Mao

For this week's blog entry I listened to a historypodcast.net podcast titled "How did Mao come into power – and how did he keep it?" by Kim Sonderborg. Mao begins his discussion by comparing and contrasting Mao to Hitler, Stalin and their own respective rises to power. Sonderborg splits his discussion into three main parts 1. 1921-1937 the establishment of  the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and early fighting with the nationalist Koumintang (KMT). 2. 1937-1949 The CCP's war against the Japanese in WW2 and then the resumption of fighting with the KMT and ending with the KMT's retreat to Taiwan.  3. 1939-1976 Mao's consolidation of power.

Sonderborg begins by detailing the CCP's beginnings, and attempts to survive after, essentially, being hunted across China by the KMT, an organization they used to be affiliated with. Sonderborg points to Mao's "Eight Points", which demanded respect for citizens from the Communist Red Army, as one of the main sources of victories for the CCP over the KMT after WW2. The Eight Points along with promises for land reform allowed the communists to gain and maintain a large amount of support from Chinese peasants and middle class after the Japanese evacuation of China. Sonderborg then discusses the relationship between the failures of the Great Leap Forward, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a purging of "bourgeois ideology" that "snuck in," and Mao's Cult of Personality, in which Mao effectively becomes a Prophet or God for the Chinese people. Sonderborg argues that Mao used radical reforms to all aspects of Chinese life to both improve China and to consolidate power by eliminating competition or dissent.

Overall, I thought the podcast was interesting and informative, but suffered from being overly basic and a little too short. If you are interested and unfamiliar with the subject matter, I would certainly check it out, but it's probably nothing that you couldn't find in an entry level textbook on the subject.