Mao's life a story
TOKYO (AP) Mao Tse-
tung was a soldier, classical
poet, historian and Marxist
•'!, philosopher who placed his
faith in China's peasants. A
peasant's son himself, he put
them in the vanguard of the
Chinese Communist
revolution.
i : His armies, ,raised and
operating from-rural bases,
tßrushed the Nationalist forces
oLSTeneralissimo Chiang Kai
shek- in a bloody civil war,
clearing the way for the
proclamation in 1949 of the
Chinese People's Republic.
• In the tumultuous years
which • followed, • Mao con
tinued
base, pouring 500 million of
them into rural communes.
Two decades later he put
them in the forefront of an
ambitoius program to in
dustrialize China by the turn
4 . of the century.
Mao's role in old age was oracular,
compoSing new directives for the faith-
fu/ to interpret and put into practice.
i His obsession persisted: to keep the party
pure and selflessly dedicated to ,com-
munism.
~ Chairman of the Corn
''Tnunist party from 1945,
symbol of state and father of
the republic, Mao regarded
himself primarily as a
teacher. He felt it was his
tasks to lead the Chinese
masses• into a life free of
hunger, disease and
Ignorance. Beyond that, 'he
dreamed of creating a - new
Marxist man, one of many
parts able to till the land,
work in the factories, heir
arms and grasp political
thought.
it, Mao lived to see many of his
dreams become reality. By
the 70's, China appeared to
have made long strides in its
ageless battle against famine,
disease and unemployment.
Its 800 million pople, while
still poor, superstitious and
i'argely illiterate, had enough
to eat, were adequately if
modestly clothed, and had a
roof over their heads.
Opportunities in education,
industry and agriculture had
been opened up to many of
peasant, worker or soldier
origin.
Though he was virtually
enshrined - by the Chinese as a -
Marxist demigod, Mao made
many enemies within his own
party and in international
communism during v his
lifetime.
He quarreled with the
Russians over ideology and
split the world Communist
movement. He sought to
bring China overnight into the
industrial age with a great
leap forward in 1958 . and
IL , aroused • the ire of the
pragmatists. A believer in the
theory of continuing'
revolution, he carried out a
series of massive purges
which shook up the army,
government and party and
raised a new crop of foes.
11.. Yet he also displayed on
several occasions the Chinese
genius for compromise. When
it suited the Communist
party, and the nation, he
actively cooperated with
Chiang Kai-shek.
1r And in, the 1970's he ended
two decades of Chinese-,
American hostility,'
welcoming President Richard;
M. Nixon to Peking as if he
were an old Mend rather than
the man identified in Chinese
.propaganda as an arch
villain.
Mao was able to unite China
under a single political entity,
the Communist party. The
emperors who preceded him
had never accomplished
anything similar.
For Mao, the party, which
he helped establish in 1921,
was everything. But he did
not hesitate in the mid-60's to
tear it apart when he believed_
it had taken a wrong course
toward capitalism.
', Partly to correct this trend,
partly to recover-the personal
power he had lost to President
Liu Shao-chi, party General
Secretary Teng Hsiao-ping
and other leaders, Mao
launched the Great
Proletarian Cultural
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Revolution in 1966. When it
'ended three years later, Liu
and Teng were in disgrace
and thousands of other senior
Communists were out of jobs
and undergoing re-education.
But when it became ap
parent later that many of
those cashiered had been the
victims of a personal ven
detta by his -designated
successor, Defense Minister
Lin Piao, and the radical wing
of the party, Mao consented to
have a number of them
restored to their old posts.
Among them was Teng Hsiao
ping, 'rehabilitated in 1973 and
by the start of 1976 one of the
most powerful men in China
after Mao himself.
Teng had been The protege
of Premier Chou En-lai, and
when the latter died in
January 1976 it was widely
concluded that Teng would
become premier.
But with Chou gone,
Maoists began attacking
Teng as a "capitalist roader"
one who sought to bring
capitalism back to China
and a campaign of 'criticism
was launched against him in
February and March 1976,
after a surprise an
nouncement that Hua
feng had been named acting
premier.
Despite demonstrations in
Peking supporting the late
Chou and hence Teng the
announcement came that the
Maoist radicals had won out:
Hua, then 56, was named .
premier and first vice
chairman of the Communist
party second only to Mao
him self. The 72 : year-old Teng
was stripped of all his
government and party posts
but alloWed to keep his
membership in the party "to
see how he will behave
himself in the future," Peking
radio said.
Mao had just completed the
remaking of the party,
government and army in
January 1975, sic years after
the Cultural Revolution and
"four years - after the unveiling'
of. a new heresy, led by Lin
Piao. Lin was accused of
plotting to overthrow Mao
and the government. Shortly
after that Lin was killed in a
plane crash in Mongolia in
1971.
Mao's role in old age was
oracular, composing new
directives for the faithful to
interpret and put into prac
tice. His obsession persisted:
to keep the party pure and
selflessly dedicated to
communism.
His oldest foe, Chiang Kai
shek, died at 87 in Taipei,
Taiwan, in 1975, without
having accomplished his vow
to reconquer the mainland.
But in death he denied Mao
the full fruits of the 1949
Communist victory. Chiang's
son and successor,
Nationalist Premier Chiang
Ching-kuo, insisted he would
never compromise with Mao
over the future of Taiwan, the
30th and last Chinese
province still free of Com
munist control.
One of Mao's failures was
an inability some said an
unwillingness to settle the
Chinese-Soviet conflict.
Relations between the two
Commu - hist giants broke
down over ideological dif
ferences only' seven years
after the Chinese- Com
munists came to power. They
deteriorated 'steadily,
sometimes convulsively, in
the two decadeS which
followed.
Mao married three times.
His first wife was killed by a
Nationalist general, the
second accompanied him on
the 8,000 mile "Long March"
in the 30's, and the third and
laAt was a Shanghai movie
actress named Chiang Ching.
To marry her he had to
divorce his second wife
then recovering from illness
in Moscow a move the
party elders*' , resisted.
Intelligence chief Kang Sheng
earned the couple's gratitude
by backing the marriage.
Chiang Ching, 20 years
Mao's junior, became the
firebrand of the Cultural
Revolution, leading the
radical leftist faction. She
became a member of the
Politburo iri her own right
afterward but was passed
'over when the 10th party
congress chose the party's
vice chairmen and members
of .the Politburo Standing
Committee. They had two
children, both girls. Mao had
no other surviving offspring.
Mao was born Dec. 26, 1893,
in Shaoshan, Hunan province,
to a moderately well-to-do
peasant family. His father, a
severe and demanding man,
put him to work in the field at
the age of 6, and his primary
school teacher often beat him.
In what he later called his
first act of rebellion, the
young Mao fled from these
influences at the age of 9 and
hid for three days in a
mountain valley.
His mother was the
dominant influence of these
early years. Mild mannered,
illiterate and understanding,
she shielded him from her
husband's ire.
His first contact with the
grim realities of revolution
occurred during a famine in
Changsha, where he had gone
to continue his studies. He
saw a peasant rebel executed,
and it left a deep mark on his
young mind.
Mao lived to see many of his dreams
become reality. By the 1970'5, China
appeared to have made long strides
in its ageless battle against famine,
disease and unemployment...
All these events contributed
to his revolutionary makeup.
At the age of 15, he worried
about the threatened partition
of China by foreign powers.
In 1911, carried away by the
fervor of revolution the
emperor had been over
thrown and a republic
established Mao joined• the
new army for six months, and
spent his spare time reading
newspapers and radical
books.
Now adrift, he wavered
between becoming a
policeman, a soap maker, a
lawyer and a businessman.
He passed them all up to
plunge into more reading:
Adam Smith's "The Wealth of
Nations," Darwin's "Origin
of Species," and the writings
of John Stuart Mill, Lincoln,
Washington and Jefferson.
For the next five years,
from 1913 to 1918, Mao studied
at the Hunan No. 1 provincial
normal school, where he
rebelled against the prin
cipal, whom he accused of
being too conventional.
He promoted a group called
the New People's Society, a
number of whose members
became influential later in
Chiang's Kuomintang
Natioalist party, or the
Communist party.
He went to Peking in 1918,
intending to join a work-study
group going •to France, but
got a job instead as a library
assistant at Peking
University, where he audited
classes. There he met Li Ta
chao, the chief librarian, and
later a founder of the Com
munist party. He fell in love
with and later married Yang
Kai-hui, daughter of his old
middle school teacher, Yang
Chang-chi. Later to be
executed by the Nationalists,
she was said to be his first and
deepest love.
Mao edited and published a
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of struggles, marches, purges
number of leftist periodicals
at that time and engaged in a
movement against the
warlord governor of Hunan
which made him, for the first
time, a wanted man. His
philosophy and politics
ranged between liberalism
and democracy until he
read his first books on
communism "The Com
munist Manifesto," Kaut
sky's "Class War" and a
history of socialism.
After the governor died,
Mao became a teacher in his
native Hunan. In July 1921 he
went to Shanghai to become
one of the 12 founding
members of the Communist
pirty. His home in - Hunan
became the center of
revolutionary activities and
there he first met Liu Shao
chi, who would become
president only to be disgraced
in the Cultural Revolution 45
hears later for opposing Mao.
Mao's life in the next few
years was one of organizing
laborers into Communist
unions and of rebellion once
more against the new
governor of Hunan.
Fleeing to Canton, in South
China, he became involved in
the Kuomintang. Communists
were admitted as members
on an individual, rather than
a part, basis.
Striken ill, Mao returned
again to Human clandestine,
there he organized more than
20 peasant associations. Three
years later Mao wrote his
first major work on the pea
sants, in which he recognized
their revolutionary poten
tial.
The party center, crushed
in the Kuomintang bloodbath
of 1927, held little enthusiasm
for Mao's peasant views.
Led by youths educated in
Moscow, among them Chou
En-lai they placed their faith
in the worker proletariat
of the big cities. Mao for a
time fell from fAvor.
Ignoring these strictures
Mao established the first
Chinese "soviet" on the bord
er of Hunan and joined forces
with 2,000 men led by Chu Teh
to form the first red army and
become its political corn
missar. Chu, an old Szechuan
warlord, became its com
mander-in-chief.
Unable to operate un
derground in Shanghai, the
young members of the party
Central Committee moved to
"soviets" in Hunan 'and
Kiangsi which Mao had set
up. There the new Red Army
fended off a series of of
fensives from the vastly
superior forces of Chiang Kai
shek.
Outmaneuvered and
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rapidly weakening, the paity
decided to break out from its
east coast "soviets" and join
forces with other Communist
armies in the west.
By then Mao was again in
the dog house, dismissed as
chairman of • the Chinese
"soviets" government. The
young Turks were in corn
From 1949 to 1959, Mao was con
currently chief of state and
. chairman
of the party Central Committee. His bold
plans for the great industrial leap forward
of 1958 backfired and critics sprang up.
mand. In January 1934, the
first movement began in what
is now known as "The Long
March." It ended in Shensi
province in the winter of 1935
after an 8,000-mile fighting
trek through some of the mo§t
forbidding terrain in China.
A year after the start of the
march, led by the youthful
Central Committee into
frontal attacks which cut the
Red Army's 120,000-man
strength in two, Mao regained
control of the party at Tsunyi,
in Kweichow province.
From Yenan, the cave city
next to the Gobi Desert which
became the Red capital, Mao
organized a united front
campaign to persuade Chiang
Kai-shek that all Chinese
should bury their differences
and form a common defense
against the invading
Japanese.
• This policy culiminated in
December 1936 at Siang,
where Chiang had been taken
captive by Chiang Hsueh-
Bang, pro-Red Kuomintang
commander of Manchurian
forces. Chiang Kai-shek
agreed to the united front and
the Communists entered
another period of cooperation
with their old enemy.
Cooperation with the
Kuomintang government,
which had its wartime capital
in Chungking, lasted only a
few years. A Kuomintang
attack on the New Fourth
Communist Army ended the
honeymoon in 1941. By the
end of World War II in 1945,
the ties between the two were
tenuous. Mao approved the
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postwar mediation mission of
Gen. George C. Marshall' of
the United States, and Chou
En-lai participated. But it
broke down in 1947, and
China's civil war flared up
once more.
The Communists were
driven out of Yenan in that
same year, but the well-
trained armies of Lin Piao in
Manchuria turned, the tables
and in 1949 the Nationalists
were driven from the
mainland.
From 1949 to 1959, Mao was
concurrently chief of state
and chairman of the party
Central Committee. His bold
political leaders foresee
U.S.
no deterioration of. China ties
WASHINGTON (UPI) President Ford
yesterday hailed Mao Tse-tung as "a very
great man" of historic influence and vision,
and predicted his passing would not harm
U.S.-Chinese relations.
Former President Richard Nixon, who
joined with Mao in opening the new era of
Sino-American srelations during his historic
1971' eking visit, issued a statement praising
the Chinese leader's ' "profound un
derstanding ... of the objective realities of the
world situation."
Nixon said he, too, was "confident that '
whoever succeeds Chairman Mao will
continue to work toward the goal of im
proving relations between the People's
Republic of China and the United States of
America."
Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy
Carter said he hoped ties with China would
continue to improve and noted 'that opening
up China was one of the "rare" achievements
of the Nixon administration.
Other foreign policy experts, including
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, were
more cautious in assessing the political
impact of Mao's death. Some felt there might
be a violent power struggle in China,
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The Daily Collegian Friday, September 10, 1976-
plans for the great industrial
leap forward of 1958 backfired
and critics sprang up, among
them Defense Minister Peng
Teh-huai, who resented using
the army for construction
work. Peng lost his job, but
Mao also followed, giving way
to the party realists headed
by Liu Shao-chi.
Mao traveled to Moscow in
1949, where he met Josef
Stalin and signed, after hard
bargaining, the Chinese-
Soviet Treaty of Friendship
and Alliance, later to become
virtually a dead letter. The
concessions in trade and
commerce wrung out by
Stalin in exchange for
relatively modest financial
aid of $5OO million embittered
Mao and persuaded him
against ever relying on
foreign aid again.
On a second visit to Moscow
in 1957, Mao perceived that
the Soviet-induced thaw in
side Russia and among its
satellites would lead to crisis
although Kissinger said the Washington-
Peking link would likely survive any
"mysterious" upheavals.
' U.S. political leaders lavished praise upon
Mao reminiscent of the tributes accorded a
Winston Church or a Charles DeGaulle or
other giants of modern history.
"Chairman Mao was a most remarkable
and a very great man," said Ford. "He had
the vision and the imagination to open up the
doors so the United 'States and the People's
Republic of China could do things in a new
era and a new day.
"It's tragic, of course, that a man of this
great, remarkable ability and skill and vision
and foresight has passed away."
Secretary Kissinger called Mao "an
historic figure who changed the course of
events in the world. He had a tremendous
impact on the present and the future of his
country."
Senate Democratic leader Mike Mansfield
said `.`the last major figure of World War H
has departed this earth ...
"Who was Mao Tse-tung? He was the man
who led the long march ... He was the man
who created the Peoples' Republic of China
... who exterminated warlordism, begging
and prostitution."
in international communism.
This was the beginning of the
ideological war between the
two Communist giants.
Mao's feelings about
Moscow were reinforced in
1960 when the Chinese-Soviet
quarrel neared a flashpoint
and the Russians withdrew
thousands of technicians and
large industrial projects.
Natural calamities that
produced bad harvests,.
combined with the mistakes
of the great leap forward,
plunged China into recession.
Yet Mao persisted in
organizing the rural com
munes which, he later in
sisted, had proved their
worth.
Concerned about the
possibility that the Russians
might attack, Mao en
couraged development of
nuclear weapons. The first
Chinese atom bomb was
exploded in the Takla Makan
Desert of Sinkiang province
in October 1964.