What is the Legacy of Mao tse Tung * 69

At a time when China is on the threshold of becoming a world power it is worthwhile pondering over the fact as to what is the legacy of Mao tse Tung. As a start Time magazine in its issue on 13 April 1998 acknowledged  Mao as one of the 100 most influential men of the twentieth century.

 This is true but there is another side to this story and that is the conduct of Mao after he seized power.


 Mao believed in his own version of Marxism  and he started two  campaigns of let a hundred flowers bloom and the  Cultural Revolution. By these two campaigns he hoped to keep the Chinese society in a state of ferment for ever and have an ongoing revolution that would propel China to a place in the Sun. Why ?  Because his mind was conditioned to accept chaos and ferment by decades of civil war and violence.

History records that both the campaigns of Mao the Cultural Revolution and the hundred flowers bloom  failed. The policy of a hundred flowers was launched by Mao to gauge his opponents. Once these were identified  of whom many were arrested and sent to labor camps for rehabilitation, the movement was called off.  He then followed up by launching the Great Leap forward.

The Great Leap forward was Mao’s attempt to put his ideas into practice as he assumed that a perpetual revolution was a necessity in the development of China. Thus he started collectivization of farms, abolished land ownership and the result was a famine when millions died.
Mao perhaps had no qualms about the deaths conditioned as he mentally was of a society in ferment and a perpetual revolution.  He followed up with The Cultural Revolution . This was his plan to keep society in ferment. The net result was that bands of red guard brigades went about identifying enemies of the revolution, many of whom were executed or sent to prison. the results now tell us that 30 million Chinese died during this decade of Mao's rule.

Mao will thus be dammed in History for the later part of his career. His earlier achievements of ushering in a mass uprising pale into insignificance with the monstrosity of the crimes that he inflicted on the Chinese people. luckily the policies of Mao were set aside and China has moved ahead, but in my view Mao's rule was a dark night for China. This will also dawn on the Chinese sooner than later.