Mao Zedong Born on December Term Paper

Moreover, in the wake of the Shanghai massacre, the more radical idea that Chinese communism should actually pursue its own independent path began to take root. For example, while Mao continued to favor the creation of soviets (councils) and the land redistribution policy, he began to militarize the dialogue by highlighting the need to arm the masses and accelerate the process of change through the creation of a wave-like or tidal revolutionary movement throughout China.

With his vision of a combined victory over Chiang and the Japanese firmly in place, Mao turned to a resolution of the land question to win the Chinese people to his side. His goal was to introduce the class struggle into the countryside and elevate the revolutionary consciousness of the masses by depicting the landlord class [as] the principal enemy of the revolution. The goal was to mobilize the peasants in the countryside, lend them support, and secure a revolutionary victory for the people. To sustain the struggle, he would frequently send bands of raiders into Chinese villages to dispossess the landlords and wealthy peasants of their holdings. These fund-raising ventures not only helped to finance the struggle, they also helped to reinforce his revolutionary message.Through the Red Army's program of confiscating goods and supplies from the rich and distributing these "surpluses" to the poor, the peasants instinctively understood that unlike armies in the past or the Kuomintang forces under Chiang Kai-shek, the Red Army was "a poor man's army" allied to the needs of the people.

Throughout his life Mao never deviated in his commitment to learn from the masses; nor did he ever compromise his respect for their revolutionary spirit or underestimate the risk of isolating the leadership from their support.

Marrin, Mao Tse-tung and His China, p. 5.

Schram, Mao Tse-tung, p. 21

Robert Jay Lifton, Revolutionary Immortality: Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (New York: Norton, 1976), p. 85.

Edgar Snow, Red Star over China (New York: Random House, 1938 [1961]), pp. 123-31.

Schram, Mao Tse-tung, p. 25

Snow, Red Star over China, p. 149.

Snow, Red Star over China, p. 151.

Marrin, Mao Tse-tung and His China, p. 44.

Schram, Mao Tse-tung, p. 47.

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1966), p. 23.

Schram, Mao Tse-tung, p. 49.

Marrin, Mao Tse-tung and His China, p. 39.

Snow, Red Star over.....