Mao Zedong: His Rise to Power and Role in Chinese Independence

533 Words2 Pages

Who would’ve thought one of the most dangerous Communist leaders of all times would be born into a wealthy (as a result of a family farm) Confucian schooled family? Mao Zedong’s unlikely circumstances claim the epitome of irony. Growing up resentful of his environment, the fearlessly bloodthirsty former Chairman of China made many permanent (as of yet) changes to Chinese society and morals. Though Confucianism officially ended in China in 1905, Mao Zedong’s years as chairman blended the Chinese society into a Communist one.

Growing up in a traditional and wealthy family, Mao attended a good, but Confucianist primary school. It was in these years that he began his hate for Confucius, his teachings, beliefs, and policies. Mao was a revolutionist at heart, and spent his formative education years in novels instead of scholarly readings. Eventually graduating primary school, Mao worked on his family farm, getting to spend more time in books of his political choice - of Communism, Marxism, and Leninism. These books fired revolution in his soul and he developed strong political opinions, ...

Show More
Related

  • Mao Zedong Research Paper

    576 Words  | 2 Pages

    During the Cultural Revolution Mao Zedong , people also knew him as Mao Zedong Tse tung was the Chinese ruler. He ruled the country during this time known as Chairman of the Communist Party of China. Moa was very well educated in Western and Chinese traditions. During the year 1918 Mao Zedong had a job as a librarian assistant at Peking University. He would call himself a Marxist in the of 1920 and he helped found the current Chinese Communist party Communist formed an alliance during 1923 with a man called Sun Ya sen and his Nationalist party. After that Mao Zedong quit the current job he had as a teacher to become a poli...

    Read More

  • Jonathan Spence´s Mao Zedong

    1446 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jonathan Spence tells his readers of how Mao Zedong was a remarkable man to say the very least. He grew up a poor farm boy from a small rural town in Shaoshan, China. Mao was originally fated to be a farmer just as his father was. It was by chance that his young wife passed away and he was permitted to continue his education which he valued so greatly. Mao matured in a China that was undergoing a threat from foreign businesses and an unruly class of young people who wanted modernization. Throughout his school years and beyond Mao watched as the nation he lived in continued to change with the immense number of youth who began to westernize. Yet in classes he learned classical Chinese literature, poems, and history. Mao also attained a thorough knowledge of the modern and Western world. This great struggle between modern and classical Chinese is what can be attributed to most of the unrest in China during this time period. His education, determination and infectious personalit...

    Read More

  • The 1949 Chinese Revolution: A Successful Achievement Of A Success?

    1927 Words  | 4 Pages

    Success, as defined by the Oxford English dictionary, is the prosperous achievement of an objective. (Oed.com 1968) Conferring to this definition, the 1949 Chinese revolution was certainly a successful revolution. The communist party of China (CCP) was incredibly successful in its attempt in replacing the bourgeoisie dominated nationalist government – The Kuomintang (KMT) - with a proletariat class lead communist government. However, whether the achievement of such objective proves to be prosperous for China and its peoples requires further analysis. Ever since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the legitimacy of the revolution of which it was built upon has perennially been in question. For example, in a 1999 issue of the

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Revolution Is Not A Dinner Party

    1904 Words  | 4 Pages

    There is no better way to learn about China's communist revolution than to live it through the eyes of an innocent child whose experiences were based on the author's first-hand experience. Readers learn how every aspect of an individual's life was changed, mostly for the worst during this time. You will also learn why and how Chairman Mao launched the revolution initially, to maintain the communist system he worked hard to create in the 1950's. As the story of Ling unfolded, I realized how it boiled down to people's struggle for existence and survival during Mao's reign, and how lucky we are to have freedom and justice in the United States; values no one should ever take for

    Read More

  • Mao vs. Deng

    1077 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mao's period of communal reform and the establishment of the Communist party from 1949-1976 was needed in order for Deng's individual oriented, capitalist society to thrive. Mao's period encompassed the structure of a true dictatorial communist government. It strove to concentrate on unifying communities to create a strong political backbone while being economically self-sufficient and socially literate and educated in Maoist propaganda. Under Mao's leadership individual wealth was seen as a hindrance to community goals in meeting production quotas and was crushed by such policies as collectivization, land reformation, and movements such as The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Under his rule, modeled under the Stalinist USSR archetype, China raised its masses from poverty and starvation to a standard of living that was considered a substantial upgrade.

    Read More

  • What Is Mao Zedong Motivations

    748 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of Mao Zedong’s motivations for beginning the Cultural Revolution was his view that a cutting-edge bureaucratic ruling class had surfaced because of the centralized authoritarian nature of the political system, which had little hope for popular participation in the process of economic development (The Chinese Cultural Revolution revisited). The motivations of Fidel Castro, on the other hand, were different in that he wanted all people of all classes to be equal. The notion that the poverty-stricken could live a life equal to all other humans was an immense sense of happiness and alteration. In China, Mao Zedong developed many things to entice people.

    Read More

  • Confucianism and Taoism

    980 Words  | 2 Pages

    Confucianism and Daoism are two influential schools of thoughts that have existed in ancient China around the 6th century BCE. The former, led by the politician and philosopher Confucius, proposed that humans live in society according to a set of predefined rules and that they transform society through political action. Whereas the latter, led by the philosopher Lao-Tzu, promoted the idea of inaction; people should go with the flow instead of taking action to control their lives and dominate their surroundings. Although, at first glance Daoism and Confucianism seem to be two opposing philosophies, a more in depth analysis of two of their key ideas –filial piety and education—reveals that they do share some similarities.

    Read More

  • Confucianism

    1169 Words  | 3 Pages

    Confucianism started off as a one man show, trying to make a difference in politics and in general, teaching people about morals and good human conduct. As history progressed, through changes of dynasties and different emperors, many new and different feelings about Confucianism emerged. But Confucius never changed what he believed in, no matter how many times his beliefs were rejected. He fought for what he new was right, and in the end didn’t achieve what he wanted to. But to everyone else, he was a brave man, a man who never gave up and a man whose legend is worth remembering.

    Read More

  • Wild Swans Analysis

    1456 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jung Chang, who wrote Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China was the first of her 3 generations to be raised under the Communist regime. Her parents worked for the Communist party and throughout her childhood she had to follow a set of rules that forced her respect orders under Mao’s rule. Like most Chinese people, she indeed followed Mao’s words and perspective, but in the end she knew that it was Mao that was responsible for China’s suffering. Her views are very biased because she hated Communists, and primarily wrote about the bad that Communism brought to China. She watched her family suffer for years, hating the Communist regime.

    Read More

  • Communism in China

    835 Words  | 2 Pages

    Communism is a system of government, a political ideology that rejects private ownership and promotes a classless, stateless society based on common ownership of all property and the means of production, where by all work is shared and all proceeds are commonly owned. Communism is practised in China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba. However most of the world’s communist governments have been disbanded since the end of World War II. Soon after the Japanese surrendered at the end of World War II, Communist forces began a war against the Kuomintang in China. The Communists gradually gained control of the country and on the 1st October, 1949, Mao Zedong announced the victory of the Communist party and the establishment of the People's Republic of China. China has been ruled by the Communist party ever since.

    Read More

  • Struggles of the Cultural Revolution in Bei Dao's "Notes from the City of the Sun"

    1001 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gittings, John. The Changing Face of China: From Mao to market. Oxford University Press, 2005.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Matalo And Stalin

    1866 Words  | 4 Pages

    The main aspect of his worldview was “socialism in one country” (Wood, 5, 10), instead of world revolution because he believed that, in order to have world revolution, he first needed to concentrate on making his own country communist. Even though all these revolutions and campaigns and revolutions were not all successful, his view of a socialist, industrialized, and communist country was somewhat successful. Although Stalin and Mao were two very different communist figures with completely different approaches to a socialist country, they were able to get along.

    Read More

  • The Impact of the Chinese Revolution

    1014 Words  | 3 Pages

    The impact (or lack thereof) of the Chinese Revolution of 1911 is seen throughout Lu Xun’s stories. In particular the works “Diary of a Madman”, “A New Year’s Sacrifice” and “The True Story of Ah Q” provided evidence of changes (or lack thereof) the revolution brought to China. Focus in particular was paid to the topics of filial piety, female chasteness and Chinese conservatism, respectively in each story.

    Read More

  • The King of Children by Ah Cheng

    1076 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mao’s Cultural Revolution was an attempt to create a new culture for China. Through education reforms and readjustments, Mao hoped to create a new generation of Chinese people - a generation of mindless Communists. By eliminating intellectuals via the Down to the Countryside movement, Mao hoped to eliminate elements of traditional Chinese culture and create a new form Chinese culture. He knew that dumbing down the masses would give him more power so his regime would be more stable. This dramatic reform affected youth especially as they were targeted by Mao’s propaganda and influence. Drawing from his experiences as an Educated Youth who was sent down to the countryside Down to the Countryside movement, Ah Cheng wrote The King of Children to show the effects of the Cultural Revolution on education, and how they affected the meaning people found in education. In The King of Children, it is shown that the Cultural Revolution destroyed the traditional incentives for pursuing an education, and instead people found moral and ethical meaning in pursuing an education.

    Read More

  • The Coming to Power of the Communists in China in 1949

    1128 Words  | 3 Pages

    people on to the side of the CCP. The CCP’s victory was also down to

    Read More

More about Mao Zedong: His Rise to Power and Role in Chinese Independence

Open Document