Mao Zedong A Life

Mao Zedong A Life, started out from when Mao was born in 1893 and ends when he died in September 9, 1976.

Mao grew up on working on his father’s farm. Mao then got an interest in learning and reading about new and classical ideas. He soon after left the farm and began to study at a variety of different school. When he was done with school, which he began to not enjoy, he started teaching and began to have various side projects. Soon he became part of the communist party and really enjoyed the teachings of Lenin and the ideas of the Soviets. Mao then began to work his way through the ranks of the Communist party by various ways. He thought that the guerrilla fighting style against the Nationalist armies worked the best. Though after some higher ups in the party changed they way they fought, the Communists where forced to retreat and the march was known as the Long March. Much of the Red Army was lost during this march, the march ended up strengthening Mao in the Communist Party. When they finally made it to Shaanxi Mao scouted for a new base and ended up setting one up in Yan’an. During this time the Japanese were starting to attack and although the Nationalist party was still focusing their troops on eliminating the Communists they ended up joining forces, after the leader of the Nationalist party Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped then later returned, to try and force the Japanese from China. Soon after Mao continued to strengthen his power in the Communist Party and before long was using his old guerrilla fighting against the Nationalists, after WWII. Even with the help Chiang Kai-shek received from the US, Mao was able to slowly defeat his armies and began to drive him further south. Once Mao had most of China taken over he announced the Peoples Republic of China and the start of Communist rule.

After Mao began to stabilize China’s economy he began to move further away from his ideals as a youth. He made it publicly known that all those so called “intellectuals” were in fact dumb, and that the true intellectuals were those of poverty who worked hard. He then began to make crazy laws and try to push through his Great Leap plan, which truly did far more harm than good. Soon he began to suspect that there were many rightly peoples in China that wanted to attack what the left was doing so he tried to lure them all out with what he called the Hundred Flowers movement. Slowly suspecting many of plotting against him he also started the Cultural Revolution to further tighten his grip on China and his enemies. Mao die in September 9, 1976. He was married several times and had many children, but only a few survived. The author Jonathan Spence was very detailed about certain things but was very brief about others. Overall this book was very insightful to the life of Mao, but it is still very puzzling why he ended up moving away from many of his earlier ideas in life to the much more restrictive ideas when he was older.