Chairman mao biography pdf

At the age of 16 Mao left the farm and his family in order not to go ahead with an arranged marriage. Image: Mao Zedong in His father was said to have made a considerable amount of wealth as a grain dealer in the village. At the age of eight he was enrolled at a local primary school, where he studied many subjects, including Wujing Confucian Classics.

His family is said to have placed value on education simply because of the benefits it offered when it came to records keeping of farm activities. However, that was to last for only a few years, as he left home because he did not consent to an arranged marriage. He enrolled at a secondary school in Changsha, where he first got introduced to the works of Chinese politicians and social reformers like Liang Qichao and Sun Yat-sen.

When the Revolution broke out, Mao joined the revolutionary army in Hunan and fought to bring down the Qing Dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of China. For about half a year or so, he was given military training, allowing him to fight fiercely during the war. Mao was of the firm belief that no political power could ever come forth without the use of violence.

President George Washington as his role models. With the Qing Dynasty toppled and a nationalist government established, Mao Zedong took on a number of jobs. He also briefly attended a number of schools, including a police school and a business school. After graduating from the First Provincial Normal School in Changsha inhe proceeded to work as a librarian at a university in Beijing, where he refined his political ideas, reading on Western liberal democracy and Marxism.

While working as a librarian in Beijing, he got acquainted with major political figures like Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao. It was also around this same period that China was undergoing a kind of sociocultural and intellectual revolution that demanded greater national independence and individual rights. Mao offered support to Duxiu, who was at the center of the New Culture Movement, rallying many students and youth Xinqinqnian in Beijing to the side of liberalism, nationalism and Western ideas.

He and his followers, mainly the energized youth, wholeheartedly believed that the destiny of the country had to be one that should be sculpted by the people themselves. Being one of the prominent members, Mao went on to set up a local branch in Changsha, the capital of Hunan sheng province. He was able to attract not just students but traders and the working class to his vision for China.

At the time, the CCP towed the line of orthodox Marxism, believing that urban proletariat was key in securing the social revolution that they desired. It must be noted that Mao worked very hard in his province to bring down the illiteracy rate. Mao is third from the right in the second row. At the time Mao and many members of the CCP were willing to work with bourgeois democrats to see their goals for the nation realized.

However, he took cognizance of the fact that he had to adapt those ideas to suit the cultural needs of Chinese. Therefore, he sought to draw support from the peasant folks instead of the urban workers and proletariat. Mao prepared peasants in Guangzhou in a number of militant activities as well as tutoring on the basic ideas of Marxism and other left-wing ideas.

A leading member of the KMT left-wing, he was appointed the Central Land Committee that fought to appropriate lands of wealthy landowners to landless peasants. Several thousands of Communist members were killed in the ensuing conflict. It was estimated that the CCP lost close to 20, members. He and his men were forced to retreat to the Jinggang Mountains of Jiangxi.

He was subsequently expelled by the CCP Central Committee after it was discovered that he tried to personally gain from the failed Autumn Harvest Uprising. While at his base in Jinggangshan City, Mao continued his policy of stripping wealthy landowners off their lands. In addition to increasing the size of his army, he was able to instill strong discipline in them.

Disregarding the Central Committee of the CCP orders to disband his guerrilla group of peasants, Mao soldiered on and intensified his revolutionary cause. However, those gains were short-lived as Chiang re-prioritized attacking the Communist Party. It was decided in October that the Red Army flee Jiangxi, chairman mao biography pdf a few guerrilla fighters behind to protect the women, children and the ill.

From their base in Shaanxi, he turned his attention to fighting against the Japanese, as he hoped that his anti-imperialist stance would draw more Chinese to his cause. Starting around Januarythe Red Army deployed guerrilla attacks against Japanese-held areas. On December 25,all three sides agreed to the proposal and formed a United Front — a national defense army — that could halt Japan in its track.

The Red Army benefited tremendously as its size shot up from about 55, to about half a million troops. The Communists received ample support, in terms of weapons and finances, from the Soviet Union, while the KMT got some bit of support from Western nations. During his revolutionary days, Mao and many members of the CCP believed that the Chinese revolution would turn into a global affair that would result in the death of capitalism and global imperialism.

In the months that followed, he directed his attention to rebuilding China by soliciting support from Stalin of the Soviet Union. In the mind of Mao, the political and economic revolution in China was far from over, as he entreated the CCP to intensify its campaigns across the country. Read More: How Joseph Stalin rose to power. The Korean War claimed the lives of close toChinese forces.

In terms of the sheer number of people killed and the kind of terror created, Mao Zedong is often compared to the likes of Adolf HitlerJoseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini. Some of the atrocities that took place during his era include the following:. Once he was certain that all kinds of dissent and counter-revolutionary activities were eliminated, Mao Zedong proceeded to implement his First Five-Year Plan Although the motive behind that plan was aimed at quickly making China an industrial powerhouse, it was the implementation that of that plan that left more to be desired.

Scans of volumes produced by Sramikavarga Prachuranalu, Hyderabad. Scan was obtained from BannedThought. The translations are based on the Chinese edition published in by the People's Publishing House. Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. Mao is responsible for vast numbers of deaths with estimates ranging from 30 to 70 million victims. Mao never accepted the marriage and his wife Luo Yigu died in Mao set up many labor camps in China, where millions of people were sent and killed.

After the authorities sent a police spy to the congress, the delegates moved to a boat on South Lake near Jiaxingin 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.

Mao was party secretary for Hunan stationed in Changsha, and to build the party there he followed a variety of tactics. 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.

Mao claimed that he missed the July 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.

Supporting this position, Mao was elected to the Party Committee, taking up residence in Shanghai. In lateMao 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.

Such uprisings angered senior KMT figures, who were themselves landowners, emphasising the growing class and ideological divide within the revolutionary movement. 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".

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". He accepted that there was great variation in revolutionary enthusiasm across the country, and that a flexible policy of land redistribution was necessary.

Ultimately, his suggestions were only partially implemented. Fresh from the success of the Northern Expedition against the warlords, Chiang turned on the Communists, who then numbered in the tens of thousands across China. Chiang ignored the orders of the Wuhan-based leftist KMT government and marched on Shanghai, a city controlled by Communist militias.

As the Communists awaited Chiang's arrival, he loosed the White Terrormassacring 5, with the aid of the Green Gang. A battalion led by General Zhu De was ordered to take the city of Nanchang on 1 Augustin what became known as the Nanchang Uprising. They were initially successful, but were forced into retreat after five days, marching south to Shantouand from there they were driven into the wilderness of Fujian.

On the eve of the attack, Mao composed a poem—the earliest of his to survive—titled "Changsha". Mao's army made it to Changsha, but could not take it; by 15 September, he accepted defeat and with survivors marched east to the Jinggang Mountains of Jiangxi. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

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". The more orthodox Communists especially regarded the peasants as backward and ridiculed Mao's idea of mobilizing them.

Mao's response was to ignore them. He ensured that no massacres took place in the region, and pursued a more lenient approach than that advocated by the Central Committee. Mao 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, [ 96 ] incorporating two groups of bandits into his army, building a force of around 1, troops.

In doing so, he moulded his men into a disciplined, efficient fighting force. When the enemy rests, we harass him. When the enemy avoids a battle, we attack. When the enemy retreats, we advance. In springthe 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. 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. 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. In the mountainous area they were unable to grow enough crops to feed everyone, leading to food shortages throughout the winter. InMao met and married He Zizhenan year-old revolutionary who would bear him six children.

In JanuaryMao and Zhu evacuated the base with 2, men and a further provided by Peng, and took their armies south, to the area around Tonggu and Xinfeng in Jiangxi. Mao replied that while he concurred with Li's theoretical position, he would not disband his army nor abandon his base. 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. Mao disagreed with the new leadership, believing they grasped little of the Chinese situation, and he soon emerged as their key rival. In December, they tried to overthrow Mao, resulting in the Futian incidentduring which Mao's loyalists tortured many and executed between and dissenters.

Meanwhile, Mao recovered from tuberculosis. 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 Tzubut 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. He too faced setbacks and retreated to deal with the further Japanese incursions into China. In November he announced the start of a "land verification project" which was expanded in June He also orchestrated education programs and implemented measures to increase female political participation.

Trapped inside, morale among the Red Army dropped as food and medicine became scarce. The leadership decided to evacuate. 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. Temporarily resting in the city, they held a conference ; here, Mao was elected to a position of leadership, becoming Chairman of the Politburoand de facto chairman mao biography pdf 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 ShaanxiNorthern 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.

From Zunyi, Mao led his troops to Loushan Passwhere they faced armed chairman mao biography pdf 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. Zhang and Mao disagreed over what to do; the latter wished to proceed to Shaanxi, while Zhang wanted to retreat west to Tibet or Sikkimfar from the KMT threat.

It was agreed that they would go their separate ways, with Zhu De joining Zhang. In Novemberhe 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 Mao's troops arrived at the Yan'an Soviet during October and settled in Bao'anuntil spring While there, they developed links with local communities, redistributed and farmed the land, offered medical treatment, and began literacy programs.

She travelled to Moscow for medical treatment; Mao proceeded to divorce her and marry an actress, Jiang Qing. The Japanese had taken both Shanghai and Nanjing —resulting in the Nanjing Massacrean atrocity Mao never spoke of all his life—and was pushing the Kuomintang government inland to Chongqing. It was a military success that resulted in the death of 20, Japanese, the disruption of railways and the loss of a coal mine.

Inthe U. The American soldiers who were sent to the mission were favourably impressed. The party seemed less corrupt, more unified, and more vigorous in its resistance to Japan than the Kuomintang. The soldiers confirmed to their superiors that the party was both strong and popular over a broad area. At leastcivilians are believed to have perished during the siegewhich lasted from June until October.

Hiroshima took nine seconds; Changchun took five months. 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. Following the Marxist—Leninist theory of vanguardism[ ] Mao believed that only the correct leadership of the Communist Party could advance China into socialism.

Mao pushed the Party to organise campaigns to reform society and extend control. These campaigns were given urgency in Octoberwhen the People's Volunteer Army was sent into the Korean War to fight as well as reinforce the armed forces of North Korea, the Korean People's Armywhich 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 Warlasting until Richard Nixon 's improvements of relations.

At leastChinese troops died during the war. Chinese troops in Korea were under the overall command of then newly installed Premier Zhou Enlaiwith General Peng Dehuai as field commander and political commissar. During the land reform campaignslarge numbers of landlords and rich peasants were beaten to death at mass meetings as land was taken from them and given to poorer peasants, which reduced economic inequality.

State Department estimated as many as a million were killed in the land reform, andkilled in the counter-revolutionary campaign. Mao himself claimed that a total ofpeople were killed in attacks on "counter-revolutionaries" during the years — The government is credited with eradicating both consumption and production of opium during the s.

Remaining opium production shifted south of the Chinese border into the Golden Triangle region. Starting inMao initiated movements to rid urban areas of corruption; the Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns. Whereas the three-anti chairman mao biography pdf was a focused purge of government, industrial and party officials, the five-anti campaign set its sights slightly more broadly, targeting capitalist elements in general.

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. 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.

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". Following the consolidation of power, Mao launched the first five-year plan —which emphasised rapid industrial development.

Within industry, iron and steel, electric power, coal, heavy engineering, building materials, and basic chemicals were prioritised with the aim of constructing large and highly capital-intensive plants. Many of these plants were built with Soviet assistance and heavy industry grew rapidly. Despite being initially sympathetic towards the reformist government of Imre NagyMao feared the "reactionary restoration" in Hungary as the Hungarian Revolution of continued and became more hardline.

Mao opposed the withdrawal of Soviet troops by asking Liu Shaoqi to inform the Soviet representatives to use military intervention against "Western imperialist-backed" protestors and Nagy's government. However, it was unclear to what degree Mao's stance played a role in Nikita Khrushchev 's decision to invade Hungary. It was also unclear if China was forced to conform to the Soviet position due to economic concerns and China's poor power projections compared to the USSR.

Despite his disagreements with Moscow's hegemony in the Eastern BlocMao viewed the integrity of the international communist movement as more important than the national autonomy of the countries in the Soviet sphere of influence. Mao decided to soften his stance on Chinese intelligentsia and allow them to express their social dissatisfaction and criticisms of the errors of the government.

Mao wanted to use this movement to prevent a similar uprising in China. However, as people in China began to criticize the CCP's policies and Mao's leadership following the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Mao cracked down on the movement he initiated and compared it to the "counter-revolutionary" Hungarian Revolution. During the Hundred Flowers Campaign, 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, totalling perhaps , [ ] as well as those who were merely alleged to have been critical, in what is called the Anti-Rightist Movement.

The movement led to the persecution of at leastpeople, mostly intellectuals and dissidents. United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower 's threats during the First Taiwan Strait Crisis to use nuclear weapons against military targets in Fujian province prompted Mao to begin China's nuclear program. Project [ ] is a military project to find antimalarial medications.

Chairman mao biography pdf

Zhou Enlai convinced Mao Zedong to start the mass project "to keep [the] allies' troops combat-ready", as the meeting minutes put it. The one for investigating traditional Chinese medicine discovered and led to the development of a class of new antimalarial drugs called artemisinins. Some private food production was banned, and livestock and farm implements were brought under collective ownership.

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 high amount of that fictitious harvest. The result, compounded in some areas by drought and in others by floods, was that farmers were left with little food and many millions starved to death in the Great Chinese Famine.

The people of urban areas 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. In late autumnMao condemned the practices used during Great Leap Forward such as forcing peasants to do labour without enough food or rest which resulted in epidemics and starvation.

He also acknowledged that anti-rightist campaigns were a major cause of "production at the expense of livelihood. After the July clash at Lushan Conference with Peng DehuaiMao launched a new anti-rightist campaign along with the radical policies that he previously abandoned. It wasn't until the spring ofthat Mao would again express concern about abnormal deaths and other abuses, but he 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". Mao stepped down as President of China on 27 April ; he retained other top positions such as Chairman of the Communist Party and of the Central Military Commission. The most direct of these was Minister of Defence Peng Dehuai.

A campaign was launched and resulted in party members and ordinary peasants being sent to prison labour camps. Years later the CCP would conclude that as many as six million chairman mao biography pdf were wrongly punished in the campaign. The Sino-Soviet split resulted in Nikita Khrushchev 's withdrawal of Soviet technical experts and aid from the country.

The split concerned the leadership of world communism. 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. The split resulted from Khrushchev's more moderate Soviet leadership after the death of Stalin in March Only Albania openly sided with China, thereby forming an alliance between the two countries.

Warned that the Soviets had nuclear weapons, Mao minimised the threat. After the Great Leap Forward, China's leadership slowed the pace of industrialization. I need to reconsider my actions" and pushed even harder for the creation of the Third Front. Development of the Third Front slowed inbut accelerated again after the Sino-Soviet border conflict at Zhenbao Island, which increased the perceived risk of Soviet Invasion.

During the early s, Mao became concerned with the nature of post China. He saw that the old ruling elite was replaced by 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 " continuous revolution " that, theoretically, would serve the interests of the majority, rather than a tiny and privileged elite.

The Cultural Revolution led to the destruction of much of China's traditional cultural heritage and the imprisonment of many Chinese citizens, as well as the creation of chaos in the country. Millions of lives were ruined, as the Cultural Revolution pierced into Chinese life. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, perished in the violence of the Cultural Revolution.

It was during this period that Mao chose Lin Biao to become his successor. Lin was later officially named as Mao's successor. Bya divide between the two men had become apparent. Lin Biao died on 13 Septemberin a chairman mao biography pdf crash over the air space of Mongolia, presumably as he fled China, probably anticipating his arrest.

At this time, Mao lost trust in many of the top CCP figures. The highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. InMao declared the Cultural Revolution to be over. Various historians mark the end of the Cultural Revolution infollowing Mao's death and the arrest of the Gang of Four. An estimate of arounddeaths is a widely accepted minimum figure, according to Maurice Meisner.

During his leadership, Mao traveled outside China on two occasions, both times for state visits to the Soviet Union. In his first visit on 16 DecemberMao traveled to celebrate the 70th birthday of Joseph Stalin in Moscow, an event that was also attended by East German deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers Walter Ulbricht and Mongolian general secretary Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal.

Mao's health declined in his final years, probably aggravated by his chain-smoking. He died nearly one week later, on 9 Septemberat the age of On 18 September, guns, sirens, whistles and horns across China were simultaneously blown and a mandatory three-minute silence was observed. Hua Guofeng concluded the service with a minute-long eulogy atop Tiananmen Gate.

On 27 Junethe communist party's Central Committee adopted the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of Chinawhich assessed the legacy of the Mao era and the party's priorities going forward. Mao has been regarded as one of the most important and influential individuals in the 20th century.

He has also been credited with having improved the status of women in China and for improving literacy and education. His policies resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people in China during his reign, [ ] [ ] [ ] done through starvation, persecution, prison labour in laogaiand mass executions. China's population grew from around million to over million under his rule.

In mainland China, Mao is respected by a great number of the general population. Mao is credited for raising the average life expectancy from 35 in to 63 bybringing "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".

Opposition to Mao can lead to censorship or professional repercussions in mainland China, [ ] and is often done in private settings. He is seen as someone who successfully liberated the country from Japanese occupation and from Western imperialist exploitation dating back to the Opium Wars. A "sizable proportion" lauded the era's simplicity, attributing to it the "clear meaning" of life and minimal inequality; they contended that the "spiritual life" was rich.

The interviewees simultaneously acknowledged the poor "material life" and other negative experiences under Mao.