That was his first step to his Revolution. As soon as he took away the rice, the lower class civilians started to starve. Zedong’s reasons for his acts are almost as insane as Hitler’s. He believed that, “ Showing how power is seized with violence has to be maintained with violence.”(Dikotter 3). In 1927, Chiang Kai-Shek, the leader of the Kuomintang defied Zedong’s ideals and believed that Communism was a bad influence to the Republic of China and he began to purge the Communist forces. During the civil war with the ROC, the CPC made the Red Army, with more than 200,000 members, and they clashed with the Kuomintang. After a long battle between the two, it finally came to an end in 1949 with Mao Zedong as victor. Zedong then claimed that China was now a Communist Country, with Beijing as capital. After their victory, Zedong lead the troops to a safe haven, that is now known as the Long March.(“Zedong” 3) In 1958, The Great Leap Forward began and that is when things got worse. After Zedong put all the farmers in giant communes, he then took everything they had away. The people began to starve causing tens of millions to die.(“Zedong” …show more content…
It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.” Mao Zedong said after he took ⅓ of all the grains, which was way more than he took before in 1959. The people of China began to kill each other to try and take over, but that did not work in the slightest. Mao Zedong has caused over 45 million premature deaths in the the span of 1958 to 1962. The political party used food as blackmail or a weapon saying, “He who does not work shall not eat.” The methods they used to kill the people who disobeyed the order were gory. Over 2 to 3 million people were tortured to death or just killed. The Hebei archives say, “When it comes to ways on how people are killed, some are buried alive, like the little boy in the small village of Hunan just for stealing a handful of grain, some are executed like when Zedong publicly executed 3 million chinese who were apparently “counter-revolutionaries”, others would be chopped to pieces or mangled to death.” Also Zedong would often send his rivals on suicide missions so they would be out of his way. He would also be willing to give up 300 million chinese to make World Revolution in 1957. On September 9th 1976, Mao Zedong died of old age. After Zedong killed millions and failed to reach his goals, he resigned and died at the age of 82 years.(“Zedong” 3) Everyone in China was shocked but relieved that he was gone. The people easily bounced