Good Intentions, Bad Results - Reflective Journal #3

Mao Zedong

Photo courtesy of Sodahead.com

For years, I’ve been presented with the idea that Mao Zedong was a bad guy. He’s credited with being a dictator, oppressive, and cruel. However, this week and previous weeks have changed my mind about him. As we learned about the PRC and Mao’s rule, I discovered that he wasn’t really a bad guy after all; he actually had good intentions. Inspired by Stalin’s successful Five Year Plans in Russia, Mao decided to try his own hand at it. China needed the industrial boost and to rebuild its economy after years of civil war and political instability from the PRC and ROC’s struggles.

Mao’s first Five Year Plan in China, with the aid of the Soviet Union, was a triumph. Goals that they had stated were exceeded by 120%-180%. Encouraged by this, Mao began his second five-year plan, grandly titled the “Great Leap Forward.” Mao is often blamed for the death of 45 million people during this time but it really wasn’t his fault. During this five-year plan, people got a little too enthusiastic and farmers began overstating their crop yields to support Mao’s efforts to advance the nation. The government, needing to supply the cities and repay the Soviet Union, continued taking crops from the peasants according to these inflated numbers. Unfortunately for the peasants, they couldn’t control the numbers that authorities above them were reporting and the common people were left with less and less food to sustain themselves with. Not only were there exaggerated reports of crop yields, but the peasants were also using bad farming techniques that Mao had naïvely supported and many farming tools were also gone thanks to a backyard steel campaign that took all the steel that people owned. Even more sadly, a famine struck the land, harming further the farming production. I can’t help but feel sorry for Mao, who was only trying to help the people. He even tried to moderate the goals of agriculture, but he was only foolishly led to believe the peasants’ false reports by enthusiasts. Mao also believed that the people should have a voice, and led the “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom and a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend” campaign, promoting free speech and the people’s constructive criticism. Watching the video in class where peasants shared stories of their villages dying was incredibly heartbreaking. China was on a potential path to success, but a series of unfortunate events led to the failure of its plans. It’s saddening and somewhat disappointing to think that China could have progressed greatly, but unluckily, its good intentions led to trouble. 


I commented on Kevin's blog here.