Mao: Tyrant or Great Leader?

A Chinese patriot, a combative revolutionary, a fervent evangelist, a Marxist theorist, a soldier, a statesman and poet, above all Mao was a moralist who deeply believed, as have Chinese since Confucius, that man's goodness must come ahead of his mere economic progress.

China achieved enormous economic progress under Mao. He transformed China into a modern, industrialized socialist state."

Unlike many great leaders, Mao never exercised, or sought, absolute control over day‐to‐day affairs.”

Who would write such blatant communist propaganda?

It was the New York Times in 1976!

This year is the 75th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. After winning the long Chinese civil war, Mao Zedong spoke before a large crowd in Beijing in 1949 and proclaimed, “The Chinese people have stood up.” Thus, was born the PRC.

Beijing, 1949: “The Chinese people have stood up.” Thus, was born the PRC.

Chairman Mao laid the foundation from which contemporary China took off like a rocket over the last 40 years, especially in the last 20 years.

And the Chinese are still standing up against imperialism, which is desperately trying to contain the Middle Kingdom through trade wars, tech wars, geopolitical wars and propaganda wars.

The quote you heard in the beginning of this podcast about Mao sounds shocking, only because the US and the UK have engaged in profound revisionism of history since the 1990s. It all started when the CIA’s color revolution in China failed in 1989 – yeah, we are talking about the Tiananmen Square protests. The globalists really wanted to end communism all over the world when the USSR collapsed.

Chinese students and workers protesting in 1989, the Tienanmen Square crisis, a color revolution instigated by the US.

However, when China continued to cling on to its core ideology, Americans decided to rewrite history and demonize Mao as an incompetent or evil tyrant who killed tens of millions of people. But you can go back and look at US media and even the CIA reports for four decades, from 1950 until 1989, and you will mostly find neutral or positive reports. You will not find a single report on the Great Famine or millions of people dying. I will share a lot of stunning statistics and some CIA reports later in this article.

This is not to say that Mao was flawless. Obviously, nobody is perfect. Even the Chinese Communist Party acknowledges that Mao made mistakes, especially during the cultural revolution. But I will show you what Mao accomplished and what the Western lies are about his record.

Let’s start with the big picture. Mao was greatly admired by the regular Chinese people when he was alive. In fact, a CIA report in 1971 described as a semi-god!

Mao liberated China from the imperialists and their puppet, Chiang Kai-shek. And it was an improbable military achievement – Mao and his poorly armed peasants defeated the opponents who were heavily funded and armed by the US. Mao’s legendary Long March involved trekking for 6000 miles. This inspires the Chinese people even today while dealing with any extraordinary challenges as a nation.

The Long March was a heroic turning point in the Chinese—and human—revolution to rid themselves of imperialism.

If Mao had lost, China would have become a puppet of the US and would have stayed quite poor even today. There would be no Chinese tech companies like Huawei, DJI, ByteDance-TikTok, BYD or Alibaba; and China would be buying all its weapons from the US. Basically, it would not have sovereignty. And China would certainly not have all the amazing infrastructure, 45,000 km of high-speed rail etc.

China's high-tech infrastructure sets standards for the rest of the world, including the "developed West". 

Mao also liberated all the farmers from feudalism, for which the farmers were eternally grateful. Mao was also a feminist – he proclaimed that women hold up half the sky and established equal rights for women. This is why the poor people of China never once rose up against Mao even when the times were difficult. Even today, many villagers in China have Mao’s picture in their homes and public places. And, of course, Mao’s image is on all the denominations of Yuan, the currency. His photo will also stay in the Tiananmen Square forever. Yes, that’s me in the picture:

Mao is everywhere in China, and deservedly so. In the hearts of countless grateful compatriots.

More importantly, Mao turned China into an industrial powerhouse. This was beyond anyone’s expectations after the Soviet Union withdrew all its technical advisors and aid in 1960. But merely four years later, China exploded its first nuclear weapon.

China had such holistic success in so many areas that the US decided to befriend Mao. This is why Nixon flew to Beijing and spent a week with Mao, forging a new alliance.

Nixon in China—1972. China's "opening" to America served to create a fracture in the world socialist bloc, and deepen the ideological rift between China and the USSR.

China in 1949

What a lot of people don’t understand when criticizing Mao is the formidable challenge he faced when he came to power. In 1949, China was extremely poor and faced a myriad of serious problems after suffering through colonialism and the Century of Humiliation.

1.       There were only 10 countries in the world with GDP-per-capita smaller than that of China!

2.       More than 4 out 5 Chinese people could not read or write.

3.       More than 20 million Chinese were addicted to opium

4.       China was a primitive agricultural country with no industrial capacity. People outside the big cities did not even have electricity.

5.       Life expectancy was only 35 and healthcare was nonexistent in much of the country.

6.       Worse, the US was meddling in China’s internal affairs by establishing Taiwan and preposterously claiming it to be the real China. Consider that 0.2% of Chinese were in Taiwan and 99.8% lived in mainland China. That’s democracy with American characteristics.

Given all these, what Mao accomplished was quite astounding. Let’s take a quick look at the stats between 1949 and 1976, when Mao passed away:

 

First, life expectancy under Mao grew from merely 35 years to 64 years. In 1949, Chinese people lived 9 years less than the world average. By 1976, they lived three years longer than the world average.

Under Mao, infant mortality fell by a whopping 75%.

And China’s population grew by 400 million during the Mao era – from 540 million to 940 million. That’s a stunning number!

The Communist party of China also reduced youth illiteracy from close to 90% to 20% under Mao. The UN called it the “single greatest educational accomplishment in human history.” To be deemed literate, a person in rural China had to master 1500 Chinese characters!

Next: Under Mao, 1.4 million barefoot doctors became famous worldwide by delivering free basic medical services, prevention, and education on hygiene and nutrition to hundreds of millions of people.

The "barefot doctor" model could be adopted by many countries, including "developed nations" like the US or the UK ravaged by deep class divisions and oligarchic regimes.

The barefoot doctors integrated Chinese and Western medicine. Thanks to the Patriotic Health Campaigns and barefoot doctors, China eradicated or significantly controlled many diseases such as smallpox, plague, malaria, cholera, tuberculosis, parasitic infections etc. This revolutionary program was so successful that the UN’s World Health Organization and UNICEF considered recommending it for all developing nations.

Mao was also a feminist who emancipated Chinese women from many societal injustices. He famously said that “women hold up half the sky.” Mao got rid of child marriage, arranged marriage, prostitution, and concubines, while ensuring that girls had equal access to education and women had not only the right to work but with equal pay. By the time Mao died, the female labor force participation rate in China was 80%.

 

So, 75% growth in population, 85% growth in life expectancy, 75% reduction in infant mortality, massive improvement in healthcare, and emancipation of women, but Western media have the chutzpah to lie about Mao being a mass murderer. That’s deranged propaganda. [Unfortunately, a huge number of people in the West, especially the USA, the most brainwashed nation in history, believe such malicious idiocies and stubbornly repeat them. Rightwingers in the US swallow these myths about China and much more, calling even dedicated servants of the oligarchy such as Kamala Harris or Barack Obama a "Marxist" or "communists". This is part because the mass media has never made any effort to correct such disinformation, and in fact, as China grew in world power, it has spread more lies about China in the last 25 years. —Ed]

Okay, now let’s take a look at the industrial and technological capabilities that improved under Mao. From the beginning, he understood the importance of transforming the nation into an industrial giant. For example, steel production from 1949 to 1976 grew a staggering 120-fold.

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Of course, you cannot grow a country without plentiful of electricity and energy. Thus, in coal production, China became #3 in the world by 1976, only next to the US and the USSR. In terms of electricity, China’s production increased 50-fold, from 4GWh to 200 GWh.

Although China does not have a lot of oil, the production grew 400-fold under Mao from 0.2 million tonnes to 80 million tonnes.

In the late 1950s, China even started manufacturing its own cars and tractors. The first Chinese car Hongqi was Mao’s favorite and it’s still a luxury car, especially for diplomats.

 

Mao understood the importance of science, technology and research. Just one month after the founding of the PRC in 1949, the Chinese Academy of Sciences was created. Today, it’s the largest research institution in the world and ranks #1 in the world – according to the prestigious Nature Index. China launched its own satellite in 1970; and tested its first nuclear weapon in 1964. During Mao’s era, the communist propaganda posters glorified science.

China today is a scientific powerhouse, leading the world in numerous categories.  

Given all these accomplishments, let’s quickly debunk the Western lies about the Great Leap Forward – from 1958 to 1962 -- when there was supposedly a Great Famine that killed 30-60 million people, and that was all due to Mao.

First, there was no mention of such a famine in the Western media for 40 years since it allegedly happened! The US had spies all over China from the moment PRC was born. Plus, the US had spy balloons and spy planes – such as Lockheed U2 – flying over China. Thus, the CIA knew exactly what was happening within China during the Great Leap Forward.

Thus, let’s see what the CIA reports from 1960, 1961 and 1962 say:

The "Great Famine", and Mao's hand in it were complete fabrications.

·         There was NO widespread famine.

·         The failures of Chinese agriculture have been “principally due to adverse weather conditions.”

·         Also, the Sino-Soviet split in 1960 certainly exacerbated the problems, as all Russian technical experts left China that year. The US sanctions on China also made it difficult for China to buy farm equipment, fertilizer etc.

·         The food grain production in 1960 – the worst year – was 180 million tons, which was the same three years earlier. So, not bad at all.

 

And during the five years of Great Leap Forward, Chinese people had 85 million children! Even during the worst year in this period, 12 million Chinese kids were born. Think about that for a minute.

85 million newborn children during the “Great Famine.” Hmm... sounds like the Great American Stupid Propaganda.

 

Also, ask yourself, why there have been no famines or severe droughts in China since 1960? After all, China has had periodic droughts and famines for centuries.

The answer is that Mao put an end to droughts and famines! That’s right, Mao should be associated with ENDING droughts and famines, and not causing one.

You see, the first thing to realize about China is that much of the agriculture happens in the North which has great soil, but does not get much rain and there are not enough rivers.

The Russo-Chinese alliance also assures robust and assured food inputs for China, as Russia's huge territory becomes warmer due to climate change.

In the South, the problem is reversed! The terrain is not so great, but it gets a lot of rain and there are many rivers. Actually, the South has a problem with too much water and flooding.

To address this issue, Mao built projects for water conservancy – in fact he built a staggering 90,000 hydro-power dams and reservoirs all across China. Most of them were small and medium, but there were some massive ones – like Xinfengjiang and Xinanjiang -  which still serve as the primary source of water for capitalist regions like Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

China now has more dams than the US.

China now has more than half of all the dams in the world.

Mao also dreamed of the Three Gorges Dam and a North-South water diversion projects, which were eventually accomplished by his successors.

So, you can see what rubbish the West has been spreading about Mao. The biggest source of the atrocity propaganda came from the crazy Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, who is no doubt funded by the US deep state. In one of his books, he claimed that China’s prohibition of opium caused greater harm than the drug itself. This is, of course, to condone the opium trafficking by the British into China.

His book “Mao’s Great Famine” – written in 2010 – is the go-to source for all the anti-China loonies.

From the start of the communist era, the capitalists have been telling massive lies about the socialist system and its accomplishments. To defame capitalism/imperialism, all you have to do is just describe them truthfully.

When the book came out first, he could not find a single photo of a malnourished Chinese person from that era (1958-1962). So, Frank Dikotter used a photo of a child beggar from the 1930s, when China was plundered by the Europeans and Americans.

Later, when his literary deception was revealed, he simply re-published the book without the book on the cover. He won several awards for his silly book, because Western propaganda is rewarded with fame and money.

As for the tens of millions of people dying, consider that China’s population was 650 million in 1960. How many people die in a normal situation? Let’s use the mortality rate of 1.7% from the US in 1940. That translates to 11 million people dying in China. Multiply that by 5, you get 55 million. That’s normal.

To summarize, Frank Dikotter lied in four ways:

·         The severe drought lasted for one year and not for five

·         It had nothing to do with Mao or the Great Leap Forward, but was mainly due to nature and China’s unfortunate climate and geographic conditions. And Mao put an end to the droughts.

·         The number of deaths look sensational only because of China’s large population.

·         Also, by CIA’s own reports, China’s population kept GROWING during the Great Leap Forward years. And the GDP growths were also impressive: 18% in 1958, 12% in 1959 and 8% in 1960. These numbers are the opposite of “catastrophic times.”

The facts speak for themselves.

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Conclusion

OK, hope you found this informative. As Mao liked to say, “Seek truths from facts.” But it takes a lot of time to explain facts, while fake news and lies are much easier and more seductive.

Mao was a great and visionary leader, who did what might have seemed impossible in those days. He laid the foundation, from which China went on to achieve greater things over the last 40 years. He was a man of the people, and was especially loved by the farmers, workers and women of China.

Of course, nobody is perfect; and he certainly went overboard in some areas during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). However, the big picture of his enduring legacy is indisputable. And the American/Western lies about him are despicable.

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The end.

S.L. Kanthan

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