China was in a state of rapid decline during the 1940’s. In-secure, Crime, Lack of basic human rights, unemployment, gangs and over populated are just some of the words used to describe the state of which china was in. But China was looking for a new leader. Someone to change china’s image and to get them going forward.
Was This The Man China We Looking For?
His name was Mao Zedong,the son of a peasant farmer. He was born in Chaochan, , in 1893 and died in 1976. He grew up working as a library assistant at Peking University and served in the revolutionary army during the 1911 Chinese Revolution. Mao wanted to change the face of china. He was inspired by the . Mao wanted to adopt the idea of the Russian president Lein. He wanted China to become a communist country. This meant everything was shared and that no one owned anything. China was facing a massive problem with poverty already. Lack of food and poor living conditions were becoming of standard around China. Mao had to change this. He immediately introduced changes into China. He wanted to run the country his way. Communism was one of the first things he brought into the new china. Communism is the idea that all people have equal rights and everyone has the same amount of goods. Mao wanted China to become a major industrial country during his reign. In 1958 Mao announced the , an attempt to increase agricultural and industrial production. He set up “ The Great Leap Forward”, this would be a massive change for everyday china, farming would be stopped and life would change greatly. Mao introduced the “Backyard Steel campaign early on in his reign. The plan was to make as much steel as possible, instead of farming. Peasants would be making steel for industry instead of farming. The population of china was so large that if this paid of it would a steel industry off the scale! China has 1.3 billion inhabitants. If everyone of those were making steel it would produce a huge amount of it. But was this all it was made out to be? Well because all of the peasants were making steel instead of farming, Mao’s campaign backfired. Huge amounts of starvation swept across regions of china. It killed millions of peasants. Not a great start for Mao. If this wasn’t enough, Mao still wanted the so called “ Great leap forward” to occur. People of china were brainwashed into going along with Mao’s plan.
