History KS3 / GCSE: The Rise of Mao ZeDong

PRESENTER:'The Chinese Empire ended in 1911, 'and China became a republic.

PRESENTER:'But the country was soon split 'between a fragile nationalist government and regional warlords. 'Rival factions fought to determine China's future.

PRESENTER:'And among the many ideas swirling round at that time 'was a Western political philosophy, communism.

PRESENTER:'The first meeting of a Chinese communist party 'was held here in this room in Shanghai in July 1921.

PRESENTER:'There were 12 people present. 'Among them a Hunan peasant's son, Mao ZeDong.'

PRESENTER:They were attracted by its anti-feudal anti-imperialist message, and also by its claim to be scientific, that it held the key not only to history, but to the future.

PRESENTER:The 12 people sitting here were the representatives of just 57 members. At that point, the party had no significance at all. But incredibly, within 30 years, the communists would rule China.

PRESENTER:'And how Mao and the communist party came to power 'was, in some ways, one of the great accidents of history.

PRESENTER:'In the late 1920s, China was ravaged by flood, famine and armed conflict. 'Peasants were selling their children, 'dying in their thousands of disease and starvation.

PRESENTER:'And it was these desperate times which shaped Mao's life 'and his career as a revolutionary.

PRESENTER:'Mao was born in 1893, the son of a well-off peasant in Hunan. 'He left high school at 25, having trained as a primary school teacher.

PRESENTER:'He was haunted by childhood memories 'of the killing of famine-stricken protestors in his hometown.

PRESENTER:'And then he discovered communism.' And then look at this, these are the early struggles, the early mobilisation of peasants.

PRESENTER:'His voracious reading had first led him to European socialism, 'and then to violent revolution.

PRESENTER:'He began as a guerrilla leader in a failed communist rising 'in his native Hunan, 'and then in setting up independent communist enclaves, soviets, 'deep in the countryside.

PRESENTER:'Fearful of what had happened recently in the Russian revolution, 'the nationalist government under Prime Minister Chiang Kai-shek, 'decided the communists should be wiped out.

PRESENTER:'Thousands were killed, including Mao's wife and sister.

PRESENTER:'In 1934, the survivors embarked on what became known as the long march, 'a 6,000 mile trek to northwest China. 'Only 8,000, about a tenth of them, survived.

PRESENTER:'And they made their base at Yan'an.

PRESENTER:'A nowhere place in a bleak countryside, 'it must have seemed, at that point, 'that the communist movement in China had reached a dead-end.

PRESENTER:'But then, in 1937,

PRESENTER:'the Japanese launched a full-scale invasion of China.'

THEODORE H.WHITE:'The Japanese now seek total conquest, 'not just another chunk of territory.'

THEODORE H.WHITE:'A century since Britain first blasted China open, 'a generation since the bloodshed of the Boxers, 'babies have grown to manhood without a year of peace.

THEODORE H.WHITE:'For 25 years, China has lived with warlords, guns and terror. 'But now it must drink deeper of the cup of bitterness.'

PRESENTER:'That December, 300,000 people were massacred in Nanjing. 'And out of such horrors, a national resistance was born.

PRESENTER:'Far away in Yan'an, from a defeated guerrilla army, 'the communists now found themselves part of a liberation struggle.

PRESENTER:'Mao himself had gained power over the party, 'and emerged as a formidable and ruthless revolutionary.

PRESENTER:'A united front was formed, 'with the nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek, 'and the communists under Mao, 'fighting the common enemy, the Japanese.'

PRESENTER:'At that time, Mao lived here in the caves outside Yan'an. 'He was even visited by Western journalists.

PRESENTER:'Among those who came to see him here 'was the philosopher and social reformer Liang Shuming.

PRESENTER:'No lover of Marxism, but he gives us a portrait of Mao 'which contrasts with some modern Western views.'

PRESENTER:Very different men, Liang the traditional scholar in his long gown, sipping tea, and Mao, the son of a Hunan peasant, laughing, scratching himself, chain-smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and knocking back glass after glass of the local white whiskey.

PRESENTER:Marx and Confucius debating the future of China. And Liang's portrait of Mao is very attractive. 'He says he was relaxed and warm, and natural.

PRESENTER:'Extremely vulgar but completely unaffected.' And a very sharp mind, head and shoulders above everybody else.

PRESENTER:But for all their differences, they were agreed on the two key problems facing China. Number one, the rural question, the terrible poverty of the mass of the population of the country.

PRESENTER:And number two, national liberation from the Japanese invasion. As Mao said to Liang, the war has changed everything.

PROF. RANA MITTER:This is a conflict that killed 14 million, possibly more, civilians and military in China during the war itself.

PRESENTER:14 million?

PROF. RANA MITTER:14 million.

PROF. RANA MITTER:'80 to 100 million Chinese 'may well have become refugees in their own country.'

PROF. RANA MITTER:So in terms of changing the direction of China's politics and society, the wartime period is immensely important.

PRESENTER:'When the Japanese surrendered in 1945, the national front fell apart.

PRESENTER:'And the nationalists and the communists 'now fought a bitter civil war.

PRESENTER:'Backed by the West, especially the US, 'the nationalists had the manpower and equipment.

PRESENTER:'The communists were outgunned, but after 12 years in Yan'an, 'their land reforms had gathered mass support across the countryside, 'boosted by propaganda promising a golden age of social justice.

PRESENTER:'In one year, the Red Army swept down the length of China. 'And after heavy fighting, the nationalists fled to Taiwan.

PRESENTER:'The People's Republic was founded.

PRESENTER:'On the 1st of October 1949, in Beijing, 'Mao announced the birth of a new China.'

PRESENTER:There's the Tiananmen gate where Mao ZeDong made that famous speech. It was only 38 years after the fall of the Empire, 'and after all the sufferings of the Chinese people 'through the Japanese war, the Second World War, and the civil war,

PRESENTER:'there was widespread optimism 'that there might be a completely fresh new start.'

PRESENTER:After all, revolution had been a fact of life in the Chinese story. Almost a natural part of the recurring cycles of Chinese history.

PRESENTER:But the surprising suddenness with which, in the end, the communists were able to take power only added to the enormous burden that they'd inherited.

PRESENTER:'The imposition of communism caused huge disasters. 'The collectivisation of farming wrecked society.

PRESENTER:'The great leap forward, 'a catastrophic drive to industrialise the countryside 'lead to the great famine in which well over 30 million died.

PRESENTER:'And in the cultural revolution, 'Mao's Red Guards tried to smash China's traditional culture.

PRESENTER:'There were those who said, of course, 'that had he died in 1956, 'his achievements would have been remembered' as one of the great rulers of China.

PRESENTER:'But after his death in 1976, even the party admitted that, 'in his errors, Mao had mistaken right for wrong, 'and the people for the enemy.

PRESENTER:'And therein lay his tragedy.'