Chiang Kai Shek v Mao Zedong

Introduction

Chiang Kai-shek was born in Ch'i-k'ou, Chekiang, on Oct. 30, 1887. His father, a salt merchant, died in 1896, leaving his third wife with the burden of Chiang's upbringing. In 1905 Chiang went to Ningpo to study and decided on a military career. In 1906 he went to Tokyo but failed to qualify for military training.

Mao Zedong was born on December 26, 1893, in Shaoshan, Hunan Province, China, and died on September 9, 1976. Mao was the most influential leader and theorist of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and of the People's Republic of China (PRC).

Discussion

Differences between Mao and Chiang, dynamics

Mao dynamics before and after World War II

Mao was one of the founders of the CCP, formed in July 1921. From 1924 to 1927, under the auspices of the United Front of the CCP and the Nationalist Party (Guomindang, GMD), Mao organized labor unions and peasant associations and participated in the Nationalist Revolution against warlords and foreign imperialists (Tokuda, Pp. 45-46). Mao stressed the central role of peasants in rural class struggles. It remained the core of his belief that the semicolonial status of China—foreign meddling and mauling inside China, the resulting lack of industrial development and a strong urban proletariat class, the warlord government—meant that the Chinese revolution would have to take the form of poor peasants versus rich landlords in rural areas.

From 1927, when a breach between the CCP and GMD occurred, to 1934, Mao established rural bases in Jiangxi and Fujian provinces in southeast China, and engaged in guerrilla warfare to resist the superior GMD forces. From 1934 to 1935, the CCP Red Army was driven out of its rural soviets (CCP's armed territories/authorities in adoption of the name of the Soviet government) and forced to relocate to Yan'an, Shaanxi Province, in northwest China. The nearly 9,700-kilometer (6,000-mile) move became known as the "Long March."

In Yan'an, Mao consolidated his power and developed political, social, and economic models for the future China. After the eight-year war against Japan ended in 1945, civil war broke out between the CCP and the GMD, despite American attempts at mediation. The defeated GMD retreated to Taiwan, and the CCP's victory in the civil war led to the founding of the PRC in 1949, with Mao as its chairman (Lüthi, Pp. 659-661).

In spite of constant friction in its relationship with the Soviet Union (USSR), which eventually resulted in an open split in the early 1960s, Mao chose to follow Russia's Stalinist system to implement socialism in the PRC—party supremacy in the government and the army, a state-planned economy with an emphasis on heavy industry, and agricultural collectivism. To achieve his goals, Mao initiated mass campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960, a disastrous social and economic movement that was intended to increase agricultural and industrial production through eradication of private land ownership, moral incentives, and mass labor) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976, a violent mass movement against the establishment,  which brought about turmoil and enormous suffering to Chinese people).

Against the backdrop of the Cold War rivalry ...