Mao, and the Communist Revolution

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Mao, and the Communist Revolution
1948 - 1965

• Shane Arguello, Ana Ariza

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Chinese Civil War

• After the Japanese surrender in World War II,
  territory in China was open for grabs.
• The Chinese Nationalists (the KMT, Kuomintang
  party) and Communists (the CCP, Chinese Communist
  Party) took advantage, and made huge grasps for
  land.
• But the two main factions had distinctly opposing
  views, which broke out into war in 1947 when
  Chiang, leader of the KMT, attacked the
  Communists openly.
• American tried to intervene, but it did not aid
  the matter, nor did it make it worse.
• Halfway through the war, Chiang began to spread
  out its troops too much, making them susceptible
  to attack.
• Mao Zedong, leader of the communist party, saw
  the weakness, and with conjunction with the Red
  Army, completely racked the Kuomintang army.
• The war ended in 1949. Communism won.
• Mao formed the Peoples Republic of China on
  October 1st, 1949.
• The U.S., though supplying the cause with 2
  billion in aid, lost their trust for China when
  they and the Soviet Union signed a stalemate
  treaty in 1950. The United States paranoia of
  Communism continued into China, who they thought
  that with the Soviet Union, would work to spread
  it.

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Mao Zedong

• He was the leader of the CCP, or the Chinese
  Communist Party
• He was born to a peasant farmer family, and
  adopted the Marxist theory of government while
  working as a library assistant in Peking
  University.
• His ideology was heavily adapted from that of
  Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks in
  the Communist Russian Revolution.
• With a win over the Nationalist Kuomintang, he
  formed the Peoples Republic of China in 1947.
• The peasants of China were generally happy with
  Mao Zedong. He made leaps to improve their
  education, literacy, and their supplies of food
  during the Civil War. His support of the peasants
  helped him immensely during the war.
• Also, the introduction of the Little Leap
  Forward, which was technically a redesigning of
  the agriculture system, angered the peasants.
  They were forced to comply with the new
  collective farming system.
• His support of the peasants wavered during the
  Great Leap Forward. The peasants had nothing to
  gain by working, and their morale to do it
  lowered.

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The Great Leap Forward

• The movement to expand the economy was a brutal
  one for the people.
• The second movement began in 1958 with the Great
  Leap Forward, a program designed to increase
  their agriculture production, increase nearly
  five-fold their production of steel, and the
  efficiency and use of coal and electricity for
  energy.
• All the people of the nation were drafted in.
  They were given a steel furnace to produce their
  own steel in their backyards, as well as a little
  farm to yield more crops.
• Communities built collective farms and factories
  to produce even more than what they did in their
  backyards.
• For the peoples efforts, they were given no
  portion of the profits of the industry and
  agriculture.
• It becomes obvious that the use of only steel
  furnaces would never produce the steel with as a
  high a merit as one that would come from a true
  steel mill.
• Agriculture results weren't that great either. In
  fact, the peasants often lied about the amount
  they harvested, so to not disappoint their
  superiors.
• It ended in failure. A prolonged flood of three
  years, inadequate harvests, and the withdrawal of
  Soviet Technical Experts led to its end. A famine
  struck hard during the Great Leap Forward,
  causing the government to call off the program in
  1961.
• The failure caused Mao to resign from his
  position of chairman in the CCP.

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Cultural Revolution

• The Great Leap Forward was called off, and now
  new economic policies took its place, some of
  which had a high Soviet influence.
• Mao disliked the changes, and encouraged
  revolution to the young people of China.
• The people rallied together a militia, called the
  Red Guard. Its members were primarily teenager
  students.
• They led a heated revolt throughout China,
  severing the intellectuals who they considered
  dangerous to the Maoist ways.
• Colleges were shut down, schools were shut down,
  books were burned, buildings were destroyed,
  people were beat, and a select few of Maos
  enemies were murdered. To sum it in one word, it
  was chaos.
• A group called the Gang of Four became the center
  of the revolution, pursuing the radical goals of
  the Red Guard. In 1976, they went imprisoned,
  receiving either the deaths sentence or twenty
  years prison time.
• Though it was Mao who encouraged the revolution,
  he was also the one to stop it. The army was put
  into motion, and quelled all the rebellions.
  This, plus the Gang of Four imprisonment, ended
  the Cultural Revolution.
• Like the Great Leap Forward, this critical
  movement also incited by Mao Zedong ended in
  failure.

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So basically.

• The CCP (Chinese Communist Party), under Mao,
  defeated the Nationalists (the Kuomintang), and
  established the Peoples Republic of China.
• Mao Zedong became the chairman of the CCP.
  Peasants at first liked him, but then did not
  because of his reforms.
• Mao employed the second Five Year Plan in the
  form of the Great Leap Forward, and plan to
  improve agriculture and industry. Ended in
  failure.
• In the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guard went up
  against the intellectuals of China, and those
  considered to be Maos enemies. They were under
  the driving influence of the Gang of Four, who
  are now blamed for the scale the conflict that
  the revolution had risen to. It was pure chaos.
  Mao and Chinas army worked together to stop the
  riots.

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