticism of the Great Leap policies. Senior officials who reported the truth of the famine to Mao were branded as "right opportunists."[212] A campaign against right-wing opportunism was launched and resulted in party members and ordinary peasants being sent to prison labor camps where many would subsequently die in the famine. Years later the CCP would conclude that as many as six million people were wrongly punished in the campaign.[213] The number of deaths by starvation during the Great Leap Forward is deeply controversial. Until the mid-1980s, when official census figures were finally published by the Chinese Government, little was known about the scale of the disaster in the Chinese countryside, as the handful of Western observers allowed access during this time had been restricted to model villages where they were deceived into believing that the Great Leap Forward had been a great success. There was also an assumption that the flow of individual reports of starvation that had been reaching the West, primarily through Hong Kong and Taiwan, must have been localised or exaggerated as China was continuing to claim record harvests and was a net exporter of grain through the period. Because Mao wanted to pay back early to the Soviets debts totalling 1.973 billion yuan from 1960 to 1962,[214] exports increased by 50%, and fellow Communist regimes in North Korea, North Vietnam and Albania were provided grain free of charge.[205] Censuses were carried out in China in 1953, 1964 and 1982. The first attempt to analyse this data to estimate the number of famine deaths was carried out by American demographer Dr. Judith Banister and published in 1984. Given the lengthy gaps between the censuses and doubts over the reliability of the data, an accurate figure is difficult to ascertain. Nevertheless, Banister concluded that the official data implied that around 15 million excess deaths incurred in China during 1958–61, and that based on her modelling of Chinese demographics during the period and taking account of assumed under-reporting during the famine years, the figure was around 30 million. The official statistic is 20 million deaths, as given by Hu Yaobang.[215] Yang Jisheng, a former Xinhua News Agency reporter who had privileged access and connections available to no other scholars, estimates a death toll of 36 million.[214] Frank Dikötter estimates that there were at least 45 million premature deaths attributable to the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962.[216] Various other sources have put the figure at between 20 and 46 million.[217][218][219] Split from Soviet Union Main article: Sino-Soviet split U.S. President Gerald Ford watches as Henry Kissinger shakes hands with Mao during their visit to China, December 2, 1975 On the international front, the period was dominated by the further isolation of China. The Sino-Soviet split resulted in Nikita Khrushchev's withdrawal of all Soviet technical experts and aid from the country. The split concerned the leadership of world communism. The USSR had a network of Communist parties it supported; China now created its own rival network to battle it out for local control of the left in numerous countries.[220] Lorenz M. Lüthi writes: "The Sino-Soviet split was one of the key events of the Cold War, equal in importance to the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Second Vietnam War, and Sino-American rapprochement. The split helped to determine the framework of the Second Cold War in general, and influenced the course of the Second Vietnam War in particular."[221] The split resulted from Nikita Khrushchev's more moderate Soviet leadership after the death of Stalin in March 1953. Only Albania openly sided with China, thereby forming an alliance between the two countries which would last until after Mao's death in 1976. Warned that the Soviets had nuclear weapons, Mao minimized the threat. Becker says that "Mao believed that the bomb was a 'paper tiger', declaring to Khrushchev that it would not matter if China lost 300 million people in a nuclear war: the other half of the population would survive to ensure victory".[222] Stalin had established himself as the successor of "correct" Marxist thought well before Mao controlled the Chinese Communist Party, and therefore Mao never challenged the suitability of any Stalinist doctrine (at least while Stalin was alive). Upon the death of Stalin, Mao believed (perhaps because of seniority) that the leadership of Marxist doctrine would fall to him. The resulting tension between Khrushchev (at the head of a politically and militarily superior government), and Mao (believing he had a superior understanding of Marxist ideology) eroded the previous patron-client relationship between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the CCP.[citation needed] In China, the formerly favoured Soviets were now denounced as "revisionists" and listed alongside "American imperialism" as movements to oppose.[citation needed] Partly surrounded by hostile American military bases in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, China was now confronted with a new threat from the Soviet Union north and west. Both the internal crisis and the external threat called for extraordinary statesmanship from Mao, but as China entered the new decade the statesmen of China were in hostile confrontation with each other.[citation needed] Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution Main article: Cultural Revolution A public appearance of Chairman Mao and Lin Biao among Red Guards, in Beijing, during the Cultural Revolution (November 1966) During the early 1960s, Mao became concerned with the nature of post-1959 China. He saw that the revolution and Great Leap Forward had replaced the old ruling elite with a new one. He was concerned that those in power were becoming estranged from the people they were to serve. Mao believed that a revolution of culture would unseat and unsettle the "ruling class" and keep China in a state of "perpetual revolution" that, theoretically, would serve the interests of the majority, rather than a tiny and privileged elite.[223] State Chairman Liu Shaoqi and General Secretary Deng Xiaoping favoured the idea that Mao be removed from actual power as China's head of state and government but maintain his ceremonial and symbolic role as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, with the party upholding all of his positive contributions to the revolution. They attempted to marginalise Mao by taking control of economic policy and asserting themselves politically as well. Many claim that Mao responded to Liu and Deng's movements by launching the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966. Some scholars, such as Mobo Gao, claim the case for this is overstated.[224] Others, such as Frank Dikötter, hold that Mao launched the Cultural Revolution to wreak revenge on those who had dared to challenge him over the Great Leap Forward.[225] Believing that certain liberal bourgeois elements of society continued to threaten the socialist framework, groups of young people known as the Red Guards struggled against authorities at all levels of society and even set up their own tribunals. Chaos reigned in much of the nation, and millions were persecuted. During the Cultural Revolution, nearly all of the schools and universities in China were closed, and the young intellectuals living in cities were ordered to the countryside to be "re-educated" by the peasants, where they performed hard manual labour and other work.[citation needed] The Cultural Revolution led to the destruction of much of China's traditional cultural heritage and the imprisonment of a huge number of Chinese citizens, as well as the creation of general economic and social chaos in the country. Millions of lives were ruined during this period, as the Cultural Revolution pierced into every part of Chinese life, depicted by such Chinese films as To Live, The Blue Kite and Farewell My Concubine. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, perished in the violence of the Cultural Revolution.[219] This included prominent figures such as Liu Shaoqi.[226][227][228] When Mao was informed of such losses, particularly that people had been driven to suicide, he is alleged to have commented: "People who try to commit suicide—don't attempt to save them! ... China is such a populous nation, it is not as if we cannot do without a few people."[229] The authorities allowed the Red Guards to abuse and kill opponents of the regime. Said Xie Fuzhi, national police chief: "Don't say it is wrong of them to beat up bad persons: if in anger they beat someone to death, then so be it."[230] In August and September 1966, there were a reported 1,772 people murdered by the Red Guards in Beijing alone.[231] It was during this period that Mao chose Lin Biao, who seemed to echo all of Mao's ideas, to become his successor. Lin was later officially named as Mao's successor. By 1971, a divide between the two men had become apparent. Official history in China states that Lin was planning a military coup or an assassination attempt on Mao. Lin Biao died on September 13, 1971, in a plane crash over the air space of Mongolia, presumably as he fled China, probably anticipating his arrest. The CCP declared that Lin was planning to depose Mao and posthumously expelled Lin from the party. At this time, Mao lost trust in many of the top CCP figures. The highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa claimed he had a conversation with Nicolae Ceaușescu, who told him about a plot to kill Mao Zedong with the help of Lin Biao organised by the KGB.[232] Despite being considered a feminist figure by some and a supporter of women's rights, documents released by the US Department of State in 2008 show that Mao declared women to be a "nonsense" in 1973, in conversation with Henry Kissinger, joking that "China is a very poor country. We don't have much. What we have in excess is women. ... Let them go to your place. They will create disasters. That way you can lessen our burdens."[233] When Mao offered 10 million women, Kissinger replied by saying that Mao was "improving his offer".[234] Mao and Kissinger then agreed that their comments on women be removed from public records, prompted by a Chinese official who feared that Mao's comments might incur public anger if released.[235] In 1969, Mao declared the Cultural Revolution to be over, although various historians in and outside of China mark the end of the Cultural Revolution—as a whole or in part—in 1976, following Mao's death and the arrest of the Gang of Four.[236] The Central Committee in 1981 officially declared the Cultural Revolution a "severe setback" for the PRC.[237] It is often looked at in all scholarly circles as a greatly disruptive period for China.[238] Despite the pro-poor rhetoric of Mao's regime, his economic policies led to substantial poverty.[239] Some scholars, such as Lee Feigon and Mobo Gao, claim there were many great advances, and in some sectors the Chinese economy continued to outperform the West.[240] Estimates of the death toll during the Cultural Revolution, including civilians and Red Guards, vary greatly. An estimate of around 400,000 deaths is a widely accepted minimum figure, according to Maurice Meisner.[241] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals assert that in rural China alone some 36 million people were persecuted, of whom between 750,000 and 1.5 million were killed, with roughly the same number permanently injured.[242] In Mao: The Unknown Story, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday claim that as many as 3 million people died in the violence of the Cultural Revolution.[243] Historian Daniel Leese writes that in the 1950s Mao's personality was hardening: "The impression of Mao's personality that emerges from the literature is disturbing. It reveals a certain temporal development from a down-to-earth leader, who was amicable when uncontested and occasionally reflected on the limits of his power, to an increasingly ruthless and self-indulgent dictator. Mao's preparedness to accept criticism decreased continuously."[244] State visits Country Date Host  Soviet Union December 16, 1949 Joseph Stalin  Soviet Union November 2–19, 1957 Nikita Khrushchev During his leadership, Mao traveled outside China on only two occasions, both state visits to the Soviet Union. His first visit abroad was to celebrate the 71st birthday of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, which was also attended by East German Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers Walter Ulbricht and Mongolian communist General Secretary Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal.[245] The second visit to Moscow was a two-week state visit of which the highlights included Mao's attendance at the 40th anniversary (Ruby Jubilee) celebrations of the October Revolution (he attended the annual military parade of the Moscow Garrison on Red Square as well as a banquet in the Moscow Kremlin) and the International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties, where he met with other communist leaders such as North Korea's Kim Il-Sung[246] and Albania's Enver Hoxha. When Mao stepped down as head of state on April 27, 1959, further diplomatic state visits and travels abroad were undertaken by President Liu Shaoqi, Premier Zhou Enlai and Deputy Premier Deng Xiaoping rather than Mao personally.[citation needed] Death and aftermath Main article: Death and state funeral of Mao Zedong Further information: Mausoleum of Mao Zedong Mao's health declined in his last years, probably aggravated by his heavy chain-smoking.[247] It became a state secret that he suffered from multiple lung and heart ailments during his later years.[248] There are unconfirmed reports that he possibly had Parkinson's disease[249] in addition to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.[250] His final public appearance—and the last known photograph of him alive—had been on May 27, 1976, when he met the visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.[139] He suffered two major heart attacks, one in March and another in July, then a third on September 5, rendering him an invalid. He died nearly four days later, at 00:10 on September 9, 1976, at the age of 82. The Communist Party delayed the announcement of his death until 16:00, when a national radio broadcast announced the news and appealed for party unity.[251] Mao's embalmed body, draped in the CCP flag, lay in state at the Great Hall of the People for one week.[252] One million Chinese filed past to pay their final respects, many crying openly or displaying sadness, while foreigners watched on television.[253][254] Mao's official portrait hung on the wall with a banner reading: "Carry on the cause left by Chairman Mao and carry on the cause of proletarian revolution to the end".[252] On September 17 the body was taken in a minibus to the 305 Hospital, where his internal organs were preserved in formaldehyde.[252] On September 18, guns, sirens, whistles and horns across China were simultaneously blown and a mandatory three-minute silence was observed.[255] Tiananmen Square was packed with millions of people and a military band played "The Internationale". Hua Guofeng concluded the service with a 20-minute-long eulogy atop Tiananmen Gate.[256] Despite Mao's request to be cremated, his body was later permanently interred in the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong in Beijing.[citation needed] Legacy A large portrait of Mao at Tiananmen Mao remains a controversial figure and there is little agreement over his legacy both in China and abroad. He is regarded as one of the most important and influential individuals in the twentieth century.[257][258] He is also known as a political intellect, theorist, military strategist, poet, and visionary.[259] Supporters generally credit and praise him for driving imperialism out of China,[260] having unified China and for ending the previous decades of civil war. He is also credited for having improved the status of women in China and for improving literacy and education. In December 2013, a poll from the state-run Global Times indicated that roughly 85% of the 1,045 respondents surveyed felt that Mao's achievements outweighed his mistakes.[261] His policies resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people in China during his 27-year reign, more than any other 20th-century leader; estimates of the number of people who died under his regime range from 40 million to as many as 80 million,[262][263] done through starvation, persecution, prison labour in Laogai, and mass executions.[187][262] In spite of such shortcomings, supporters respond that life expectancy, education, and health care improved during his period of rule,[264][265] and state that he rapidly industrialised China; however, others have claimed that his policies, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, were impediments to industrialisation and modernisation. His supporters say that his policies laid the groundwork for China's later rise to become an economic superpower, while others state that his policies delayed economic development and that China's economy underwent its rapid growth only after Mao's policies had been widely abandoned. China's population grew from around 550 million to over 900 million under his rule while the government did not strictly enforce its family planning policy, leading his successors such as Deng Xiaoping to take a strict one-child policy to cope with the human overpopulation.[266][267] Mao's revolutionary tactics continue to be used by insurgents, and his political ideology continues to be embraced by many Communist organizations around the world.[268] Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say? — Chen Yun, a leading Chinese Communist Party official under Mao and Deng Xiaoping[269] Mao Zedong Square at Saoshan In mainland China, Mao is revered by many members and supporters of the Communist Party and respected by a great number of the general population as the "Founding Father of modern China", credited for "giving the Chinese people dignity and self-respect."[270] Mobo Gao, in his 2008 book The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution, credits him for raising the average life expectancy from 35 in 1949 to 63 by 1975, bringing "unity and stability to a country that had been plagued by civil wars and foreign invasions", and laying the foundation for China to "become the equal of the great global powers".[271] Gao also lauds him for carrying out massive land reform, promoting the status of women, improving popular literacy, and positively "transform(ing) Chinese society beyond recognition."[271] Scholars outside of China also credit Mao for boosting literacy (only 20% of the population could read in 1949, compared to 65.5% thirty years later), doubling life expectancy, a near doubling of the population, and developing China's industry and infrastructure, paving the way for its position as a world power.[264][8][9] Mao also has many Chinese critics. Opposition to him can lead to censorship or professional repercussions in mainland China,[272] and is often done in private settings such as the Internet.[273] Critical attitudes were apparent when a video of Bi Fujian insulting him at a private dinner in 2015 went viral, with Bi garnering the support of 80% of Weibo users in a poll amidst backlash from state affiliates.[274][275] In the West, Mao is often reviled as a tyrannical ideologue and his economic theories are widely discredited—though to some political activists he remains a symbol against capitalism, imperialism and western influence. Even in China, key pillars of his economic theory have been publicly dismantled for the most part by market reformers like Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang, who succeeded him as leaders of the Communist Party.[citation needed] Statue of young Mao in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Though the Chinese Communist Party, which Mao led to power, has rejected in practice the economic fundamentals of much of Mao's ideology, it retains for itself many of the powers established under Mao's reign: it controls the Chinese army, police, courts and media and does not permit multi-party elections at the national or local level, except in Hong Kong and Macau. Thus it is difficult to gauge the true extent of support for the Chinese Communist Party and Mao's legacy within mainland China. For its part, the Chinese government continues to officially regard Mao as a national hero. On December 25, 2008, China opened the Mao Zedong Square to visitors in his home town of central Hunan Province to mark the 115th anniversary of his birth.[276] There continue to be disagreements on Mao's legacy. Former party official Su Shachi has opined that "he was a great historical criminal, but he was also a great force for good."[270] In a similar vein, journalist Liu Binyan has described Mao as "both monster and a genius."[270] Some historians argue that Mao was "one of the great tyrants of the twentieth century", and a dictator comparable to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin,[277][278] with a death toll surpassing both.[187][262] In The Black Book of Communism, Jean Louis Margolin writes that "Mao Zedong was so powerful that he was often known as the Red Emperor. ... the violence he erected into a whole system far exceeds any national tradition of violence that we might find in China."[279] Mao was frequently likened to China's First Emperor Qin Shi Huang, notorious for purportedly burying alive hundreds of scholars, and personally enjoyed the comparison.[280] During a speech to party cadre in 1958, Mao said he had far outdone Qin Shi Huang in his policy against intellectuals: "What did he amount to? He only buried alive 460 scholars, while we buried 46,000. In our suppression of the counter-revolutionaries, did we not kill some counter-revolutionary intellectuals? I once debated with the democratic people: You accuse us of acting like Ch'in-shih-huang, but you are wrong; we surpass him 100 times."[281][282] As a result of such tactics, critics have compared it to Nazi Germany.[278][c] Others, such as Philip Short in Mao: A Life, reject comparisons by saying that whereas the deaths caused by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were largely systematic and deliberate, the overwhelming majority of the deaths under Mao were unintended consequences of famine.[283] Short stated that landlord class were not exterminated as a people due to Mao's belief in redemption through thought reform,[283] and compared Mao with 19th-century Chinese reformers who challenged China's traditional beliefs in the era of China's clashes with Western colonial powers. Short writes that "Mao's tragedy and his grandeur were that he remained to the end in thrall to his own revolutionary dreams. ... He freed China from the straitjacket of its Confucian past, but the bright Red future he promised turned out to be a sterile purgatory.[283] In their 2013 biography, Mao: The Real Story, Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine assert that Mao was both "a successful creator and ultimately an evil destroyer" but also argue that he was a complicated figure who should not be lionized as a saint or reduced to a demon, as he "indeed tried his best to bring about prosperity and gain international respect for his country."[284] In 1978, the classroom of a kindergarten in Shanghai putting up portraits of then- Chairman Hua Guofeng and former Chairman Mao Zedong Mao's way of thinking and governing was terrifying. He put no value on human life. The deaths of others meant nothing to him. — Li Rui, Mao's personal secretary and Communist Party comrade[285] Mao's English interpreter Sidney Rittenberg wrote in his memoir The Man Who Stayed Behind that whilst Mao "was a great leader in history", he was also "a great criminal because, not that he wanted to, not that he intended to, but in fact, his wild fantasies led to the deaths of tens of millions of people."[286] In Mao: The Unknown Story, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday take a very critical view of Mao's life and influence. They say that Mao was well aware that his policies would be responsible for the deaths of millions. While discussing labour-intensive projects such as waterworks and making steel, Mao said to his inner circle in November 1958: "Working like this, with all these projects, half of China may well have to die. If not half, one-third, or one-tenth—50 million—die."[287] Thomas Bernstein of Columbia University responds that this quotation is taken out of context.[288][d] Dikötter argues that CCP leaders "glorified violence and were inured to massive loss of life. And all of them shared an ideology in which the end justified the means. In 1962, having lost millions of people in his province, Li Jingquan compared the Great Leap Forward to the Long March in which only one in ten had made it to the end: 'We are not weak, we are stronger, we have kept the backbone.'"[289] Regarding the large-scale irrigation projects, Dikötter stresses that, in spite of Mao being in a good position to see the human cost, they continued unabated for several years, and ultimately claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of exhausted villagers. He also writes: "In a chilling precursor of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, villagers in Qingshui and Gansu called these projects the 'killing fields.'"[290] Mao greets U.S. President Richard Nixon during his visit to China in 1972. The United States placed a trade embargo on the People's Republic as a result of its involvement in the Korean War, lasting until Richard Nixon decided that developing relations with the PRC would be useful in dealing with the Soviet Union.[citation needed] The television series Biography stated: "[Mao] turned China from a feudal backwater into one of the most powerful countries in the World. ... The Chinese system he overthrew was backward and corrupt; few would argue the fact that he dragged China into the 20th century. But at a cost in human lives that is staggering."[270] In the book China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know published in 2010, Professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom of the University of California, Irvine compares China's relationship to Mao to Americans' remembrance of Andrew Jackson; both countries regard the leaders in a positive light, despite their respective roles in devastating policies. Jackson forcibly moved Native Americans through the Trail of Tears, resulting in thousands of deaths, while Mao was at the helm during the violent years of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.[291][e] Statue of Mao in Lijiang The ideology of Maoism has influenced many Communists, mainly in the Third World, including revolutionary movements such as Cambodia's Khmer Rouge,[292] Peru's Shining Path, and the Nepalese revolutionary movement. Under the influence of Mao's agrarian socialism and Cultural Revolution, Cambodia's Pol Pot conceived of his disastrous Year Zero policies which purged the nation of its teachers, artists and intellectuals and emptied its cities, resulting in the Cambodian genocide.[293] The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, also claims Marxism–Leninism-Maoism as its ideology, as do other Communist Parties around the world which are part of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement. China itself has moved sharply away from Maoism since Mao's death, and most people outside of China who describe themselves as Maoist regard the Deng Xiaoping reforms to be a betrayal of Maoism, in line with Mao's view of "Capitalist roaders" within the Communist Party.[294] As the Chinese government instituted free market economic reforms starting in the late 1970s and as later Chinese leaders took power, less recognition was given to the status of Mao. This accompanied a decline in state recognition of Mao in later years in contrast to previous years when the state organised numerous events and seminars commemorating Mao's 100th birthday. Nevertheless, the Chinese government has never officially repudiated the tactics of Mao. Deng Xiaoping, who was opposed to the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, has to a certain extent rejected Mao's legacy, famously saying that Mao was "70% right and 30% wrong".[citation needed] Mao's military writings continue to have a large amount of influence both among those who seek to create an insurgency and those who seek to crush one, especially in manners of guerrilla warfare, at which Mao is popularly regarded as a genius.[citation needed] The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) followed Mao's examples of guerrilla warfare to considerable political and military success even in the 21st century.[citation needed] Mao's major contribution to the military science is his theory of People's War, with not only guerrilla warfare but more importantly, Mobile Warfare methodologies. Mao had successfully applied Mobile Warfare in the Korean War, and was able to encircle, push back and then halt the UN forces in Korea, despite the clear superiority of UN firepower.[citation needed] In 1957, Mao also gave the impression that he might even welcome a nuclear war.[295][f] Mao's poems and writings are frequently cited by both Chinese and non-Chinese. The official Chinese translation of President Barack Obama's inauguration speech used a famous line from one of Mao's poems.[299] In the mid-1990s, Mao's picture began to appear on all new renminbi currency from the People's Republic of China. This was officially instituted as an anti-counterfeiting measure as Mao's face is widely recognised in contrast to the generic figures that appear in older currency. On March 13, 2006, a story in the People's Daily reported that a proposal had been made to print the portraits of Sun Yat-sen and Deng Xiaoping.[300] Public image Mao gave contradicting statements on the subject of personality cults. In 1955, as a response to the Khrushchev Report that criticised Joseph Stalin, Mao stated that personality cults are "poisonous ideological survivals of the old society", and reaffirmed China's commitment to collective leadership.[301] At the 1958 party congress in Chengdu, Mao expressed support for the personality cults of people whom he labelled as genuinely worthy figures, not those that expressed "blind worship".[302] In 1962, Mao proposed the Socialist Education Movement (SEM) in an attempt to educate the peasants to resist the "temptations" of feudalism and the sprouts of capitalism that he saw re-emerging in the countryside from Liu's economic reforms.[303] Large quantities of politicised art were produced and circulated—with Mao at the centre. Numerous posters, badges, and musical compositions referenced Mao in the phrase "Chairman Mao is the red sun in our hearts" (毛主席是我們心中的紅太陽; Máo Zhǔxí Shì Wǒmen Xīnzhōng De Hóng Tàiyáng)[304] and a "Savior of the people" (人民的大救星; Rénmín De Dà Jiùxīng).[304] In October 1966, Mao's Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, known as the Little Red Book, was published. Party members were encouraged to carry a copy with them, and possession was almost mandatory as a criterion for membership. According to Mao: The Unknown Story by Jun Yang, the mass publication and sale of this text contributed to making Mao the only millionaire created in 1950's China (332). Over the years, Mao's image became displayed almost everywhere, present in homes, offices and shops. His quotations were typographically emphasised by putting them in boldface or red type in even the most obscure writings. Music from the period emphasised Mao's stature, as did children's rhymes. The phrase "Long Live Chairman Mao for ten thousand years" was commonly heard during the era.[305] Visitors wait in line to enter the Mao Zedong Mausoleum. Mao also has a presence in China and around the world in popular culture, where his face adorns everything from T-shirts to coffee cups. Mao's granddaughter, Kong Dongmei, defended the phenomenon, stating that "it shows his influence, that he exists in people's consciousness and has influenced several generations of Chinese people's way of life. Just like Che Guevara's image, his has become a symbol of revolutionary culture."[286] Since 1950, over 40 million people have visited Mao's birthplace in Shaoshan, Hunan.[306] A 2016 survey by YouGov survey found that 42% of American millennials have never heard of Mao.[307][308] According to the CIS poll, in 2019 only 21% of Australian millennials were familiar with Mao Zedong.[309] In 2020s China, members of Generation Z are embracing Mao's revolutionary ideas, including violence against the capitalist class, amid rising social inequality, long working hours, and decreasing economic opportunities.[310]
  • Condition: In overall good condition, pages browning by time.
  • Year Printed: 1952
  • Country/Region of Manufacture: China
  • Topic: Political
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • Region: China
  • Author: MAO TSE TUNG
  • Subject: Philosophy
  • Original/Facsimile: Original
  • Language: English
  • Place of Publication: Peking
  • Special Attributes: 1st Edition

PicClick Insights - Mao Tse Tung Zedong On Practice First English Edition Peking China 1952 PicClick Exclusive

  •  Popularity - 3 watchers, 0.0 new watchers per day, 700 days for sale on eBay. High amount watching. 0 sold, 1 available.
  •  Best Price -
  •  Seller - 615+ items sold. 0% negative feedback. Great seller with very good positive feedback and over 50 ratings.

People Also Loved PicClick Exclusive