The Winning Essay in the 2001 Marie Wanek
Asian Studies Essay Competition

The Significance of Remembering Mao Zedong

Myra Pong

            The death of Mao Zedong affected millions of Chinese people.  Mourners from all over the nation came to the capital to pay their respects to their leader.  It is well known that Mao made several irreversible mistakes in the later part of his life.  Most Chinese, however, choose to remember him as a great leader, one who changed all of China, and use his past to provide guidance for the present and the future.  

Mao Zedong died on September 9, 1976, in Beijing.  One of the major causes of his death was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.  He also suffered from heart problems and chronic lung disease (Li 9).  Immediately following his death, there was confusion as to what would be done with his body.  On the one hand, in 1956, Chairman Mao was the first leader of China to sign an agreement to have his remains cremated after his death (18).  Almost right after his death, however, the politburo, the central authority in China, gave orders to temporarily preserve the chairman's body for two weeks (16).  Soon after, the authorities changed their decision and said that the body was to be preserved indefinitely (18). 

Although the decision was known among only a few select people, there was much argument.  Many thought that it simply could not be accomplished, e.g., Dr. Zhisui Li, Mao's personal physician of many years, who was skeptical about the sophistication of Chinese science (Li 18).  Despite the concerns, preparations for the preservation were taken immediately – the urgency was justified by the fact that the politburo wanted generations of Chinese to be reminded of Mao’s contributions to modern China.  The Academy of Medical Sciences was the first to be consulted for suggestions of possible methods; the method chosen was to inject approximately twelve to sixteen liters of formaldehyde to preserve the body temporarily (Li 19).  Twenty-two liters were injected into the corpse, a process that took several hours, and additional time was required to make his appearance more normal after the swelling (20).  The process completed, Mao's body was taken to the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where it was displayed for thousands of "carefully selected citizens" to pay their respects (21-22). 

Meanwhile, a team of over twenty was established to make plans for the permanent preservation of the body; specialists in anatomy, pathology, and organic chemistry were gathered from medical schools all over China.  The team studied many ancient Chinese methods for preservation of bodies, and they even attempted to obtain information from other nations, including Vietnam and the Soviet Union, but were unsuccessful (Li 22).  The Institute of Arts and Crafts in China then made a replica of the body with wax, in case the real one could not be preserved.  As if this was not enough, Mao's organs were preserved in jars of formaldehyde in case anyone questioned the cause of death, a tube was put in his neck to replenish the formaldehyde supply when it was necessary, and his crystal coffin, which he would later be displayed in, was filled with helium, all done in secret (23). 

During the next year, the preserved corpse and the wax model were kept clandestinely in an underground hospital where they were both closely monitored by Dr. Li.  In 1977, a full year after the death, both were transported to a vault under the Memorial Hall in Tiananmen Square and were put on public display (Li 24).  Since then, thousands upon thousands of ordinary citizens have gone to the memorial each day to pay their respects to the chairman and remember his great achievements.  His portrait continues to hang atop Tiananmen, the Gate of Heavenly Peace (25).  Since so much was done to ensure that Mao was remembered forever, he was obviously extremely important to the Chinese people. 

Mao Zedong was born in Xiangtan in Hunan Province, China, on December 26, 1893.  Mao was an active figure in Chinese politics, especially in the Communist party, and was constantly given newer and higher positions.  With these positions, he was able to lead the Communists and fight for his dream, a socialist China free from imperialism.  By 1924, he had already become deeply involved in politics in Canton, a major city in South China (Spence 66).  Two years later, he had gained stature in the Communist movement for his positive view on the revolutionary potentials of the Chinese peasants (71).  Then in 1931, he earned the title of Chairman of the Communist Party, a position he kept until his death (81).  It was under this role that he led and won the Communist Revolution against the Nationalists and gained much praise from the Chinese people.  Around 1936, Mao was also given the title of Chairman of the Military Council (89).  He became Chairman of the Politburo in the Central Committee in 1943, a position created especially for him (100).  It was at this time that people of all sorts, even Party leaders, started to follow and praise him for his leadership skills.  At the Zunyi Conference in 1935, even a man known for his hatred of Mao called him the “helmsman of the Chinese revolution” (101).  From 1949 to 1959, he was the Chairman of the People’s Republic of China and remained Chairman of the Communist Party until his death in 1976 (Spence 108).  Thus, Mao had led the Chinese through many ups and downs during most of his life.

Mao is remembered by so many today mainly because of his great achievements.  He is labeled one of the paramount political innovators in history, and is acclaimed for his "social inventiveness" (Wilson 300).  He was a pioneer, a revolutionary, and a liberator (303).  He believed that he could achieve anything that he wanted to, which is observed in many of the poems that he wrote.  An excerpt from one of his poems reads, "Under this heaven nothing is difficult,/ If only there is the will to ascend” (315). 

Mao had envisioned a wealthy, powerful, socialist China (Wilson 72).  To accomplish this, he cleverly adapted the ideas of Marx and Lenin to Chinese conditions (Spence 94).  A tenet of Marx’s idea is that “salvation lay not in resisting modernization but in ruthlessly pushing through industrialization to the end” (Karnow 6).  Lenin further developed this idea and believed that industrialization and productivity were primordial and that the ideal Communist Party should “serve as the vanguard of the industrial working class in its quest to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat” (7).  Mao not only accepted these ideas but also united this Marxist-Leninist philosophy with the practice of the Chinese revolution, using it as an ultimate guide for the Communist movement.  Mao’s adaptation of Marxist-Leninist ideas to Chinese conditions became known as “Mao Zedong Thought” or “Maoism” (Spence 101). 

There are a number of Maoist principles that helped the Chinese struggle going.  To serve the people is one of them.  Another is self-reliance – Mao believed that if China was self-reliant, then it would grow stronger, giving the people a sense of pride.  In addition, the "continuing renewal of revolutionary consciousness and continuing guard against divorce from the reality of manual labor and the life of the masses" were needed (Tuchman 34).  These were the philosophies that helped China through many of its troubles. 

Mao’s main goal during his life was to strengthen China and to rid it of imperialism.  Imperialism, which reduces independent nations into a state of political and economic dependency, was one of the major problems the Chinese faced since the Opium War (1839-1842).  Since then, China had been humiliated numerous times – parts of China had been seized by Germany, France, Britain, Russia, and Japan in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Karnow 25).  Upon reading a pamphlet on these defeats, Mao once said, “I felt depressed about the future of my country and began to realize that it was the duty of all the people to help save it” (32).  Japanese aggression in the 1930s and 1940s, however, helped Mao and the Communists gain support from the peasants; due to this increase in support, the Communist army increased from 50,000 in 1937 to about 500,000 in 1945.  Mao’s large army helped China defeat Japan, which provided China with a sense of pride (50). 

Then, a civil war began in July 1946 between the Communists led by Mao and the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek (Karnow 49).  This war showed that the Communists had great military skill that the Nationalists lacked.  Under Mao, the Communist force started out as about one-fourth the size of the Nationalist army.  But by end of the war in 1948, it had become the same in size (52).  The Communists won the war.  This was a great achievement.  Mao was able to quadruple the size of his army – this was largely due to the fact that the peasants were driven by nationalism and the idea of self-reliance, one of Mao’s major principles, and were drawn to the concept of socialism in which they would all be treated equally.  Thus, under his leadership, the army as well as the Party went from being weak to strong.  In 1949, Mao’s forces captured Nanjing, the Nationalist capital, and drove Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan.  On October 1, 1949, Mao went to Peking, his capital, and proclaimed the People’s Republic of China (Karnow 54). 

Mao also did much to help other Communist nations.  For example, Mao was deeply involved in the Korean War.  In1950, the Korean War broke out when North Korea attacked South Korea.  Mao supported the North Koreans.  At first, he did not think that the Americans would intervene.  And when they did, he felt that they were not politically motivated enough to fight and relied too much on their firepower and other sophisticated weaponry (Spence 116).  Mao then made the decision to send Chinese troops into Korea.  First, he wanted to secure China’s borders, and second, he wanted to rescue its neighboring Communist ally from the Americans (117).  His rallying cry during the war was “Aid Korea, Resist America” (118). 

Prior to this, the Communists had never been engaged in modern warfare.  In the Korean War, the United States had the latest weapons and machines while the Communists, on the other hand, had almost no tanks, artillery, or transport facilities.  Mao, however, stood up to the Americans and fought (Karnow 70). When Mao’s eldest son, Mao Anying, died as a casualty in the war, he was buried in North Korea as were all other soldiers; Mao wanted his son’s body to stay there to illustrate his duty to the Chinese people (Spence 117). 

The war ended with the Treaty of 1953 (Spence 120).  Looking back, Mao can be seen as the “instigator and manipulator” of the war because he intervened to help North Korea and also fought against the powerful Americans (118).  But the war is even more important than this.  Mao once said, “After defeating Chiang Kai-shek, Japanese imperialism, and American imperialism, our experience is much richer than that of the Soviet Union, and it is wrong to regard it as worthless” (Karnow 73).  This quote is of the utmost significance because China, a relatively weak and poor country before Mao’s reign, rose to hold the world’s strongest military country to a standstill.  Hence, under Mao, both the Communist Party and China were able to gain recognition and power.  

Even though Mao achieved a great deal in his lifetime, he had made numerous mistakes as well.  A primary reason for his mistakes was that he believed in “destruction before construction” (Karnow 200).  One of the major mistakes that he made was the Great Leap Forward, which was the “biggest and most ambitious experiment in human mobilization” in history, despite the fact that it lasted less than one year (92).  Mao’s objective was to lift China to Britain’s level of industrial production within a fifteen-year period (93).  One of the movement’s purposes was to weed out the capitalists and bourgeoisie (97).  It began in the fall of 1958 with the organization of over half a billion peasants into 24,000 “people’s communes,” while all private property was confiscated.  The peasants were transformed into a large labor force that worked all day, farming and making products such as steel in backyard furnaces (92).  Each of the peasants was promised equal food, clothing, and shelter according to socialist ideals (96). 

The movement ended in the spring of 1959, less than a year after it began, but the damage was severe (Karnow 102).  It had put to a complete halt the economic prosperity that the Communists had brought about during their first eight years of power (103).  Its primary purpose was to raise production, but ironically, it resulted in a great famine in which at least 25-35 million people died (Li 507).  The famine lasted for two years.  Malnutrition and diseases, such as tuberculosis, hepatitis, and edema, spread rapidly (Karnow 103-104).  In one of China’s richest provinces, Guangdong, there was no meat or fish, and there were hardly any vegetables and even rice.  The number of food parcels sent from Hong Kong into Guangdong for families rose from about one million in 1959 to almost twelve million by 1961.  Many were forced to eat grass, cornstalks, and other vegetation; even authorities recommended things such as “nonpoisonous, highly nutritious plankton” called “red worm” for sources of protein (105).  Crime increased dramatically; people resorted to robbery, and many women even took on prostitution to get food-ration coupons.  Some were so desperate that they deliberately got arrested in hope of being fed in jail (106).  Even soldiers in the People’s Liberation Army publicly slandered the government that they were supposed to fight for, blaming it for the food shortages that were affecting many of their own families (108). 

The Great Leap led to “demoralization, corruption, and the decay of many Communist principles and practices” (Karnow 107).  Mao blamed the whole ordeal on the bureaucracy, claiming that it did not follow his orders properly (111).  To many, he did not seem to care about the poverty, sickness, and increasing mortality rate, and it was in this way that he resembled the emperors that he had despised so much (Li 125). 

Mao’s second major mistake was The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which was supposed to introduce a new stage in the development of socialist revolution in China (Rejai 121).  It began in 1965.  In the Cultural Revolution, Mao criticized the ideas of the bourgeoisie, especially in art and literature, which were vital elements in Mao’s “spiritual” tactic towards his idea of revolution (Karnow 158-159).  It was for this reason that Mao had strong feelings about the educational system in China.  He believed that if “revolutionary successors” were to be produced to carry out his vision of China's future, the educational system would have to be greatly transformed (Karnow 170). 

During the revolution, Mao formed the Red Guards, an organization of young activists, to protest against Chinese institutes of education (Karnow 170).  Each Red Guard possessed and carried around a red bound book, Quotations from Chairman Mao (194).  Mao also compiled "The Sixteen Point Decision," which consisted of his hopes for the campaign; he wanted to replace all the previous ideas, cultures, customs, and habits of exploiting classes with his new ones (199). 

The Cultural Revolution, like the Great Leap Forward, resulted in much destruction.  There was no economic progress made.  More importantly, unrest among the people swept through China, and people were terrified to do anything that would anger the officials for fear of being killed (Karnow 240).  Therefore, Mao’s actions caused much damage to China and its people towards the later part of his life.                                  

There are many different ways in which Mao Zedong is remembered, but most Chinese think of him as a great leader who did much for twentieth century China and its people.  He showed the world that a new China could exist, and because of his vision, he helped China see the world through his eyes, and China will never limit itself to what others think of it (Wilson 298).  He countered the view that all problems are unmanageable by doing such things as freeing China from imperialism and defeating Chiang Kai-shek in the Communist Revolution (320).  People see him as the one who saved the Communist Party and China in times of trouble and therefore do not focus on his mistakes (Deng 326). 

The Chinese also believe that Mao, by using Marxist and Leninist ideas in China, did a “great thing for the country” because these ideas helped the Communists in a successful revolution (Deng 326).  The Chinese today still adhere to "Mao Zedong Thought " because they believe that it led to their victory in the Communist revolution (327).  To the Chinese, this thought symbolizes the correct part of Mao's life.  So, together with Mao's portrait, which is a symbol of China, "Mao Zedong Thought" is a valued possession of the people of China (329).  The Chinese are aware that Mao made numerous mistakes, starting with the late 1950s, but they believe that they were not completely his fault because the people went along with him (327).  Deng Xiaoping, the man accredited with saving China after Mao’s death, thinks that Mao's portrait will forever hang above Tiananmen.  "In evaluating his merits and mistakes, we hold that his mistakes were only secondary.  What he did for the Chinese people can never be erased.  In our hearts we Chinese will always cherish him as a founder of our Party and our State," Deng pronounced (326).  The Chinese will continue to learn from Mao's mistakes and will handle them realistically (328).  As the Chinese look to the future, they remember the past, so they are taking precautions to ensure that such mistakes are not repeated by restructuring their institutions; they want to develop socialist democracy and socialist legality to contribute to their history of feudalism (330).  Thus, the Chinese remember Mao not for his mistakes but for his achievements, which gave rise to modern China.

            In conclusion, Mao Zedong was an innovator who forever changed the way the Chinese looked at the world and the way the world looked at China.  He transformed China from a weak, dependent nation into a strong, independent nation of the twentieth century, and it was in this way that he provided the Chinese people with an enormous sense of pride, which they had not experienced for more than a century.  Although he made mistakes, his visions of a socialist China became a reality when he led China.  Mao is a symbol of national unity, and the Chinese will never forget what he did for them.

Works Cited

Deng, Xiaoping. Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping. 1975-1982 ed. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1984.

Karnow, Stanley. Mao and China. New York: The Viking Press, 1972.

Li, Zhisui. The Private Life of Chairman Mao. London: Chatto and Windus, 1994.

Rejai, Mostafa. Mao Tse-tung on Revolution and War. Garden City: Anchor Books, 1970.

Spence, Jonathan. Mao Zedong. New York: The Viking Press, 1999.

Tuchman, Barbara. Notes From China. New York: Collier Books, 1972.

Wilson, Dick, ed. Mao Tse-tung in the Scales of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.