Link between Mao Zedong and Chinese government - Essay Example

MApaper2 Advisor Alison Stagner English 131 2 march Link between Mao Zedong and Chinese government Mao Zedong is the founding father of China, but he acted in a more complicated way than the founding father of this great nation.The initial impressions of Mao Zedong for most Chinese is obtained from text books from primary to high school. After 1945, China’s education department incorporated Mao Zedong into the history text book as a great hero and the founding father of China. In the history text book, Mao firstly led the early movement of laborer and farmer in Hunan province and established the native party organization to publicize his own thoughts against the invaders. In this process, he helped the members from the early communist party to learn a lesson from the failure of the revolution to overturn the government of Qing dynasty. Mao’s thoughts indicated the right way for the revolution. Secondly, in the most dangerous time of the Red Army, Mao forced row criticism and persisted to transfer the battlefield. Due to his insistence, the fortune of the Red Army took a turn to be out of danger. His contribution in military field not only ensured the success of the revolution, but also pointed out a efficient way to combating the invaders. Thirdly, Mao advocated socialism and Chinese socialism ruling by law. Compared to capitalism, socialism is more suitable for China. Thus, to date, Mao has indelible contribution on the development of China. Unlike the contribution Mao has made, the huge mistakes he also made are not included in the text book. According to the history which was published outside China, Mao led the Great Cultural Revolution in this country from 1966 to 1976. From the chairman’s position, Mao contested for the seat president of China and won. He was arrogant and his policies caused a recession in the economy of China for fifty years. Mao alleged that the bourgeois elements had infiltrated the government and society at large aiming to restore capitalism. He also insisted that these “revisionists” be removed through violent class struggle. Based on Mao’s wrong decision, China’s youth responded to Mao with forming Red Guard groups around the country. The movement influenced military, workers, farmers, students and the government itself. Across the populace, the movement resulted in widespread factional struggles around the whole industry. In the top leadership, the movement led to a mass purge of senior officials. During this period, many personal properties were destroyed, many families were broken and many historical relics and artifacts were destroyed. Due to this meaningless movement a lot of productive time was wasted which led to economic recession. It can be seen that Mao is a great commander who led the People’s Liberation Army to win the revolutionary war, but he is not as consummate as the image in text book. Another ruthless decision that Mao made was giving up Nanjing and defending Wuxi during the rough time against the invaders. Following a bloody victory in Shanghai during the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese turned their attention towards Nanjing. Fearful of losing them in battle, Mao ordered the removal of nearly all official Chinese troops and army from the city, leaving it defended by untrained auxiliary troops. Mao’s decision directly caused the Nanjing Massacre. There are no official numbers of the death toll in the Nanjing Massacre, though estimates range from 200,000 to 300,000 people. Besides this, between 20,000 and 80,000 women were sexually assaulted is another horrific event. However, the text book before 1979s never included any description about the Nanjing Massacre. In the history text book, Mao portrayed as a faultless great leader. Nevertheless, the educational department in Chinese government never added any notable mistakes or negative evaluations in the history text book. Why does the text book editor not say everything about Mao to the naive and innocent students? Why does the text book editor not willing to admit the mistakes that were made by Mao? By shaping vivid heroic image, the text book editor made an incomplete but perfect hero to the public, and concealed the lost personality of a hero. A study from Beijing University world culture and social department about hero and hero maker shows the benefit to individuals or individual groups which can be acquired from the perfect heroes created them. In other words, creating a perfect hero is beneficial to the individual or individual group because a perfect hero can receive more admiration in adorer’s mind. In relation to the Chinese government and the way it made Mao Zedong a flawless leader, people started to learn his legendary historical story from childhood and modeled him as an idol. Based on the admiration of Mao people gained from childhood, people who educated in Chinese school would have a subconscious concept -- “chairman Mao is a great leader and his organization -- the Chinese government is a proper and reliable political party seed grown in the people’s minds. And after Chinese government has grown a seed in people’s mind, they win people’s heart and they dominate the country easier. “He made mistakes, because everybody does, but it seems to me that the development of the countryside and so on was very sensible,” said Tony Benn who praised Chairman Mao as the greatest man of the 20th century and who knew almost everything about Mao not only the official biography but also the privately compiled history. Some people are holding the same opinion as him when analyzing Mao’s contribution where his mistakes are ignorable. For the Chinese government, it can be seen that they are hiding Mao’s mistakes purposely. For example, a student movement called six-four student tide that occurred in 1989 was submerged under the Chinese government intended concealment. This student movement was aimed at reclaiming the reputation of the leaders who were framed and persecuted in the great culture revolution, implementing the freedom of speech, and asking a self-criticism about the errors made by Chinese government. But the consequence of this student movement was much more than painful because the Chinese government wanted to hide the mistakes Mao made directly or indirectly. They sent an army to the parade place and shot at the students who had joined the parade. After this cruel slaughter, Chinese government blocked the whole event immediately. In order to maintain the brilliant heroic image of Mao Zedong, Chinese government lied. Due to the efforts made by the Chinese government to create a great hero, Chinese people admired Mao and regarded the Chinese government as a reliable government. The crazy admire and trust Mao who has both positive and negative influence. Except the negative effects like great culture revolution, during 1949 to 1969, the special period gave a possibility for positive developments. China between 1949 and 1969 was a poor country just established and experienced war. To recover from the war, this country had to stimulate the depleted labor force even though labors were not able to have enough food. Under this situation, the heroic image of Mao affected numerous people in various filed. Labors treated Mao as a spiritual leader, imitated his arduous struggle, learned his selfless dedication. Thus, labors, especially the factory labors and construction labors committed themselves to the construction of the new country. Without the labors’ hard work, China would not have developed quickly. Except the huge influence on public from Mao’s heroic image, personally crazy admirers of Mao also existed in that period. Lei Feng was not widely known until after his death, and he was a little fan of Mao when he was young. Inherited Mao’s will, he became a screw in the construction. The people’s daily magazine values Lei Feng as this: “When Lei Feng died in the line of duty, he was only 22, but his short life gives concentrated expression to the noble ideals of a new people, nurtured with the communist spirit, and also to the noble moral integrity and values of the Chinese people in the new period. These are firm faith in communist ideals, political warm heartedness for the party and the socialist cause, the revolutionary will work arduously for self-improvement, the moral quality and self-cultivation of showing fraternal unity and taking pleasure in assisting others, the heroic spirit of being ready to take up cudgels for a just cause without caring for ones safety, the attitude of seeking advancement and studying hard, and the genuine spirit of matching words with deeds and enthusiastically carrying out ones duties.” Behind Lei Feng’s heroic history and huge influence in China, Lei Feng had meet Mao in Beijing when he first joined the communist party. Mao had a private talk with him and it influenced him a lot. People like Lei Feng significantly contributed to the new country’s construction not only on his or her own power, but also effecting the people around him or her. To sum up, with the development of societies, thoughts about Mao Zedong’s heroic image are remarkable. The changing of Chinese heroic image is an epitome of the willingnes of Chinese government: from Mao to Yuan Longping ( a great inventor who invented hybrid rice ). It represents the time changes and the different requirements from Chinese government of the different times. Historically, Mao’s heroic treatment has contributed to the success of the Chinese government. Personal reflection about how I revised the paper When revising this paper, there are quite a number of things that I considered. I checked grammar first to ensure that it was correct so that the reader can easily understand the contents of the paper. For instance, the following statement: “Mao leaded…” is grammatically incorrect and I corrected it to read: “Mao led the revolution.” Grammatically incorrect statements distort the meaning of the paper and this can make it difficult to understand the whole idea being communicated by the writer. The other thing that I did when revising this paper was to check my sentence structure to see if they were coherent. I checked things like punctuation and corrected all statements that were comprised of wrong expressions. For example, I removed meaningless statements like the following: “would be inveterately implant in people’s mind like a seed.” After carefully reading this statement, I realised that it was meaningless and decided to remove it from the document. I carefully read the paper to make sure that it was flowing smoothly and easy to understand. Essentially, the readers should understand what the author is trying to say and this is the reason why I decided to remove certain statements that did not make any sense. I also removed wrong word that also distorted the meaning of certain statements in the documents. This word: ‘hided” is wrong and I replaced it with “concealed.” This helped me to ensure that my work was flawless and had no mistakes. I also checked the structure of the paper to make sure that it is presented in a professional manner. Structure of the paper is very important since it makes it easy for the reader to grasp what the writer is trying to say. I also made sure that my ideas are well connected from one paragraph to the other. I made sure that there was transition from one paragraph to the nest to show that the ideas presented are linked. My first reading of the completed paper showed that it was comprised of numerous repetition of words. I replaced these repeated words with synonyms so as to ensure variety. It becomes monotonous for the readers to come across the same word several times in a sentence or paragraph. In order to avoid monotony among the readers, I also revised my sentences to make sure that they are short and simple to understand. I also made sure that my sentences were clear and to the point. The readers are interested in reading something that is precise and easy to understand than to struggle to try to get the meaning of the written text. Above all, I double checked the work for any mistake that could have been overlooked in order to ensure that it is perfect. Work cited: The six-four student movement http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/indepth/2014/05/140520_64_history_one Mao’s contributions to China http://wenku.baidu.com/link?url=4ltSd3uSQMeKDEGH9Akoxq8sdcplifIvQ_yMyRnq4jpcnI61PcOUoLMTGCLNjUh3BmBa-NSpV2mepIq27tCbFIyrCWF_7ArQEulrcT4CHda https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/uk.hightide/inpraisemao.htm Mao’s success and failure http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Mao_Zedong.aspx Tony Benn admired Chairman Mao, responsible for the deaths of millions. Why is this ignored? http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/seanthomas/100264023/tony-benn-admired-chairman-mao-responsible-for-the-deaths-of-millions-why-is-this-ignored/ The American Who Gave His Life to Chairman Mao http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/12/the-american-who-gave-his-life-to-chairman-mao/282647/ Lei Feng http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lei_Feng Yuan Longping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_Longping Read More