Mao zedong - Research Paper Example

He became the main participator in the United Front. Mao was appointed as leader of the Peasant Movement Training Institute. Mao’s work included organizational and ideological instruction for peasant leaders. The opportunity opened Mao’s eyes to the potential of the Chinese peasants to engage in a revolution.2 Mao married Yang Kaihui, a daughter of one of his Beijing University’s mentors, in 1921. In 1930, Yang was executed by the Kuomintang. However, Mao had begun to stay with an 18-year old girl, He Zizhen.

In the next nine years, they had sired five children. Mao divorced He in 1937 and married Jiang Qing. 1937 became a cataclysmic year for every person involved in the Chinese Revolution. Mao and his fellow Communists were involved in the futile southern China after the April Shanghai coup. The experience resulted into a distrust of Soviet advice. There was a deep animosity toward Chiang Kaishek that resulted in a search for new strategies to a mass-based revolution. Mao moved with a small group of loyalists to Jinggangshan, a mountainous and forested region in the province of Jiangxi.

It was here that Mao faced the reality of real rural revolution.3 The political attitudes of Mao materialized against a background of great crisis in China in early 20th century. China was weak and divided. The main national problems were the need to reunify China and to expel foreign occupiers. Mao, who was young, was seen as a nationalist. He was strongly anti-imperialist and anti-Western and even before becoming attracted to Marxism. His nationalism combined with his combativeness to admire the martial spirit- martial spirit later became a pillar of Maoism.

4 There was a strong need for change and social reform. China’s social structure was obsolete. For instance, the gentry class was an obstacle to modernization. This class dominated the peasants, who comprised the significant majority