How Did Mao Zedong Affect China

Mao Zedong said, “Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.” Mao Zedong was the leader of the communist party in China for forty-one years. He began to rise to power in 1921, not officially recognized as the leader of the Communist party until 1935. Although he wasn’t officially in power during World War Two, he still had an impact on it. Mao had many political campaigns, things he did well, as well as a lasting effect on modern day China. However, many people believe that he only did good things for China, many believe all that he did was wrong; overall Mao had a detrimental effect on China. Mao officially took a role of power in the mid-1930s and throughout World War 2. The Chinese Communist Party was …show more content…
First he instituted the Land Reform, which was forcibly taking the land in rural China from the landlords and redistributing it among the peasants. This campaign was notable because unlike the Soviet land reforms, where the government punished the landlords. The people encouraged the overthrow and kill the landlords. This campaign increased the popularity of the Communist party among the peasants, and resulted in approximately 1 million to 4.5 million peasant deaths. The next large campaign was the Hundred Flowers Movement in which the intellectuals of China were encouraged to offer diverse views and criticisms on matters of national policy. But when the criticism started targeting Mao and the Communist rule this policy was promptly shut down. In 1958 Mao launched The Great Leap Forward, a campaign that was meant to revitalize the revolution by returning emphasis to its rural base (“Mao Zedong”, 2001). By stepping up the collectivization of peasant communes and calling for small industry in rural areas, this campaign was a disaster, creating the worst famine of the Communist era (“Mao Zedong”, 2001). The Great Leap Forward killed approximately 45 million people. (Spence, 1999, 121-148 Used for info in paragraph that was not paraphrased or directly quoted.) Mao was removed from the position of State Chairman in 1960 as moderates sought to restore state …show more content…
Currently Mao is viewed as a hero in China. “The Chinese government officially regards Mao as a national hero. In 2008, China opened the Mao Zedong Square to visitors in his hometown of central Hunan Province to mark the 115th anniversary of his birth.” (“Legacy of Mao Zedong”, n.d.). For people who seek to instigate insurgency, and those who wish to crush insurgency Mao’s military writings have had a great amount of influence specifically in reference to guerilla warfare, of which Mao is regarded as a genius (“Legacy of Mao Zedong”, n.d.). Mao’s poems and quotations out of his Little Red Book, it kind of became their Bible much like Mein Kampf did for Germany, are widely used by both the Chinese and non-Chinese, probably most notably by President Barack Obama in his inauguration speech. By the mid-1990s, Mao’s picture began to pop up on all new renminbi, currency from the People’s Republic of China. His face was instituted as an official counterfeiting measure due to how recognizable his face was compared to the old counterfeiting measures which were just generic figures (“Legacy of Mao Zedong”, n.d.). Before 2006 students learned about Mao all throughout their high school years. But in 2006 except for one mention in a chapter on etiquette, students in China only learn about Mao in junior

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