70 years of communism's triumph: how Mao Zedong managed to crown himself as China's top leader

To the south of the Forbidden City, in the center of the Chinese capital, there are two showy doors arranged on the axis that leads to the main access.

In the most famous of them, the Tiananmen Gate, hangs for decades a giant portrait of Mao Zedong, with a serene but indecipherable expression.

The position of Mao's bust could not be more symbolic: it is, if you will, the line that divides Chinese history, culture and politics of the last century.

On one side, there is the opulent court, the last great vestige of the stately past, that of the vast empire and its miseries.

Mao's photo turns his back on him. Look forward, towards the communist future: there is Tiananmen Square, the modern and symbolic center of the State he created, place of celebrations or horrors, as you look.

There, opposite the neural center of the millennial empire, Mao proclaimed the People 's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, now 70 years ago .

And it was there too, in the place where the last emperor lived, where Mao became the "Great Helmsman": not only did he change the destiny of the nation, but he ruled it for a longer time and with a power that has not returned to have another Chinese leader since the end of the Qing dynasty.

"Mao is one of the most controversial characters in history: he was the man who put his country on the map, who led a revolution and changes that transcended China," historian Alexander Pantsov, author of the BBC, tells BBC Mundo. Biography Mao: The Real Story .

"But also one of the most stark dictators in history, responsible for the deaths of more than 40 million people," adds the also professor at Capital University, USA.

An accident in history

In his well-known documentary The Story of China , British investigator Michael Wood says that the series of events that led to the rise of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) "was one of the greatest accidents in history."

According to Wood, it all began more than two decades before the end of the "Chinese Revolution," when the clashes for power between the Communists, led by Mao, and the Kuomintang Nationalists (KMT), the followers of Chiang Kai, began in 1927. -shek that would take control of the Republic and at the end of the war they would end up going into exile in Taiwan.

"At the beginning of the revolution, when the CCP was established in 1921, Mao was a young idealistic intellectual who was looking for ways to strengthen his country," Elisabeth Perry, an expert in Chinese history and politics at Harvard University, tells the BBC.

"Mao was horrified by the inequalities he saw between rich and poor, between city and country, between men and women, and he really wanted to improve China's social, political and economic situation," he says.

After millennia of dynasties, China had entered the 20th century with a deep economic backwardness and had been a frequent victim of invasions and subjugations.

"To understand the 'phenomenon of Mao' we have to remember that, before the revolution, China had been a colony of the West, exploited to a large extent, and the Chinese were considered second-class people," says Pantsov.

"And although the empire was overthrown in 1911, the new KMT nationalist forces failed to end the revolution. It would be Mao who would do so several years later," he adds.

But to become the undisputed leader of the Chinese revolutionary movement, Mao not only needed to devise a strategy to get rid of the nationalists, but he also had to find ways to overcome the CCP's hidden world of internal battles.

"Mao had all kinds of intellectual and political advantages that many other top leaders of the Communist Party or Nationalist Party did not have," says Perry.

"He had a series of skills that other more important leaders could not match. And, at the same time, he was not only a very intelligent personality, but also very ruthless, that allowed him to do everything possible whenever he was committed to a cause in particular, "he adds.

The long march to power

Born in 1893 in the heart of Hunan, a province in central China that had given rebels for centuries, Mao grew up in what he called a " rich peasant family " in which he had access to privileged education, a mixture of Western knowledge. Modern and classical Chinese.

With only 18 years, he joined the Army in his town during the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, which ended the last Chinese dynasty (Qing) and led to the proclamation of the new Republic, which he would later fight against.

Unlike other communist leaders in his country at that time, he had not studied at universities in France or the Soviet Union and his reality until moving to the capital and working as a librarian's assistant at the University of Beijing had been limited to a fundamentally experience Peasant

"This gave him some nativist knowledge that helped him unite two worlds, rural and urban. He was very skilled at using popular culture that attracted ordinary people while writing poetry that was quite well regarded by intellectuals. "says Perry of Harvard.

But according to Pantsov he had also developed all sorts of political skills that he used to great effect both to neutralize his opponents within the CCP and to become close to the common villager.

"He was an excellent organizer, he had a great charisma and his own origin led him to pay attention to the problems of the peasants, who would be the force that gave him the most support," says the biographer.

According to the experts consulted, one of the moments that decided his fate in that regard was a wild journey he proposed in 1934 and that led the Chinese Red Army, the CCP armed forces, to travel more than 12,500 kilometers in 370 days.

It would become known as the Long March , a strategy to flee from the Army of the Republic, in the hands of the KMT, until the "People's Liberation Army" led by Mao was strengthened.

"If we look at it in historical terms, that idea seems crazy: to leave behind the south of China, with relatively fertile and rich fields to move to the inhospitable province of Shaanxi in the northwest," says Perry.

Although much of those who started the Long March failed to finish it, the Maoist tactic of avoiding confrontation with the KMT laid the groundwork for the escape of the nationalists at the end of September 1949.

"In the end, Mao's plan paid off and, as a consequence, gained tremendous prestige. From then on, both at the popular and party levels, it became clear that he would be the undisputed leader of the movement," says the Harvard academic. .

Beyond China

But beyond the borders of China, Mao also began to attract the attention of the world's great powers of the time: the closeness of the nationalists to the United States. and of the communists with the Soviet Union it became part of the political pulse between Washington and Moscow.

"It is not possible to understand Mao's initial leadership without the help he received from Moscow. Although he was not well regarded by the Communist International for his interpretation of Marxism, it was Stalin who would help the world communist movement surrender to Mao " Pantsov notes.

According to the biographer, despite the tensions with Mao's visions, Stalin could understand that behind the rebel peasant was a potential leader who would help spread the Soviet model on the eastern borders of the USSR.

And although Stalin's death also marked the end of the "unbreakable" friendship between the two communist nations, the last years of the Soviet leader also became decisive in the formation of the People's Republic of China.

"The correspondence between Mao and Stalin shows that Mao always considered himself a disciple of the Soviet leader and consulted with him on many matters. For example, on the eve of the revolution he asked him about the location of the future Chinese capital, if he should keep it in Beijing or in Shanghai, "says Pantsov.

"Stalin replied that he believed that Beijing should be maintained and so Mao did, proclaimed the Republic from Beijing and there established the new Chinese state. I think this is important to keep in mind, that without Stalin's support it would have been difficult to think of the Mao's triumph . "

Controversial legacy

After the victory of the communists in early October 1949, China began to experience one of the most frantic changes in its history and Mao's personality began to transform as well.

"Mao was a great believer in the dialectic, he was very flexible changing his views when he felt it was appropriate to do so. He began to concentrate enormous power around his figure and project himself in an increasingly authoritarian and dictatorial way," he says. Perry

Since Mao took power in 1949 until his death 27 years later, China experienced a huge internal and external change, and also some of the biggest social upheavals in its recent history.

The nation, which had been lagging for centuries of global political discourse, soon became a force to consider: it tested its first nuclear weapon in 1964 and its political and military influence grew beyond Asia.

"If before the revolution, China had been historically marginalized, that changed to such an extent that it was (US) President Richard Nixon who visited Mao in 1972 and not vice versa, and it was the United States that sought normalization of relations with China, "he adds.

During its almost three decades at the helm of the CCP, the country also experienced a remarkable improvement in public health and education became accessible to millions and millions of people in all the confines of the vast national territory.

"When China and India were founded as states in the late 1940s they had quite similar statistics in terms of literacy and life expectancy. At the end of the Mao era, India's record had not changed much, but China's had an impressive leap, "says Perry.

"I think those rates grew faster and in less time than any other country in the history of the world. And it is important because it meant that Mao bequeathed to his successors the human capital on which they could base subsequent economic reforms," ​​he adds.

The dark years

However, as Mao took some measures of popular benefit that would mark China's future, millions of people also died from starvation or political persecution.

In his book "The Great Famine of Mao" (2010), the historian Frank Dikötter relates how the frantic campaign of the Great Leap Forward, the Maoist initiative to industrialize the country and overcome the western economic model in less than 15 years, caused one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes in history.

Between 20 and 45 million Chinese (figures vary from historian to historian) are believed to have died between 1958 and 1962, victims of forced labor, displacement to the countryside, violence and lack of food caused by Mao's campaign.

"It was the greatest economic failure in the history of the world and caused the greatest famine on record. Simply because that model was miscalculated given that it followed Mao's rather childish reasoning that he had no idea of ​​economics but had the power to do what you want, "adds Pantsov.

Despite its millions of deaths and the economic disaster that it implied for the country, the Great Leap Forward did not mean the end of Mao's power.

The measures he took from then on, led him not only to consolidate and concentrate more and more power.

From 1966 until Mao's death, the Asian nation lived one of its darkest pages of repression and censorship: the so-called Cultural Revolution , a campaign devised by the Chinese leader against supporters of capitalism with the underlying plan to try to eliminate all traces of dissent, according to historians.

With the argument of eliminating deviations that would put the communist future at risk, the denunciations, collective purges, censorship, pressure, social fear and executions were part of a new model that was governed by the cult of the figure of Mao.

"The Chinese leader decided to attack all his potential enemies, but he did it in a different way than other dictators: it was not with the police or with security agencies, but in an even more macabre way: he mobilized ordinary people, the farmers, students, workers, to do their will, "says Perry.

"He was convinced of the power and the special ability he had to organize them, to mobilize them for his own ends. And he used that strategy repeatedly to improve his own position and basically overthrow any other rival," he adds.

The legacy

After his death in 1976, the new Chinese government initiated a process against a group of high Maoist hierarchs (the so-called Band of Four), including Mao's last wife, whom they accused of being the true architects of the hardships of the Cultural Revolution

The CCP presented Mao as a "great hero" , although over the years some of his failings were recognized, as summarized by the popularized saying: "He was 7 0% right and he was 30% wrong".

Despite the fact that his figure is still very present in the day to day and his popularity is still very high -the ranks to enter his mausoleum never fail-, his importance in the politics of the CCP was diminishing ... until Xi.

"With the Xi Jinping government, which many label as a new Mao because of the power it has concentrated, there has been a process in which it is again about rescuing the figure of the great leader," says Pantsov.

And although according to the biographer Xi's power still does not reach everyone who came to gather the founder of the People's Republic, the use of his figure shows how the Chinese propaganda machine continues to use an old feeling that Mao drove: nationalism .

"We must bear in mind that the CCP remains in power and, for the party, Mao is and will be the man who created the communist state and united China as a nation," said the academic at Capital University.

"Although it promotes atheism, communism is like a religion that needs gods and China already has its own," he says.

Source: bbc.com