What did Mao do when he gained power?

Mao Zedong was at the head of a Communist government in China during the year 1949 when it finally forced the Nationalists to retread to Taiwan. Mao, or as he was known during this time period, the Great Leader Chairman Mao, announced: “The Chinese people have stood up.” However, Mao had a long way to go before China, one of the largest nations in the world, would be on an even technological and economical foothold with the rest of the developed world. In order to achieve his goals, Mao passed forward a series of plans.

One of Mao’s first plans was land reform. Utilizing the massive number of peasants in poverty, Mao ordered that in every village, at least one landlord was to be executed as an example, and that all the property was to be equally redistributed. Although this did help to close the massive income and social disparity in China, it did so at the cost of millions of lives. In addition, Mao continued to cement his political and economic control of the nation through the “Campaign to suppress counter revolutionaries”. Although this campaign was provoked by Nationalist remnants who tried to foster armed rebellion and conduct acts of terrorism such as sabotaging rail lines and buildings and stealing cattle and animals, it grew to target anyone who opposed Mao and the Communist Party. The campaign altered between lenient punishments to assuage the public, but also mass executions when Mao felt that the Nationalist influence grew too strong. This would later pave the way for the Anti-Rightist movement and the Cultural Revolution, both of which were targeted to Mao’s opponents.

Mao’s next policy was to try and improve China’s economic capability through what would come to be known as “The Great Leap Forward” Mao demanded that large farming communes would be formed, and that private land ownership would be banned. In addition, he advocated the U.S. of furnaces that were not properly fueled to turn scrap metal into usable material, which became a miserable failure. In order to meet the man-power requirements of his ideas, he diverted factory workers and others to work on the communes and in the production of iron. Furthermore, Mao utilized untested and theoretical planting techniques, such as over-seeding of the same plant type, deeper planting for supposedly “better root growth”, and concentration of fertilizer on one type of ground while not planting other areas. All of these policies were eventually proved to be faulty, and combined with ecological disaster, crop growths dropped by a huge amount. However, low-level communist leaders, both fearful of being targeted for a failure to meet goals, and excited for a chance to move higher on the Communist totem pole, lied and exaggerated grain and food production. As a result, the government took food for export even when the farmers themselves had nothing to eat, resulting in mass famine. In the end, “The Great Leap Forward” turned out to be a massive step backwards.

However, Mao, unlike other leaders who would ignore their mistakes, Mao would fix the problems when he realized there was one. For example, when he realized that the home-made furnaces were useless, he discontinued them and moved to formal furnaces powered by coal. In addition, he also admitted that the Great Leap Forward had been a mistake, and allowed his subordinates to import grain and give some private land ownership. Unlike other dictators who would never acknowledge that they were wrong, despite the deaths of their citizens, Mao admitted that he was wrong and would attempt to change for the better.

One thing Mao was able to do that greatly assisted China was that he turned to the future and replaced the corrupt and inept Qing dynasty. Also, he drove out the Nationalists, who were responsible for brutal killings and were essentially tyrants without the support of the people. Also, he righted the massive income disparity in China where the wealthy had an enormous amount of wealth and power while the poor farmers and workers had nearly nothing. This allowed China to start over anew, and to move forward as an entire nation, not just the privileged upper class leaving the lower class behind like other 3^rd world or 2^nd world nations.

Another thing Mao did do well was to empower China as an independent nation. Previously, China had been extremely weak to the outside world. So-called Western “democracies” would often use a better equipped army to force open unfair trade routes or make money in other unfair ways. Also, England used its superior military to win the Opium war. However, under Mao, despite the fact that China was still economically and technologically behind other nations, Mao was able to create an army that stalemated one of the world’s superpowers, the U.S. Also, during this time period, undue foreign influences greatly diminished, and China’s military strength grew greatly, becoming one of the nations to have successfully detonated the Atomic bomb. Mao was able to make China a powerful military nation capable of defending itself against outside invaders, something that no previous imperial dynasty had been able to successfully accomplish.

Despite Mao’s failures, he did manage to unite the country as one and to start the process of bringing China up to speed with the rest of the world. He built up an industrial force by forcing people to work on factories and farms. As a leader and a motivator, he was able to spurn his nation into attempting to increase production and becoming superior to the Western nations. However, as a Chairman who frequently felt threatened by others, he also initiated many violent movements to cement his control of the Communist Party and of an entire nation. Mao Zedong laid the foundation for China to come onto the world stage, and Deng Xiaoping and other reformers built upon that foundation to create the economic and political skyscraper China is today.