Mao Zedong, born in Shaoshan county on December 26, 1893, passed away in Beijing on September 9, 1976 at 82 years old. His successful career as a politician was characterized by the excessive control he established within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Joining in 1920, Mao became a member one year before the official establishment of the CCP, designated to fight strong forces that opposed the formation of a stable government (Lovell). Since then, Mao dedicated his life to the ultimate achievement of communism. Mao’s journey began in the 1st National Congress of the CCP, consisting of 13 representatives representing 50 members nationwide, and eventually faded as he held the 10th National Party Congress in 1973, consisting of 1249 representatives representing over 28 million members nationwide. It is no doubt that Mao was a giant in both Chinese and world history, leading the CCP for half a century and making global influences on the world stage. Great willpower rewarded him great success, great success brought him great confidence, great confidence led to great bossiness, and great bossiness boosted him to great ambitions, which became disastrous and detrimental. Marx deconstructed capitalism, Lenin created socialism, but ultimate communism remained unachievable. Mao refused to wait and he will build a truly communist society with his own hands. Indeed, if he would have succeeded in building the society in which there is no class system, no exploitation, no oppression, and human
liberation globally as one nation, history textbooks would only have three chapters, namely Marx, Lenin, and Mao Zedong.

“Chiang Kai-shek will seize power and profit from the people by any means. We? Our policy is to fight for every inch of his land. We are following the methods of Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang Kai-shek always forced people toaccept war. He held a knife in his left hand and a knife in his right. And we followed his way, and took up our knives also” (Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, The Little Red Book).

In the first half of Mao’s life, Mao’s biggest enemy was Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist party (KMT). With completely different ambitions and strategies, the CCP and the KMT were not able to coexist. While the KMT wished to save the Chinese civilization from ruin in nationalism ways, the CCP is universalist in its goal of revolution, believing that Chinese revolution, on its own, is only part of a global transformation from capitalism to socialism and ultimately communism; while the KMT relied on the support of the wealthy class, the CCP mobilized urban workers and peasants at the grassroots: “[The KMT] had always relied on the moneyed classes for funds, while the Communists were devoted to organizing rebellion by China's urban workers and poor farmers (Lovell 28)”. This ideological struggle gradually turned into a 14-year civil war, only to be disturbed and temporarily paused by the Japanese invasion during WWII. This difference of mobilization targets between the two parties were later proven to be critical in Mao and the CCP’s success after WWII. In general terms, Mao's success was primarily attributed to his successful persuasion of the rural farmers and his tactics of “Encircling the Cities from the Rural Areas,” first proposed in his work ​A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire,​ in which Mao pointed out that the nation is full of dried firewood, or in other terms opportunities and manpower of revolution (Mao). With this ideology that grew around the narrative of rescuing the majority poor and oppressed, Mao gained enormous popularity and support. On October 1st, 1949, Mao, through numerous setbacks and twists and turns, realized his dream of founding the PRC with the strong willpower of his ideologies. Mao has reached the pinnacle of his life and career at this point. Yet, he wasn’t satisfied by the 20 x 15 feet portrait hanging from the Tiananmen nor the titles of “Chairman of the Central People's Government,” “Chairman of the Communist Party of China,” and “Chairman of the People's Revolutionary Military Commission of the Central People's Government.” Mao wanted to build an ultimate communist society in China.

“The new socialist system has only just been established and needs time to be consolidated. It is impossible to assume that the new system will be completely rigid once it has been established. It needs to be graduallyconsolidated”(Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, The Little Red Book).

Mao's revolution did not end after the 1949 victory. In fact, revolution, possibly his favorite word to use, is a never-ending advancement. After 1949, there were only two main goals in Mao's mind: one was to educate the people, and the other was to eradicate the “enemy”. Specifically, educate the people with Maoism and eradicate the enemies of Maoism. The purpose of both was to promote and even realize the ultimate communist ideal during his lifetime. Hence, Mao proposed the nationalization of industry and commerce, the cooperative movement in the countryside, the communal cooking in the people's communes, the egalitarianism-similar supply system, the incessant brainwashing, and a never-ending political purge. In Mao’s view, when class enemies are eliminated and people’s individual thoughts have been cleansed, everyone would be selfless and the realization of communism is then possible. However, Maoist communism was conceptual and subjective. It was a magnificent vision of society so brilliant that he could not resist the impulse to take a leap towards. In order to achieve this immortal success, he pursued the illusory goal at the highest social cost with his feelings of idealism, the confidence of implementation, coupled with his masterly imperial art (as in the art of governing
like an emperor). When people do not understand him, he uses a variety of brainwashing tools to assimilate them rather than explaining, most notably the ​Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong​, also known as ​The Little Red Book​. Drawing on this assertion, Mao’s Rectification campaigns were present ever since he was in the CCP. Although such campaigns posed as a learning opportunity to allow people to reflect on their false attitudes, Mao used it to intimidate and marginalize party members that did not support him. According to Lovell, Rectification was a sophisticated and thorough punitive technique that relied on persuasion and isolation and was termed “one of the most ambitious attempts at human manipulation in history” (Lovell 42).

“The peasant economy was decentralized, and according to Soviet experience, it took a long time and careful work to socialize agriculture. Without the socialization of agriculture, there will be no fully consolidated socialism”(Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, The Little Red Book).

Some ideals can be achieved, others impossible, it is therefore false to pursue an unachievable ideal unrestrained. Mao’s ego was too inflated to think that the society is of endless capability and he was chosen to turn the already-prepared opportunities and possibilities into reality. Mao wanted to create a society where “Hard work and discipline would bring better health and physicians would have nothing to do; clothes would be indistinguishable and would be as free as food; wage system would vanish as would the need for private housing; morality would improve that in the new society no supervision would be required” (Spence 133). Mao’s ideal is too high and unachievable, to a point that it became divorced from the reality of the conditions. He was tenacious, ruthless and defiant enough to forge his dream at the cost of the flesh and blood of millions of people. Of which the most famous is the Great Leap Forward. The campaign was designated to take advantage of the abundant labor force and the vigorous enthusiasm of the masses to increase production in industries and agriculture. However, as the
socialist construction movement blindly increased production (leap) in industry and agriculture in disregard of market rules, society turned to chaos. As industrial productions had “exaggeration run through the whole campaign, slogan and projections had been faulty,” agricultural productions resulted in “poor harvests and colossal floods,” rural farmers, Mao’s massive supporting population, was “exhausted by ceaseless projects that pushed them into totally unrealistic expectations.” With the reality collapsing on his ideals, Mao turned away and “would not tolerate direct criticism of the Great Leap at any level” (Spence 144, 145, 147). When Mao decided to put his ideal above all, it was disastrous and detrimental, resulting in an estimation ranging between 18 million and 45 million deaths between 1958 and 1962.

“We should restrain ourselves from complacency and constantly criticize our shortcomings, just as we should wash our face and sweep the floor every day in order to get rid of dust and cleanliness” (Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, The Little Red Book).

At a time when people are still struggling to put food on tables and put clothes on their body, Mao asked them to “fight private property and criticize revisionists1”; in the face of the national economy collapsing, Mao demanded a cultural revolution “once every seven or eight years” (Mao). Mao saw only his ideal, but not the welfare of his people. The failure of Mao’s revolutions was precisely caused by the individual idealism that it was based on, rather than the demands of the people. Vice versa, the success of Deng Xiaoping's reform in 1978, was exactly in line with the deep wishes of the people. If a politician does not know where the people’s heart is at and what the people want, instead only by subjective and even selfish desire to determine the direction of national development, their result is bound to hit a wall, namely Mao’s comrade Stalin, Mao’s enemy Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao himself eventually. ​For Mao Zedong, the unbridled praise, by many even today, is only a political disease left over from the Cultural·Revolution. However, it is of no use to curse him without thinking. There are still forbidden zones in Mao’s life that remain unclear to us, especially during his reputation’s descending years. The most practical would be to lift the bans so that later generations can further explore his real thoughts, character, mentality, and the Chinese historical and cultural background behind his thoughts and actions. Only in this way can we benefit from the evaluation of his achievements and mistakes.

Works Cited

Lovell, J. (2020). Chapter 1: What is Maoism. In ​Maoism: A Global History.​ London: Vintage. Spence, J. D. (2006). ​Mao Zedong: A LIFE.​ Penguin.
Tse-Tung, M. (1966). ​Quotations from Chairman Mao​. Beijing: PLA General Political Dept. Tse-Tung, M. (1966). ​A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire.​ Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.