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Assess Mao Zedong’s contribution to China’s modernization between 1949 and his death in 1976....

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Assess Mao Zedong’s contribution to China’s modernization between 1949 and his death in 1976.

Under the rule of the dictator, Mao Zedong, the very foundation of modern-day China was set in stone. For centuries, China has remained an ancient civilization that has continued its legacy far longer than any other nation, yet the aspiration to transform china into a modern nation began with Mao in 1949. Throughout his reign he implemented revolutionary communist ideals in his policies and this Marxist communist ideology was one that lay at the forefront of his revolution. Chairman Mao led a path for socialist modernization after his establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. For Mao, he emphasized the importance of human activity and the willingness of individuals to engage in revolutionary action. He stressed the significance of “thought reform” and “ideological remolding”. Essentially holding “correct ideological consciousness: as the deciding factor in achieving success (Meisner, 1999, p. 42). Using this ideology, Mao’s nationalist party, the Communist Party of China (CCP), set out to eliminate all forms of remnants of Chinese society while imposing socialist orthodoxy and the preservation of communism. Whilst it is clear the Mao’s leadership left a mark in history, it is important acknowledge the severity of the failed decisions he made throughout his rule. Within this essay, we will explore Mao’s relationship with the Soviet Union, the disastrous “Great Leap Forward”, the “Cultural Revolution” and end with an overall assessment of Mao’s leadership and its lasting effects on China today.

The establishment of the People’s Republic of China (1949), marked the beginning of a nationalist revolutionary era. Mao proclaimed that ‘The Chinese people have stood up’. Inferred from this statement was that the ‘New China’ would stand up against any form of imperialism and overtly reject the West. Under Mao’s leadership, the evolvement of the SinoSoviet relationship was particularly important when it came to China’s modernization. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Sino-Soviet relationship was seen as ‘unbreakable’ and stronger than ever. The alliance remained an integral part of Mao’s vision of China’s modernization with the uniting factor between the nations being their common belief of socialism and commitment to the international proletarian movement (Jian, 2001, p. 50). The Soviet Union played a a fundamental role in aiding China in terms of their economic development. China followed a five-year plan that was modeled by the Soviet. It was comprised of goals based on economic and industrial expansion. The first plan established was successful and resulted in Mao implementing two more five-year plans. The first had disastrous events culminating in 40 million deaths (), hence the second was introduced to fix the problems created by the former. Ultimately, these five-year plans have been instrumental

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in the countries’ political success yet the same cannot be said in terms of their economic development. In any case, towards the end of the 50’s the Sino-Soviet relationship faced turmoil and at in the mid 1960s the relationship collapsed. The collapse was a result of a buildup of several different issues faced by both parties, some of which included the Korean War issue, clashes in leadership between Stalin and Mao, inequality in dealings between Russia and China, disagreements and distrust between leadership, Khrushchev’s development of de-Stalinization etc. (Meisner, 1999, p. 7) Overtime, Beijing and Moscow’s relationship rapidly worsened and with both countries’ looking to further their own interests it was after the Sino-Soviet polemic debate that the alliance had virtually died (Jian, 2001, pg. 84)

The ‘Great Leap Forward’ was introduced by Mao, in 1958, in an attempt to promote a new more ‘Chinese communism’. Mao and his people realized that the first five-year plan had actually resulted in China moving further away from their vision of socialism and communism, in social, political and ideological terms. The basic idea of the movement was to instill in society the importance of working hard, for longer hours in order to industrialize the countryside and catch up with other world powers in terms of economy. This was, in part, the Maoist response to the early industrialization (Meisner, 1999, pg. 191). The ideological incentive behind the Great Leap was revolutionary Maoism, the populist belief that a true revolution’s potential lies in the peasant masses. Mao was convinced that he had the ability to instill socialism in the people much more rapidly than other leaders such as Stalin could. To the other Chinese leaders’ surprise, he was able to pull through a rapid socialist transformation of the economy by 1957 (Walder, 2015, pg. 315). The aim was to implement large-scale infrastructure projects, intensive farming to boost agricultural surplus, increase industrial output through the use of localized industrialization as well as including the building of ‘backyard furnaces. Allied to this policy was the idea of taking power from the center and redistributing it to rural communes containing thousands of households. Initially the Great Leap was a success, as the output of agricultural and was significantly higher in 1958 than in 1957. The only other success that came from this for Mao that it allowed him to challenge previous soviet model, leading to a decreased soviet authority. This situation began to deteriorate by 1959 and the Great Leap Forward had become a disaster. The production upsurge was the precursor to an economic catastrophe. Sheer fatigue was taking its toll on the manual labor workers and they were no longer able to exert their efforts into agricultural labor. Not only did it result in a massive manmade famine that led to the death of nearly 30 million people, but it also led to a deep industrial depression. As a consequence of the severity of Mao’s misjudgments during the Great Leap Forward his

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reputation disintegrated and he no longer upheld the power or status as a great leader from the Soviet or the Chinese people. The whole movement of the Great Leap discredited the notion that mass mobilization was an essential factor in economic reformation, yet Mao remained faithful to this idea.

In addition to the Great Leap Forward, another disastrous movement that Mao is remembered by was ‘The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’. It began in 1966, when Mao set forth to redeem himself after the colossal damages of the Great Leap Forward. It was an attempt to continue the revolution and challenge privileged positions within the communist party and society. On the outset, Mao did not have a clear plan in mind, which forced him to repeatedly improvise and make decisions out of haste as the events took place. According to scholars, neither Mao nor any other party leader expected the outcomes of the Cultural Revolution (Walder, 2015, pg. 200). On one hand, the cultural revolution can be perceived mass eradication of anything remotely ‘bourgeois’, in art and literature, as well as a campaign to root out anything from ‘old China’ (Moise, 2013, pg. 169). The Cultural Revolution became an attempt to rid the CCP of ‘revisionist’ whom Chairman Mao accused of seeking to introduce capitalist practices. Rapidly, the Cultural Revolution became a mass insurgency and created a cult determined to follow every one of Mao’s wishes. Conflict between revolutionaries and enemies of the revolution soon escalated. Maoists used the ‘Little Red Book’ as a bible, an official source of inspiration for almost any activity. 3 elements that became the intrinsic values of each Maoist revolutionary included: personal selflessness, belief in the masses and a belief in Chairman Mao (Moise, 2013, pg. 169). Within the movement, Mao believed that in order to modernize China and allow the individuals to progress in an increasingly Western world where education was fundamental, the Chinese people had to undergo an educational reform. He observed that educated people tended to be superior than uneducated ones. He felt they were entitled to avoid manual labor, ‘as a right’. The leaders of the cultural revolution called for the attack of the “four old’s”. These included: old customs, old habits, old culture and old traditions (Spence, 1999). Mao was adamant on the ideological cleansing of the cultural realm as beneath these ideals he believed there were much greater social and political implications. In order to progress his visions, Mao recruited students to rebel against university institutions and the higher authority. These students formed the ‘Red Guards’. Whilst they started off by rebelling and fighting political and educational authorities, this gradually escalated in battle between one another (Meisner, 1999, pg. 316) . They slowly engaged in increasingly violent assaults on faculty, school administrators and eventually on government officials (Walder, 2015, pg. 5). The Cultural Revolution turn into decades of pointless conflict which left China in

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shambles. In retrospect, the cultural revolution was able to achieve certain aims, yet it was ultimately a failure. Some of the successes included its ability to mobilize a large insurgency against a party state, it was able to enforce a new set of governmental institutions and was able to destroy the old party without completely disintegrating the nation-state. However, the problems that arose completely outweighed the benefits. There was no clear aim which meant that strategies changed multiple times, it led to the instigation of nationwide rebellions and inflicted enormous amounts of damage in the process.

From the Great Leap Forward to the cultural revolution, the creation of the PRC to creating and destroying China’s alliance with the Soviet Union, Mao’s death in 1976 marked the end of an in Chinese history. Mao promised a bourgeoise revolution, which was followed by a socialist one (Meisner, 1999, pg. 413). Regardless of the damaging policies he had, we can acknowledge that China’s bourgeois revolution assisted in the increase in production of products associated with the modernization movement. This is evident in the output of steel production increasing from 1.3 to 23 million tons between 1952 and 1976, coal from 66 to 448 million tons and so on (Meisner, 1999, pg. 415). Mao’s initial aim was to “reconcile the means of modern industrialism with the ends of socialism”, however Mao was much more successful as an economic modernizer than an implementor of socialism (Meisner, 1999, pg. 414). Nonetheless, these industrial accomplishments were done at the expense of the working population. It required hard labor and great sacrifices, collectivization and large amounts of nationalism. In retrospect, Mao brought China to international prominence but regardless of this China still did not receive its superpower status. Mao was a great revolutionary, but did he fail his people?

Overall, Mao held back the modernization more than he brought it forward. It is important to acknowledge that initially Mao was able to bring China forward from before 1949. Before the establishment of the PRC in 1949, China was in a civil war, which meant it lacked infrastructure and social welfare. His early attempts to modernize were drastically more successful than his later plans for example, land distribution, the first five-year plan, the early alliance with the Soviet etc. However, when it comes Mao’s contribution to China’s modernization it is safe to say that there were several destructive aspects of his initiatives were extremely damaging. Not only was Mao daring and reckless, the basics of his ideology and his need for revolutionary change did not modernize China as much as he had initially envisioned it to.

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WORKS CITED Jian, C. (2001). Mao’s China and The Cold War. Chapel Hill, NC; London; England: The University of North Carolina Press. Meisner, M. (1999). Mao’s China and After (3rd ed.). USA: The Free Press. Moise, E. E. (2013). Modern China: a history. London; New York: Longman. Spence, J. (1999). The search for modern China (2nd ed.). New York: W.W. Norton. Walder, A. G. (2015). China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed. Cambridge, MA; London, England: Harvard University Press....