Father of Chinese Communism: Chairman Mao Zedong {Part 8: The Inevitable occurs)
In this final post on Mao Zedong’s life, we discuss the last few years of the Father of Modern China’s life. Previous posts can be found by clicking here.
The purging of real and imaginary enemies with the revolution lasted for well over a decade claiming the lives of over 2 million well educated Chinese while millions more were sent to labor camps. Instead of the promised utopian Chinese society, Mao only delivered a society governed by terror. Questions remain as to whether he actually built and unified China in the right sense, but we are certain that his legacy of needless deaths is too great a number; a total might never be gotten. It is said that in the League table of Horrors, he comes third.
Mao and Nixon(former U.S Presdent)
In the early 1970s, Mao was approaching his 80th birthday and at this moment was battling with health issues. By 1974, he was silenced by a degenerative condition which made him unintelligible to everybody except his personal nurse who looked after him. To anybody’s awe, even with the current condition of his incapacity to lead, the fear he had sown into the party members left him untouchable at the top. Mao saw himself lose the power of speech in the last two years of his life and only burbled, but then, as long as he was alive nobody dared to move against him.
A sick Mao still calling the shots in the nation.
With his health deteriorating by the day, China’s progress and development as a nation was halted. Behind the scenes, Mao was ravaged by an ever increasing sense of paranoia. He held on to power for 27 years and he lived with no peace of mind the days of his life. He had a total lack of empathy for other people’s lives. Most importantly, in his final years, Mao was aware that his Communist Party believed he had failed. Mao never achieved his dream of building China into a strong Military Superpower and to dominate the world. He died full of self-pity and dissatisfaction but not for the tragedy he brought on the Chinese people costing about 70 million Chinese lives in peace time as a result of him pursuing his dream.
Mao's embalmed body
Communists paying their last respect to Chairman Mao Zedong
Finally, on September 9, 1976 after spending 27 years as the Supreme Leader of China, Chairman Mao Zedong died. His passing was marked by the Communist party with quite hysterical scenes of national mourning. Almost right after his death, China is reborn and Mao’s ideology is almost totally discarded. Most the people Mao had imprisoned later became leaders in the new China. But still, his portrait can be seen hanging almost everywhere in China. This is because the ruling Communist party would be undermined if they admitted to all the many atrocities committed by this very man. Hence the fact still remains that Chairman Mao Zedong is the father of Modern China as we know it.
With this post we come to the end of our biography series on the life of Chairman Mao Zedong. I hope you were able to learn a few things and extract vital information from the posts? Do drop comments and suggestions. The next post will be a biography of another historical figure. Thank you and #staysafe.
AS COMPOSED BY QUE