20th Century China And The Mao Period History Essay

China is the world oldest and largest surviving civilization. For centuries China stayed ahead of the world, Chinese civilization made much advancement in the areas of art and sciences regarding medical practices, agricultural systems etc. china witness civil unrest, political uprisings, major famines, wars and foreign occupation. During end of World War 2, the Mao Zedong established the political system under the light of red code; he tried to restore china’s integrity and political sovereignty. He observed dictatorial practices and followed communist standards. During his rule millions of Chinese people lost their life. He founded Red Guard. With the help of Red Guard he started Cultural Revolution, resulting many people get permanently silenced.

Mao Zedong was a political theorist, revolutionary, and communist leader. He is the most regarded personality in Chinese history. Credited for leading China into modernized and industrialized path, he has been tagged and considered as a national hero by Chinese government. The political system he developed caused millions of people to lose their lives. Many died of starvation, which was result of poor management and very strict hierarchy for chain of commands, which resulted secrecy and stopped flow of adequate data required to make correct decisions. Mao era has been selected because of the fact that his caused violent mass moments resulting death of Millions of Chinese people. During his rule from 1949-1976 China suffered feminine caused by poor management and lead civil poor to gain and bring political power.

Political Change

Mao believed in armed struggle to bring in the political change into the society. He was inspiration for many freedom fighters and revolutionaries, most notably Che Guerra.

During 1920 he lead and armed assault “Revolutionary Army of Workers and Peasans”. His armed assault was defeated, but he learned much from it and started to develop studies which would later inspire revolutionary fighter from around the world.

During this era he developed army and institutionalized his army into proper military setup. Organized camps were formed throughout numerous provinces in order to start his campaigning with greater effect. Thus, socialism could be spread among the poor, mostly peasants.

The people of were suspected of his opposition or were considered his enemies were subjected to public humiliation it has been reported that Mao people under his direction practiced numerous methods of torture. It has been reported that many noble families and scholars were subjected to these just because of displeasure for their intellectual abilities.

These kinds of practices have been common throughout history, in fact are still being practiced. Reason and motives behind are impalement of the ultimate authority. Rule by fear was the method, it is argued at during that time people of the China were too stubborn and it was necessary to take these radical measure in order to convert one lazy and useless nation into giant working organizational might committed in becoming the most powerful nation of the world. This was the Mao dream, his ambition.

When countries are newly formed, it has been observed great loss of life happening, and initial political setup making grave mistakes, either by total stupidity or due to lack of experience and ill or no knowledge of the art of ruling and managing the country.

Country can be won and taken over the combining the forces, merging people and gathering them into one banner, because masses can be motivated and their emotions captured and put into for the cause. But running the country is entirely different matter, as country and its stability is not judged not calculated by its performance in single year, or perhaps 2 years, or 5 years or 10 years. Its performance is based on the result continual policy.

China has indeed accomplished allot in very short span time. But the question is the lives of people so less insignificant compared to the achievement of national objectives? When the lives of people are started to be valued, what about the freedom of the people? Their rights to complain even further prohibiting political expression? It’s not just now; Chinese People have never been given right to stand up against the system, even if the system is working or not working. This is one of the major reasons for the underdevelopment of the independent ruling standards.

Cultural Revolution 1966 to 1976

May 16, 1966; Mao Zedong started campaign to setup socialism standard throughout the country. To achieve this he gathered students and peasant and started a revolution which was called Cultural Revolution. The purpose of this revolution was to stop restoration of capitalism because he believed that capitalism hinders revolutionary objectives required for uplifting china to become self-sufficient nation.

First Five Year Plan

To setup “grassroots socialism” Mao started a Five Year Plan. The goal was turn china into modern industrialized state. To achieve industrial goals for china mass mobilization of the people was started. Because of the mass mobilization many important areas economy were neglected, peasants who have been rationally working over the fields were forced into industries and other labors required for the conversation into industrialized state. Those who opposed this idea and obscurity of the methods, were considered enemy of the states and were either imprisoned or killed. Result was fear, and because of the fear and the production goals set by the government, many were forced to take difficult measures. For the production of the steel, furnaces were set at home to achieve production targets, farmers melted their equipment in order to make steel. Industrial goals were tried to be achieved which resulted the harvest. Because of very high ambitious goals setup my Mao regime and strict punishment imposed over those who failed to yield desired results, local management authorizes started producing false progress reports. This caused management decision misjudgments. Grain deposits got emptied, people starved, and china faced world worst famine.

China first five year plan because of its unrealistic goals was a failure. Death toll during this Great Leap period is estimated to be around 45million. (Tsou) (http://www-chaos.umd.edu/history/prc2.html)

The Method of ruling was based on the ideas, or vague dreams and goals. Chinese leaders were not ready to bring radical changes. Lack of knowledge and skills required for the development of the country caused mass scale turmoil. There approaches towards the achievement of their goals were based on the self-centered projections of greatness. Lives of people were wagered without consideration of their worth and importance. Many rulers have used the masses for their achievements, men and women wasted to serve their own purposes.

Chinese government has given status of national hero to Mao; it could be understood from the Chinese history that even before this socialism channeling into the political system, and china has always been a secretive society. Empirical world and there practices were kept secret and were always closely guarded. Now secrecy was still being practiced, the reason was to stop people from knowing. Those who questioned and dared correct the authority, were announced enemy of state and were considered to be causing obstruction into the progress. Thus, were put to silence, one can assume political system did this in order avoid there guilt ill knowledge. Clearly they lacked knowledge of economical handling and they learned by the destruction of human life and natural resources.

Legacy

Red Guards have caused massive amount of damage to China and Chinese people. Red Guards which was formed by the Mao to bring in the social change acted not just as wheel of constructive change but also ruined and disrupted the Chinese heritage and culture in favor of modernizations goals and dreams which were projected through Mao and his political team. Read Army which was in addition to the actual army, was paid by the government

Mao rule and his revolutionary dream was primary centered on him, his operations, his concepts and his ideologies were the based upon the decision making progress. Ultimate authority was objected to nil objections. 350 million copies of his quotations had been printed for distribution among the masses. He was projected as the source and the inspiration. After failure of his management, which was proved by the implementation of his first five year plan, caused major damage to the lives and the property of the Chinese families.

The Red Guard force which he created also damaged and destroyed the priceless historical items and sites, Religions and faiths were affected.

The goal of the revolution forfeited the process of intellectual growth of the Chinese people. They were discouraged by alienating the intellectual community of China, they were send to rural camps, put and forced through extremes of hard labor. The result of this harassment caused generation of Chinese people to become poorly educated.

This sacrificed the achievement of the revolution objectives but one thinks, that these steps might have been taken to avoid the complexity of the questioning and reasoning of the objectives and surreal task and goals set by the chairmen and his aiding collations.

Chinese were following Russian example, without studying there results. This is why the amount of damage received in Russia and china are similar. Though, scale of damage in China case exceeded anything that has been previously happened anywhere else in the world.

Mao was the central operative figure who guided everything in China. His creation (Red Army) as was comprised of people motivated and feed by Mao regime became more authorities then the state Army and other organizations that are setup with traditional task for the peace settlement and harmonious discipline in the society and of the country.

In order to impose further psychological control, campaigns were started to create image of Mao of a dearly loved and truly inspirational leader. Children and people were fed to the idea that Mao is the ultimate caretaker and the best wisher of the Chinese people.

Ultimately central political system became chaotic and it lacked any sort of stability, the outcome was local governing house following their lead, which resulted mismanagement. (Meisner)

End of Moment

Red Guards had caused and were continually causing many stability issues, thus political center proposed the idea of dismantling of the Red Guards from Cultural Revolution scene. People liberation army forcibly suppressed the out of control Red Guard groups in Sichuan, Anhui, Hunan, Fujian and Hubei provinces. Students who were taking part in Red Guard activities were ordered to join schools. Finally Political center had learned the lesson masses being given opportunity to take control only caused the result of chaos.

Until this time revolutionary was described by the involvement of students and young generation into radicalism concepts and teachings. Now, political forces at found this to be against national benefits thus recommended and later imposed student radicalism as counterrevolutionary and banned.

Though, this banned did get back fired and the student who were ordered to join back schools, reportedly did not lose their aggressive touch and did not seize opportunity to cause backlash against government and military oppressions. Those student who were taught to question everything else but authority started questioning authority. (Meisner)

Seems to very predictable outcome, as one can clearly make sense of these acts as their rights to control and be authorizing, which they exercised, was been snatched away from them.

Following years more violence was spotted between nation Red Guard movement and Peoples liberal Army. Though in the end Mao did put end to the moment by officially calling the movement members and telling them the end of Red Guards. (Meisner)

Conclusion 1949-1976

After death of Chairman Mao, the process of fixing the china started off by arresting key political figures involved who have caused massive ramifications. Chiang Ching, Chang Chun-chiao, Wang Hung-wen, and Yao Wen-yuan were the Mao closet supporters, they were also arrested and thousands others under their command were also affected. Mao party was liquidated and steps were taken to start the process reversing the damage caused during his time. Another ominous sign came by the removal of the pictures of these political figures from offices.

From the outlook it seems that the process was started to undo the political effect which was started by Mao and Red Guards. As to this day, present Chinese authority is behaving in different manner compared to original founders, they have become somehow more lenient and less conservative, but still the age old tradition is still followed.

The Issue of this self-containment and suffering, during Mao time could be contained within the boundaries of china, but as this globalization and joint businesses or multinational businesses are emerging and are becoming more powerful, the result of mismanagement could result whole world end up suffering from not just emotional dilemma but also physical one.

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