It was estimated that close to a million people were killed as a result of Mao Zedongs land reforms. In 1911, the Xinhua Revolution began against the monarchy, and Mao joined the Revolutionary Army and the Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party. Maosrectification campaign in Yanan was designed, in part, to intimidate, marginalise and eradicate his opponents. Mao Zedong [a] (26 December 1893 - 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese politician, political theorist, military strategist, poet, and communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which he led as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from the establishment of the PRC in 1949 u. Mao Zedong: Biography, Cultural Revolution, Major Facts, & Death Washington made it clear to Mao that it recognized Jiangs Republic of China as the legal government, and the GMD was and would remain the sole agency that should unify the country. The turning point was the 1948 Siege of Changchun, in which the Red Army, now called the People's Liberation Army (PLA), defeated the Kuomintang's army in Changchun, Jilin Province. Title: Mao Zedong On the other hand, Mao ran an authoritarian government that quashed dissidence and caused years of terror, suffering, and famine for its . A huge proponent of industrialization, Chairman Mao spent close to Between 5 to 6 million people found themselves in what Mao called reform camps or re-educational camps. Mao Zedong , or Mao Tse-tung, (born Dec. 26, 1893, Shaoshan, Hunan province, Chinadied Sept. 9, 1976, Beijing), Chinese Marxist theorist, soldier, and statesman who led China's communist revolution and served as chairman of the People's Republic of China (1949-59) and chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP; 1931-76). From Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping. Impressed by accounts of the rigorous physical regimen of Theodore Roosevelt, Mao had devised a similar program for himself. With his despotic regime secured, by the spring of 1951 Kim Il-sung wanted to end the war, but Mao would not permit it. Mao arrived in Beijing with a typical students interestsbooks, poetry, politics, and girls. On the one hand, Mao's revolution achieved China's sovereignty, and his land reforms bequeathed land to a formerly landless peasantry. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. This Chinese Revolution website is created and maintained by Alpha History. Mao Tse-tung (also spelled Zedong) was the principal Chinese Marxist theorist, soldier and statesman who led his nation's Cultural Revolution. Mao Zedong Biography - Childhood, Life Achievements & Timeline To subscribe, click here. With the new government in place, the Chinese Communists expected only two things from the United States: that China be accepted as a great power and that Chinas traditional sphere of influence be respected. Hebegan his life as a librarian and teacher while studying both left-wing Western political texts and the writings of ancient Chinese scholars. The KMT crushed Mao's peasant army, killing 90% of them and forcing the survivors out into the countryside, where they rallied more peasants to their cause. Instead of taking the PRC seriously, Truman was unable to see anything other than a country that was weak economically and militarily. He is widely considered one of the most prominent communist theoreticians. Mao Zedong - Alpha History Since 1948, when the 38th parallel became the agreed boundary between North and South Korea, the leader of North Korea, Kim Il-sung, had been pestering Stalin to sanction a war to unify the Korean Peninsula. On matters of war and peace his unmatched prestige was usually enough for him to get his way, but not every time, and although Mao had thought Chinese intervention might prove necessary almost from the start of Kims invasion, war preparations had not begun. As Americas frustration mounted at its inability to win the war in Vietnam, the Joint Chiefs of Staff advised Johnson he was fighting the wrong war. At five feet ten, Mao was markedly taller than most Chinese males. In 1949, Mao led the communists to victory in the Chinese Civil War and proclaimed the formation of the Peoples Republic of China. In 1907, Mao's father arranged a marriage for his 14-year-old son. In 1966, Mao Tse-tung made his political return and launched the Cultural Revolution. He seized warlord land, converting it into people's communes. By 1962, China and the USSR had cut off relations with one another in the Sino-Soviet Split. Vo Nguyen Giap was convinced by this time that the United States, rather than admit failure, was about to escalate what was still a modest insurgency into one of the biggest wars of the century. WhenMao died in September 1976, it triggered a tidal wave of grief and sorrow around China. It was a formula for defeat. Taking advantage of a chance for reflection, he produced some of the key texts on strategy and tactics for armies engaged in protracted war. There were only a few hundred American military advisers in South Korea, and the Republic of Koreas army was no match for Kims Soviet-trained and -equipped military. One way or another, North Vietnam would not run out of arms or men so long as it had the will to endure. Most of the invasion force was likely to survive the hundred-mile crossing from the mainland, much of which would take place at night. The new Soviet leaders, Leonid Brezhnev and Andrei Kosygin, rapidly abandoned Khrushchevs ultra-cautious policy toward the war in Vietnam. Truman in turn scorned Pannikar, considering him a fellow traveler., Even so, when MacArthur met with Truman on Wake Island on October 15, Truman told him, General, all of our intelligence sources indicate that the Chinese Communists are about to enter this war. He was wrong. Yet the vast country had little stability. When he turned 17, he left home to enroll in a secondary school in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. He had developed a strategy during the civil war of fighting while talking, talking while fighting. He carried that same negotiating strategy into Korea, hence the two years of talks and continued fighting before the sides could agree on armistice terms. Dr. Kallie Szczepanski is a history teacher specializing in Asian history and culture. In January 1954, with the advice of two Chinese generals, Giap began situating his 105s on hilltops within range of Dien Bien Phu. Getty Images. Eros in Greek Mythology: Origin story, myths, symbols, depiction, and powers, Thutmose III: Biography, Military Campaigns, and Greatest Accomplishments, Chinese Civil War: History, Causes & Effects. In January 1935, the party leadership gathered around a large conference table in a well-known spa town, Zunyi, to discuss strategy. On December 10, the PLA besieged the final KMT stronghold at Chengdu, Sichuan. Studies of Chinese leadership theory and practice cannot afford to ignore these two figures. During the war a small group of American military officers and diplomats was sent to Yan An, over Jiangs objections. This amounted to a blank check for Hanoi, but Ho did not cash it right away. He was a leader in the Chinese Cultural Revolution and led. Mao ever after claimed he had been taken prisoner but managed to escape before the Nationalists could execute him. After graduation, Mao followed his professor Yang Changji to Beijing, where he took a job at the Beijing University library. If American forces shut down the ports of Haiphong in North Vietnam and Sihanoukville in Cambodia, Soviet support would go overland, through China. If they did not intervene to save North Korea, Mao told his colleagues, they would live to regret it. He suffered two major heart attacks early in September, and died September 9, 1976, after being removed from life support. His authoritarian father, Mao Zedong, was a prosperous grain dealer, and his mother, Wen Qimei, was a nurturing parent. In addition to her address of Congress in 1943, the Wellesley-educated "Madame. "Biography of Mao Zedong, Father of Modern China." Mao had married a third wife, He Zizhen, in May of that year. As Maos resolve hardened, Stalins went wobbly. Repudiated by the CCPs leadership, Braun returned to Russia. In his memoirs, Present at the Creation, Acheson said that he and Truman alike were trying to force the Joint Chiefs to alter their strategy. Chiang Kai-shek and his followers fled to the island of Taiwan, where they formed the Republic of China. Mao told Service that backward China was going to need American help once the war ended. In my opinion we should not.If war is inevitable, let us wage it now.. Stalins chilly response was, Go see Mao. He backed up this advice with a telegram to Mao, telling him, Move at least five or six divisions toward the 38th parallel. Otherwise, he knew the war would be lost. Mao Zedong, also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founding father of the People's Republic of China, which he ruled as the chairman of the Chinese. It contributed nothing to American security. In April 1927, he broke the alliance and began a violent purge of the Communists, imprisoning or killing many. They would cross the Yalu River if the Americans crossed the 38th parallel. On October 1, 1949, in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, Mao announced the establishment of the People's Republic of China. In 1929, heinstigated the formation ofa peasant soviet in the southern province of Jiangxi. The president dared not risk it and gave the military a bombing campaign against North Vietnam instead. He fought against the Nationalist party during the Chinese civil war. Helping to push a road over the mountains and through the jungles of Burma was the one notable success that Jiangs troops could claim during World War II. As far as Mao was concerned, the United States had just gone from a secondary role to the leading player in Chinas civil war. Mao Zedong, 1957 Mao was a Chinese communist leader and founder of the People's Republic of China. Only high-level Communist Party leaders knew, and Mao's protective inner circle kept many of the famine's details from him. Mao Zedong was a Marxist theorist, revolutionary, and, from 1949 to 1959, the first chairman of the People's Republic of China. He was responsible for the disastrous policies of the 'Great Leap Forward' and the 'Cultural. The scale of the disaster was hidden from the nation and the world. Experience gained fighting the Japanese and Chiang Kai-shek helped a dynamic military leader take on the United States twice, to victory and a draw. A Legacy. The French were constructing a base at Dien Bien Phu, intending to cut the roads Viet Minh guerrillas used in moving into northern Laos. We must be brave and not shrink from our responsibilities.. Soon afterward, however, and under intense pressure from Josef Stalin, Mao and Jiang finally forged a united front to fight the Japanese. Almost one million people were killed between 1950 and 1952. He still admired and liked Americans, but if Truman continued on his present course, Mao expected the United States would involve itself in the coming civil war with Jiang. Truman was implicitly rejecting the advice of the military. He became the most significant leader and figurehead of the Chinese Revolution. There have been few people in the twentieth century with greater experience of war than Maoor who gave more thought to the subject. One of the casualties of the bombing raid was Mao Anying, Maos Russian-educated son, who was serving Peng as a Russian translator. That same year, his mother died, and he had no desire to return home. Mao had no illusions about the risks involved in Kims project. In 1911, when he was just 18, the Qing dynasty, better known in the West as the Manchu, was overthrown. Chinese crowds attacked American diplomats, beating one of them to death. would become the official ideology of the CCP. In the end, Mao prevailed. Throughout, Mao was issuing orders, offering advice, and encouraging. The strategy that Ho and Mao hammered out was that any American invasion above the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Vietnam would be met by a North Vietnamese counteroffensive. The bombing achieved nothing. In January 1962, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held a "Conference of the Seven Thousand" in Beijing. Known as the Long March, the trek lasted a year and covered some 4,000 miles (or more, by some estimates). Truman also accepted Achesons advice to put the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait. Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is a variety of Marxism-Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China and later the People's Republic of China. In that turmoil, Mao would find himself. As GMD troops moved in, Mao waited until they were only half an hour away, then got on his pony and rode off to another town. In 1944, the United States sent the Dixie Mission to meet Mao and the communists; the Americans found the communists better organized and less corrupt than the KMT, which had been receiving western support. Despite his successes there, Mao was elbowed from power in Jiangxi after the partys national leaders relocated there in 1931. As MacArthur was moving north, Kim Il-sung implored Stalin to intervene. We must lean to one side.Sitting on the fence is not possible; nor is there a third road. His anger at the United States was almost palpable. 50+ Surprising Mao Zedong Facts You Need to Know for School She refused to denounce communism, so the warlord had her beheaded in front of her 8-year-old son. He and Zhu devised a sixteen-character military guide that even an illiterate peasant could understand and not even Sun Tzu could have improved on: They would rely on the tactic of the guerrilla down through the agesthe ambush, which Mao called the short attack.. To journalists such as Theodore White, Mao was undoubtedly a Communist, but primarily he was a nationalist. About 85,000 Red Army troops and followers retreated from Jiangxiand started walking the 6,000-kilometer arc to the northern province of Shaanxi. It appeared the United States was creating a command infrastructure to deploy an American army in Vietnam. Mao was one of the most influential and controversial political figures of the 20th century, in China and abroad. Jiangs policy of acquiescing in the Japanese occupation provoked spontaneous protests and military mutinies in areas the Nationalists controlled, and for three years Jiang had to devote his energies to holding his party and army together. Ralph White had a harrowing adventure to save his Vietnamese colleagues. Xi Jinping started an anti-corruption drive . In desperation, the Red Army broke through the Kuomintangs lines, suffering heavy losses. This is also known as the "rejuvenation of the Chinese nation", a phrase that has been closely tied with Xi since he first came to power in 2012. . He also began to withdraw American troops, only to discover that talking to Hanoi was not enough. Nonetheless, Mao Thought continues to guide policies to this day. Warlord Games on Twitter: "Answer: Mao Zedong, or Mao Tse-tung's Little He spent that time plotting a return to power and revenge on Liu and Deng. Despite this infertility, Chairman Mao had four wives who gave birth to 10 children. Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole. Mao was also the figurehead of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), a disruptive and sometimes violent mass campaign driven by political radicals. Communism is not love. Intensive bombing and strafing had isolated the battlefield. The Long March marked the emergence of Mao Zedong (1893-1976) as the undisputed leader of . At the time, the CCP and the Kuomintang were cooperating to reestablish order and stability, but following the death of Sun Yat-sen in 1925 that alliance unraveled, and in 1927 Suns successor, professional soldier Jiang Jieshi (aka Chiang Kai-shek), initiated civil war by attacking the still-minuscule CCP. The president was certain the Chinese could not respond to whatever the United States chose to do, not then or for many years to come. Even as Acheson delivered his speech, major events were unfolding on the other side of the world. The climactic battle came when the battle-hardened PLA prepared to launch an opposed crossing of the Yangtze, a great natural barrier to any army. Date published: February 10, 2019 There were only sixteen thousand Chinese troops in North Korea, MacArthur informed the Pentagon (one-sixth the actual number). Citation information He moved tens of thousands of tons of military supplies across the border into Vietnam. South Koreans would greet the North Korean troops as liberators, he assured Stalin. If the North Vietnamese army counteroffensive failed to drive the Americans out of the North, the Chinese would mount a counteroffensive of their own, with up to eight hundred thousand troops. The Cultural Revolution became a sweeping social and political movement, underpinned by one of the strongest personality cults in history. Only two senior figures supported Mao in the September debate over interventionZhu De and another general, Peng Dehuai. During this time, Mao established himself as a military leader and, with aid from Allied forces, helped fight the Japanese. Mao Zedong was a communist leader. Unlike Stalin, Hitler, and Kim Il-sung, Mao was not an absolute ruler. Mao wanted the Americans to know Chinese troops were there and take the hintplenty more where they came from. Chinese military issues 'unprecedented' rules for top commanders The Korean conflict dragged on and might have lasted even longer had not Stalin died in March 1953. Did you know? He traveled to Beijing, but was unsuccessful in finding a job. He claimed he had done so to prevent the Communists from launching their planned amphibious assault against Formosa and to keep the Nationalists from attacking the mainland, but his true intention was to stop the PLA. The Chairman also was the grandfather to 12 grandchildren. Nobody. Appearing at a gathering at the Yangtze River in May, the 73-year-old Mao swam for several minutes in the river, looking fit and energetic. For more info, visit Alpha History or our Terms of Use. He urged farmers to smelt iron in their yards, rather than tending the crops. On many occasions, he publicly encouraged the execution of persons accused of corruption or counter-revolutionary practices. Mao had prevailed on the Korean Peninsula, and on terms that were acceptable to China. All that would remain would be mopping up operations to destroy guerrillas and marauders in his rear. On the bottom of Tank 390 was a metal plate that read, Made in China.. In courting Mao, they offered to help him get everything that Americans had denied him for the past 23 years, and morediplomatic recognition, a seat on the United Nations Security Council, help with military technologies, and a guarantee of American support if the Soviet Union attacked China. In June1928, the KMT took Beijing and was recognized as the official government of China by foreign powers. The march resumed, but now it had a destination. In the mid-1960s Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, a movement to identify and cleanse anti-socialist ideas in academia, art and literature. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. Mao called for Sun Yatsen to be president and cut off his long braid of hair (queue), a sign of anti-Manchu revolt. Putting his ideas on how to wage and win a guerrilla struggle into a pamphlet titled A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire, Mao produced the prototext of his most influential military idea, the doctrine of protracted war. He was a Chinese soldier, statesman, writer, poet, calligrapher, and Marxist-Leninist who led China's Cultural Revolution. As if to confirm it, the president of the United States was coming to seek his help. As word spread that the Communists had escaped extermination by the Kuomintang, many young people migrated to Yanan. Required fields are marked *. Unknown to Nixon and Kissinger, it was Mao who, through Zhou Enlai, persuaded the North to finally agree to negotiate an end to the presence of American troops in Vietnam, albeit on terms that doomed South Vietnam. All the same, after the talks with Jiang ended and Marshall returned home, Mao renamed the Red Army the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA). Mao Zedong was born on December 26 th, 1893, in Shaoshan, Hunan Province of China, to Mao Yichang, a wealthy farmer, and Wen Qimei, a Buddhist. Instead of making a stand, Jiang fled to Formosa (Taiwan), abandoning the war to other GMD commanders.