Explanation:
Mao Zedong is most famous for being the leader of the Chinese Communist revolution and the founding father of the modern Chinese state the People’s Republic of China founded in 1949. In most western countries such as the USA, UK , Canada and Australia, Mao Zedong is depicted as the mindless dictator that killed tens of millions of people for seemingly no particular reason other than ‘power corrupts’ or simple incompetence . Lesser known to most people in the English speaking world is how the Chinese view Mao Zedong. The Chinese view of Mao is an image of a 20th century slavery abolitionist, a giant of anti-colonialism with 23 years of guerrilla warfare experience to his name, the most accomplished fighter for women’s rights in all of human history, the leader who united all of China, a champion of racial equality, a working class hero who defeated poverty on an unprecedented scale and challenged the world’s mightiest empires head on in war and came out victorious. With this said is it really no wonder that Mao Zedong is China’s most popular historic leader?
China before the revolution
Before the Chinese Communists came into power the Chinese people lived very different lives. China was an underdeveloped country which was divided between numerous warlords, tribes, and hereditary landlord dynasties which fought among each other for power and wealth. The average lifespan of a Chinese person was mid 40’s and hospitals were a luxury mostly reserved for the wealthy. Illiteracy was common and remote tribes practiced slavery. Some areas of China were so backwards and underdeveloped that people conducted headhunting rituals where they would kill people and put their heads in baskets outside their villages because they believed it would make the crops grow. Women were treated as property and were kept out of education, many were even bought and sold as slaves under the guise of ‘domestic servants’.
It can be very easy to poke holes in China’s modern day human rights record but to to get an idea of how China changed after the Communists came to power, let’s first look at China before the Communists won the revolution.
So how did the Communists change China?
Women’s rights
Before the communists came to power Chinese women were not considered as equals, particularly in South China women were bought and sold as slaves under the guise of “domestic servants”. These women bought and sold into slavery were known as “mui-tsai” which in Cantonese means “little sister”. It was very rare for a women to receive an education before the communist revolution because at this time in Chinese history women were usually sent to their husband’s household after marriage. This meant that to educate a woman was seen as not benefiting the family paying for the education. Many peasants could not afford to keep their daughter due to poverty and so would sell her to become a “mui-tsai” so that the rest of the family would not starve. American feminist author Agnes Smedley who took part in the Chinese revolution wrote extensively on the mui-tsai in her German language writings.
