Mao: A Biography

Dressed in the drab military uniform that symbolized the revolutionary government of Communist China, Mao Zedong's body still looked powerful, like an giant rock in a gushing river. An enormous red flag draped his coffin, like a red sail unfurled on a Chinese junk, illustrating the dualism of traditional China and the present Communist China that typified Mao. 1 A river of people flowed past while he lay in state during the second week of September 1976. Workers, peasants, soldiers and students, united in grief; brought together by Mao, the helmsman of modern China. 2 He had assembled a revolutionary government using traditional Chinese ideals of filial piety, harmony, and order. Mao's cult of personality, party purges, and political policies reflect Mao's esteem of these traditional Chinese ideals and history.
Mao was born on December 26, 1893 in Shao Shan, a village in Hunan Province. 3 His family lived in a rural village where for hundreds of years the pattern of everyday life had remained largely unbroken. 4 Mao's father, the son of a "poor peasant," during Mao's childhood however, prospered and become a wealthy land owner and rice dealer. 5 Yet, the structure of Mao's family continued to mirror the rigidity of traditional Chinese society. His father, a strict disciplinarian, demanded filial piety. 6 Forced to do farm labor and study the Chinese classics, Mao was expected to be obedient. On the other hand, Mao remembers his mother was "generous and sympathetic." 7 Mao urged his mother to confront his father but Mao's mother who believed in many traditional ideas replied that "was not the Chinese way." 8 Mao in his interviews with historian Edgar Snow reports how during his childhood he tried to escape this traditional Chinese upbringing by running away from home.
The rebellion Mao claims to have manifested might have distanced Mao physically from his family but, traditional Chinese values were deeply ingrained, shaping his political and personal persona. His father's harshness with dealing with opposition, his cunning, his demand for reverence from subordinates, and his ambition were to be seen in how Mao demanded harmony, order, and reverence as a ruthless dictator. Yet, Mao, was also the kindly father figure for the people of China, as manifested in characteristic qualities of Mao's mother: kindness, benevolence, and patriarchal indulgence.
The China that Mao was born into was fast becoming a shell of its former past. The Ch'ing dynasty which had ruled China for 250 years was only 14 years away from its collapse. 9 Peasant rebellions, famines, and riots heralded its failing. For Mao, one particular event when he was just ten years old, left a lasting impression. It both symbolized the deterioration of order in Chinese traditional society and was in sharp contrast to principles of harmony. A group of local villagers rioted for food during a famine in 1903. The leaders were captured, beheaded, and their heads displayed on poles as a warning for future rebels. 10
Amidst the change that quaked the Chinese nation and Mao's family's economic situation, 11 Mao sought solace in books about Chinese history and its emperors. 12 He became known in his family as, "the scholar." As a child " fascinated by accounts of the rulers of ancient China: Yao, Shun, Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, and Hu Wu Ti, and read many books about them." 13 Indeed, the emperors grandeur, elegance and power were a sharp contrast to the brutish leaders that Mao was exposed to during his childhood. 14 Yao and Shun are credited with forming the first Chinese society in the Yellow River Valley; Ch'in Shih Huang Ti unified the Chinese empire and built the Great Wall of China; Han Wu Ti solidified the foundation of the Han Empire. 15 In the turmoil that China was to undergo, particularly after Mao became the head of the Communist party, we will see how he was guided by traditional Chinese values and the history of the emperors provided him with a map for the future. 16 However, at first, he did not seem strongly focused on history or philosophy.
During the next ten years, 1909-1918, Mao drifted. In 1909 at the age of 16, he left home to attend school in Hsiang. 17 In 1911, he enlisted in the Army for six months after which he moved to Changsha the capital of Hunan Province where he stayed until 1918. 18 While in Changsha, he tried numerous schools. 19 Finally, he enrolled at the Hunan Normal School, graduating in 1918. 20
Mao's mother's died in 1918, which seemed to be a precipitant factor in his final break with home and in September of that year he traveled to Beijing. Arriving at Beijing University21 he was exposed to a wide range of political philosophy such as, anarchism, communism, and western ideas of democracy and capitalism. Nonetheless, when describing to Edgar Snow the events that stood out in his mind from his time in Beijing, Mao did not select political ideology but three journeys to Chinese sites that captured the grandeur of the historic Chinese Empires. He visited the wall of Hsuchou famous in the San Kuo ; climbed the T'ai Shan, a Chinese mountain of historic and religious significance; and made a pilgrimage to Confucius's grave. 22
Mao now age 26, returned to Changsha in the spring of 1919. 23 It was at this point that he became active in politics. During the summer of 1919, Mao became involved in demonstrations, which although not Marxist-inspired, were strongly anti-imperialist. 24 But, by the summer of 1920, he embraced Marxism. 25 However, like everything that Mao embarked upon, it also had "Maoist" tenets. The Marxism that Mao espoused became by the 1930's, an amalgam of Marxism and Mao's Chinese traditional ideas. He called it, Sinified-Marxism. 26
In 1923, after the Communists formed an alliance with the Guomingdang, the Chinese National People's Party, 27 Mao became a leader in the combined party. 28 He was sent in 1925 to organize the Peasants of Hunan province. This event and Mao's report of it became a pivotal point in documenting and disseminating Mao's hallmark of Chinese Communism. 29 It reflected Mao's revolutionary belief in the peasantry's ability to rule while also giving credence to Chinese traditional ideals. With glee, Mao described the peasant associations which had successfully taken over in Hunan. 30 In his report, Mao pays tribute to the peasants for selectively relying on Chinese traditions of order, harmony, and filial piety. While praising the peasants for abandoning the worship of Gods and rejecting Buddhism, he congratulates the peasants puritan prohibitions against gambling and drinking wine. Although the peasants rejected "the traditional Buddhist religion" by spurning idols, Mao praises the peasants for saving certain idols such as, a statue of Pao Cheng who was a official in the Sung Dynasty (960-1127), an impartial judge. 31 Finally, he applauds the Hunan peasant association for restoring order, which was to be a theme echoed by Mao during the Cultural Revolution when Mao relied on the military to restore order.
Mao's belief in the ability of peasants to organize and rule was at the heart of the Communist success in attaining power. In 1927, the Guomingdang broke with the Communists. Chased from the urban areas, the Communists fled to the countryside. 32 This proved to be a blessing. Throughout the 1930's, the Communists organized the rural areas and solidified the party organization. 33 The Japanese invasion of China during World War II, also provided Mao with opportunity to draw the Chinese people behind him in an united front against the Japanese invaders.
Mao's stature within the party continued to grow. After leading the Communists on the Long March to the City of Yunan in Northern China in 1935, he assumed leadership of the party at age 42. 34 Mao's belief in harmony, set him upon a campaign that would solidify his power, and further strengthen his role, the Rectification Campaign (1942-1943). The Rectification Campaign was a harbinger of the purges that Mao would initiate again during the Cultural Revolution; it was a symbol of Mao's belief in harmony and order. This campaign aimed at purging the party of Stalinist supporters. 35 Purging of dissident elements within the party created unity according to Mao. The Rectification Campaign was a turning point for the Communists. With a strong leader, unity within, and a specifically tailored Chinese political ideology, the Communists made steady gains against the Guomingdang in the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949).
By 1949, the Communists controlled the Chinese mainland. Not surprisingly, on October 1st, Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China. Equally in character, Mao's proclamation took place at the Imperial Gate in Tianamen Square, the gate where the Emperors of China had stood prior to the fall of the Ch'ing Dynasty in 1911. 36 During the next five years, Mao focused on structuring the new Chinese government. 37
Again, Mao turned to Chinese history. Using the Imperial governments as a blueprint, he copied the principles of an Imperial state, with a commanding head as the supreme authority. Like that of an ancient Chinese family tree, authority was placed in one person: Mao. 38 Below Mao in authority, were a plethora of overlapping bureaucracies. 39 This structure served Mao in later years as these branches squabbled amongst themselves allowing Mao to rise above these disputes and be able to exercise absolute imperial power. By the mid 1950's, Mao had what the Chinese Emperors, his childhood heroes, had struggled to create: a unified mainland China with a supreme ruler.
Mao's lifestyle during the 1950's also began to resemble the imperial luxury of a Chinese Emperor. 40 His court consisted of an inner circle of around thirty to forty people who worked to his rhythm. 41 In bed for days, lounging by the side of a private pool, or enjoying a bevy of women, Mao lived in an atmosphere reminiscent of the Forbidden City, the place where Chinese Emperors were isolated from their country. His appetite and desire for luxury was continually satisfied. 42 Mao emulated the First Tang Emperor of China43 binding people to him by discovering their weaknesses. Sycophantic advisors whose position resided with pleasing Mao, never disagreed with him. Security staff during the Great Leap Forward would set up vast potemkin fields of grain to lead Mao to think that the economy was doing well, while in reality, huge numbers of people were starving. Mao, born a peasant, had become an emperor. According to Mao's personal doctor, Dr. Li Zhisui, "At the end, the most loved man in China was friendless." 44
Mao also knew how to use Chinese culture to consolidate his place as the head of China. 45 The three great rivers of China, the Pearl, the Xiang, and the Yangtze were historically signs of the power of nature. Mao proposed that he swim the three great rivers in the spring of 1956. Mao's security staff opposed the swim. He defied them and swam. Chairman Mao was as mighty as the rivers he had swam, the propaganda posters depicting the swim seemed to say to the people of China. 46 One staff member, Yang Shangkun said, "No other world leader looks down with such disdain on great mountains and powerful rivers." 47
Mao's swimming in 1956 showed his desire to do what no one else had imagined which epitomized his power. Mao's strength lay in his ability to devise colossal plans, plans that only an emperor would dream of and be able to execute. Shortly after his swim in the Yangtze, in July of 1956, Mao told Dr. Li that he wanted to dam the Yangtze in the area of the Three Gorges. The dam was to be like Emperor Qin Shihuangdi's "Great Wall." 48
In February, 1957 Mao turned back to politics. He moved to solidify his power in the party. Again, he called upon traditional Chinese ideas. An ancient Chinese adage, "let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend," 49 became The Hundred Flower's Movement. Traditionally, Chinese intellectuals were given freedom to criticize the Imperial Governments without fear of persecution. Many of the Chinese histories that Mao had read, were written by intellectuals who during imperial times had criticized the government. 50 A Hundred Flowers promoted criticism of the Communist Party. However, other leaders in the Communist Party, did not embrace such Chinese tradition. They condemned the Flowers Movement and launched the Anti-Rightist Campaign which condemned critics of the Communist party. 51
Undaunted by the failure of the Hundred Flowers Movement, Mao in May of 1958 launched another grandiose plan: the Great Leap Forward. This was Mao's economic plan to transform China into an industrial nation in two years. The plan was to decentralize agriculture and create communes which would promote heavy industry and agricultural production. 52 The Great Leap Forward seemed to symbolize Mao's embrace of technology and industry. In fact, it epitomizes Mao's reliance on traditional Chinese ideals first formulated in his observance of the peasant culture. The Great Leap Forward relied on a commune system, which operates much like the China of Mao's childhood. Small villages would set rice quotas and economic priorities and work as a group, sharing resources for the harvest. Communes can be seen as based on the Confucian idea of obligation. 53 Traditionally, Confucianism obligated a child to respect a parent. Communes, according to Mao would replace that obligation to parents, with an obligation to Communism. Unfortunately, the experiment failed. Misapplication of resources coupled with an unforeseen drought was disastrous and 54 Millions starved. 55
Mao, in the years following the Great Leap Forward again sought to regain power in the party. 56 Convinced that "new bourgeois" elements were emerging in the party, he began what at first was to be a modest attack on enemies in the Communist Party. It quickly transformed itself into an all-out attack on figures of authority which Mao promoted under the slogan, "to rebel is justified." 57
This marked the era of the Cultural Revolution. From 1964 to 1969, Chinese society was turned upside down, like the turning over of a giant hourglass. 58 A state of chaos reigned: universities and school were shut down, widespread purges of "rightist elements" forced many former Communist officials into rural re-education camps, children were urged to denounce their parents and teachers, and students formed into Red Guard brigades, which dictated barbarous policies to provincial governments.
Mao's belief in an organized "Strong Socialist State" was clearly headed into anarchy. Yet, Mao's strong sense of Chinese ideals of order, filial piety, and harmony were still in place. He quickly restored order, relying on the military. 59 The Cultural Revolution, like the Great Leap Forward, had tried to replace filial piety for parents with reverence for the Communist Party as embodied in Mao. During The Cultural Revolution, Mao's personality cult had grown into a God-father figure reinforcing traditional Chinese obligation of filial piety: the same as the Emperors had during the dynasties. 60
By 1969 order was somewhat restored. 61 During the next six years, Mao's health gradually deteriorated and he ceded most of his power to his wife and the Gang of Four, a group consisting of Mao's wife and three others. They ruled China while Mao grew more incapacitated. But even in the waning years of his life, Mao continued to write and espouse his belief in the power of Sinified-Marxism.
On September 9th 1976, the man who had fathered the People's Republic of China died. Thousands of people poured into Beijing to pay their respects to the "helmsman of modern China." Mao, the young boy who had discovered a glorious nation in Chinese history books; filled with wise and mighty emperors, had combined Chinese traditional values with revolutionary Marxism to restore China to its glory. The man and the nation he conceived were anchored in Chinese tradition.

Footnotes

1 History 97 Course Pack #2. p.12.

2 Ibid. p.13.

3 Hunan Province in Southern China typified traditional China as it was far removed from the westernized cities of Shanghai and Beijing. Ibid. p.50.

4 Peasants raised rice as they had for hundreds of years on small plots of land. Mao's parents were illiterate which also illustrates that modern schools were only recently introduced to the area where Mao grew up. Ibid. p.50.

5 By the time Mao was six, his father employed his family and a laborer to do the manual work on the family farm. Yet, despite this new found wealth, peasant lineage barred Mao's father from being part of the aristocratic class. Ibid. p.51.

6 Mao in his interviews with Edgar Snow recounts how his father was a, "severe taskmaster... He gave us no money whatever, and the most meager food. ..." Ibid. p.52.

7 Although Mao uses Marxist words such as "dialectic," "ruling power," "opposition," and "rebellion," to describe relationships in his family, it is doubtful that Mao while growing up saw his mother and father on such terms. Edgar Snow recounts (in footnotes) that Mao used these political terms in a humorous way. Ibid. p.52.

8 Ibid. p.52.

9 Ibid. p.1.

10 Another event also profoundly influenced Mao when he was growing up which involved a group of peasants who sued a landlord to gain ownership of the land they farmed. The peasants lost in court, and fled to a local mountain. Troops were sent, and the leader was eventually beheaded. Mao in his interviews with Edgar Snow claims this incident also gave him a desire to help make China a great nation, "these incidents, occurring close together made lasting impressions on my young mind." Ibid. p. 53b.

11 Mao's families economic situation created turmoil for Mao as he was growing up. Mao recalls how in the Hsiang School the wealthy children would torment him because of his peasant roots. Ibid. p.55.

12 Mao also feverishly consumed Chinese romance novels. Mao's personal doctor in his memoir recalls that Mao could always be found reading books about Chinese History while lying next to his private pool. Ibid. p.55.

13 Ibid. p.58

14 Ibid. p.53b.

15 Ibid. p. 58.

16 Mao claims in interviews with Edgar Snow, that as a child, he was not interested in reading the Chinese Classics. The truth of these statements though is questionable considering Mao might have been motivated to make them so that he appeared to be a more modern and western thinker. The frequency with which Mao declared his dislike of Chinese Classics also makes Mao's statements suspect. Mao in interviews with Edgar Snow states, "my mind was not on the Classics, I knew the Classics but disliked them. I succeeded in continuing my reading, devouring everything but the classics." Mao also in interviews with Snow stressed his knowledge and ability at reading the classics, which in traditional Chinese society was a sign of prestige and learning. Regardless of whether or not Mao enjoyed reading the classics, as a child his other reading shows him to be an avid "scholar" of Chinese history.

17 Ibid. p.55.

18 Ibid. p.14.

19 In Changsha, Mao pursued a variety of interests: self-study at a library, travel through Hunan province, attendance at a soap making school, and enrollment in a law school. Ibid. p.60.

20 Ibid. p.14.

21 By borrowing from friends, Mao made his way by train to Beijing. Once in Beijing, Mao through a former ethics teacher at the Normal School Mao was able to find employment as an assistant librarian. Mao longed in Beijing to learn from the wise in his country,. "My office was so low that people avoided me... I recognized the name of famous leaders of the renaissance movement... I tried to begin conversations with them on political and cultural subjects, but they were very busy men. They had no time to listen to an assistant librarian speaking southern dialect." Despite the rejection that Mao received on the job, he joined the Society of Philosophy and the Journalism Society so that he could take classes at Beijing University. Ibid. p.71.

22 Ibid. p.73.

23 Ibid. p.74.

24 Mao's anti-imperialist and increasingly Marxist sentiments are evident in the language he used in articles he wrote for a student paper in Changsha. Mao wrote about the "army of the red flag," expansionism, and the Russian threat. Ibid. p.14.

25 Mao after his conversion to Marxism became increasingly involved in the Party. In July 1921, he attended the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. Ibid. p.75.

26 Ibid. p.16.

27 The Guomingdang also known as the KMT was founded in 1912 by Sun Yat-Sen. The Guomingdang supported establishing parliamentary democracy in China. Ibid. p.1.

28 Mao served as Acting Head of the Propaganda Department and Head of the Guomingdang Peasant Movement Training Institute while in the Guomingdang. Ibid. 15.

29 Ibid. p.105.

30 Ibid. p.106.

31 Ibid. p.112.

32 Ibid. p.15.

33 Ibid. p.16.

34 Ibid. p.16.

35 Mao's philosophy of Sinified-Marxism replaced Lenin and Marx in the party. By March of 1943, the purge was over. Mao, now chairman of the Communist Party and Politburo: was the undisputed head. Ibid. p.16.

36 Ibid. p.14.

37 He solidified the economic stability of the Republic by securing a treaty of mutual assistance with Russia; which gave China much needed economic aid. Stalin was unenthusiastic in his support for Mao because Mao's peasant socialism ran counter to Stalin's internationalist urban ideology; and Mao's "Rectification Campaign" had expelled most of the Soviet supporters in the Chinese Communist Party, further alienating the Chinese Communist Party from the Soviet Union. But Mao need economic support from Russia to help establish the new Chinese Government. Mao in December of 1949 traveled to Moscow and met with Stalin and after two months of negotiations won Stalin's support. Ibid. p.16.

38 Ibid. p.5.

39 Ibid. p.5.

40 Mao's personal physician, Dr. Li Zhisui in a personal memoir, describes Mao's private life from the 1950's to Mao's death in 1976. Although the assertions about Mao's sex life and his quest for power are quite sensational, the author, appears to be uniquely qualified to do so and thus his assertions have the weight of truth. Ibid. p.77.

41 Mao even ruled over the clock and calendar. It was not unusual for Mao to call meetings at two or three in the morning. Ibid. p.79.

42 Mao had each province Party Secretary build him a villa. Traveling by private train, he stayed at these villas. He became paranoid of rivals, had his food tasted, his rooms cooled with tubs of ice. Like the Emperors, with their armies of concubines, Mao's staff spent hours procuring women for Mao. They were served to Mao like food who even had a special room set aside in the Great Hall of The People for "refreshment" during party meetings. Ibid. p.79.

43 Mao relied on his subordinates Confucian unwillingness to confront a superior, to control all the junior officials and his rivals. Ibid. p.78

44 Ibid. p.83.

45 Mao's swims in the river are also symptomatic of his struggle against the isolation imposed on him by his security staff which opposed the swims. Ibid. p.91

46 Ibid. p.8

47 Ibid. p.94.

48 Although the Three Gorges Damn was not completed until twenty years after Mao's death, the foundation for this grandiose idea were laid by Mao who although isolated by a court culture also sought to transform China much like China's Emperors in the past. Ibid. p.96

49 Ibid. pp.20, 128

50 Ibid. p.53a.

51 According to some sources, Mao was never in favor of ending the Hundred Flowers Movement and would have tolerated dissent. "Against the wishes of Mao Zedong the Communist Party reacted to these criticisms by condemning the critics." Ibid. p.20.

52 Instead, local party cadres wound up mis-distributing resources in an effort to meet the ambitious industrial and agricultural targets set by the Communist Party. In the end, fields lay barren because all farm implements had been melted to produce tractors which had not been built. Grain production from 1958 to 1960 fell by almost thirty percent. Ibid. p.20-22

53 The communes which were created as the institutional framework for the Great Leap Forward were even called by their Chinese name, "Gongshe." Ibid. p.21.

54 Mao was criticized for what was seen as a disastrous economic policy. The criticism came to an apex at the Communist Party Central Committee Meeting in Lushan in Southern China in 1959. At the meeting, Peng Duhuai, the Minister of Defense, denounced the Great Leap Forward and its leader, Mao. After the meeting, Mao solidified his position in the party and had Peng Duhuai removed from his posts in the party. Mao's response to Peng Duhuai's criticism at the Lushan meeting Mao repudiated Peng Duhuai by creating a delineation between what Mao labeled a good Communist and a Rightist. "Bourgeois elements have infiltrated our Communist Party. Amidst our Party membership there are many Bourgeois and petit-bourgeious elements." Ibid. p.118.

55 Estimates place the death toll from starvation during the Great Leap Forward at 50 million people. Ibid. p.139.

56 In 1964, Mao attempted to have Liu Shaoqi (Mao's chosen successor and the second in command of China) lead a struggle against "capitalist inroaders" in the party. Liu refused and Mao seeing this as a clear sign of the emergence of bourgeois elements in the party decided that Liu and his allies in the party had to be removed. Mao's attack on Liu and others snowballed and became known as the, "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution". Ibid. p.18.

57 Ibid. p.18.

58 Ibid. p.18.

59 When The Red Guards took over Shanghai and attempted to turn the city into a commune, Mao demanded the Shanghai Commune be disbanded and order restored. Mao called in the military. By 1975, 12 million Red Guards were sent to rural labor camps. Ibid. p.18.

60 It mirrored the same type of adoration and Godlike status that was accorded to the past emperors of China. Despite criticism of numerous Communist Party officials, Mao's authority was never questioned.

61 Mao convened the 9th Party Congress in the fall of 1969. Ibid. p.18.