Mao: The Unknown Story

Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. 

Goals

Mao Zedong had two goals:

(1) Becoming dictator of China

(2) Making China into a nuclear superpower

Acquiring Power

Mao Zedong acquired political power with help from Joseph Stalin. Mao was also an expert at removing his rivals. In particular, any rival who advocated paying attention to reality was accused of secretly being a capitalist roader.

Arming China

Mao achieved his second goal by using grain requisitions from the Chinese peasants to trade for weapons technology from the Soviet Union.

Liberation by Starvation

Mao achieved both of his goals. Unfortunately, 30 million Chinese peasants starved to death from his grain requisitions. This was ironic, considering that he claimed to be a champion of the Chinese peasants who was liberating them from their feudal landlords.

Chronology

• 1893 Mao Zedong is born in Hunan Province

• 1912: Sun Yan-seen founds the Kuo Min Tang (Nationalist Party)

• 1925: Sun Yat-sen dies

• 1926: Mao appointed to head the Peasant Institute

• 1927: Chiang Kai-shek cleans the KMT of Communists

• 1928: Mao execut3es landlord Kuo Weei-chien

• 1930: Mao, Shiqi and Li Shaojiu kill Anti-Bolshevik League members

• 1931: Creation of the Jiangxi-Fujian Soviet

• 1934-1936: Long March

• 1937: Japanese attack Shanghai and Nanking

• 1942-1944: Mao grows opium to support his army

• 1942-1944: Yen'an Rectification Campaign

• 1945: Stalin invades Manchuria

• 1949: Mao defeats the Kuo Min Tang

• 1955: Farm collectivization

• 1957: Anti-Rightist Campaign

• 1958-1962: Great Leap Forward

• 1966-1976: Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

• 1976: Mao Zedong dies