The year is 1975. Leaders of newly independent nations have come to Mao asking for advice on how to rule their countries. What do you believe would be three pieces of advice Mao would give them? The advice should include at least one positive... what to do and at least one negative... what to avoid. In what ways would the countries benefit from following Mao's advice?
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Mitchel Barry
ReplyDeleteIf a newly independent nation were to go to Mao for advice, I have no doubt he would give it to them. One key point in his advice would likely be to control the thoughts of the people. This would lead to a nation that would follow their ruler without question, even when this ruler makes grievous errors in policies. We see this occur in Mao’s history through his struggle meetings, and the fact that he kept the peoples favor even after events such as the Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Great Leap Forward. He would also likely tell the nation to avoid keeping the same party members in charge for too long. He is seen doing this in a massive way in his “Cultural Revolution,” where he called all the youth to rise against the government he was integral in forming and was head of. This would likely be the piece of advice that would be hardest for other nations to accept, as revolution is usually an action that the ruling power makes a massive effort to avoid. One last nugget of wisdom I believe Mao would give would be to industrialize as much as possible, as this was one of Mao’s goals throughout his time as Chairman. He passed a large number of plans, some of which were the two five year plans, and the Great Leap Forward, to bring China years into the future so that they could match and even overtake the European nations.
M.Barry Word Count: 256
I believe Mao’s advice would be heavily centered on creating an independent yet fully standardized nation, so as to create the most efficient and effective state possible. Following the example of his own plans for China, Mao would first and foremost advise against becoming dependent on any outside influences besides possibly China itself, as the vast majority of the world was capitalist, and the other major communist power, the USSR, was a variant of communism that Mao heavily disagreed with. His main point of advice would be to not allow nations such as the USA to influence their countries, given the history China had with the Americas. He would promote becoming self-sustaining, as a part of this. He would encourage plans he himself had used, such as the five-year plan, or the communes. The commune movement would be chosen over the collectives due to the extreme failure of the collectives in the eyes of the peasants, as well as the far superior popularity of the communes. He would likely try to promote his own failed endeavor of creating steel factories, though he’d have developed a new plan to make it more effective than the failed attempts of China in earlier years. His last piece of advice would be to the leader exclusively, that they should not trust another person besides themselves when it came to matters of the nation. This is very heavily evidenced by Mao’s own heavy purges throughout the CCP during his entire reign, and the fact that his own retirement was not of his own volition purely, but heavily influenced by the CCP party members.
ReplyDeleteJared Wheaton Word Count: 268
The first piece of advice that Mao would suggest is that there needs to be policies that unify the population’s ideals. One method would be the struggle meeting, which puts everyone in the country on equal footing with one another and makes it quite difficult for one to possess anti-government emotions as they would be forced to reveal these sentiments. This allows for the new leaders of the government to change the people’s ideals into one that would be beneficial to the nation.
ReplyDeleteAnother piece of advice that Mao would suggest to the leaders is that they should become self-sustaining. This would allow for the new nations to develop their economy and make it so that they were not dependent on others. During wars, this would be especially helpful as blockades would be difficult to implement as there would not be many imports the nation would depend on. However, Mao would advise that countries avoid policies such as the Great Leap Forward. Although this policy had great intentions and theoretically would have worked, the fact that competition amongst collectives existed made it difficult for the general population to survive. The quotas were being overfilled that there wasn’t enough food to feed the people. Eventually, this caused a great famine throughout China and slowed down industrialization within the nation.
Finally, Mao would say that the leaders need to be authoritarian. This would allow for them to have utter control of the country and allow for the nation to flourish as long as they possessed proper plans to do so. Also, Mao would say that the leaders should never allow for other government officials to be comfortable within their positions as this may cause them to be corrupt. Instead, Mao would suggest that the leaders get rid of these officials once a certain duration has passed and appoint a new person to take over.
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One of the biggest pieces of advice that Mao would give the leaders of another country would be that the government and its leader needs to be idolized and revered and the thoughts and opinions of the people heavily monitored and moderated. This allows for complete control over the country which would let the government and its leader do whatever they felt the best course of action would be while (if done correctly) retaining the loyalty of the people even if the call made by the government ended up being a disaster. Another thing that Mao would suggest is industrialization. One of the things that Mao worked hard toward was as much industrialization as possible for his country. He believed that industrialization was one of the primary ways to strengthen a country and put it ahead of other countries, so he worked hard toward achieving as much as he could. He would then suggest against dependency on other countries. He believed that a country that doesn't depend heavily on other countries for resources or goods is a strong country, especially with the two previous earlier pieces of advice being taken into consideration and enforced throughout the country. With the strong authoritarian leadership pushing a country united under goals and ideals toward independency and a high level of industrialism, the country is bound to be successful and rise up to be better than all of the other countries surrounding it, provided that everything was executed correctly. It would be important, though, that the total control over the country and push for industrialism didn't result in revolutionary attitudes and overworked citizens, however, because that would end up just destroying the country from the inside out.
ReplyDeleteWord count: 285
First of all I think Mao should advice the new leader to be making sure that they keep their people’s opinion in mind when they are making important decisions. By doing this it can insure the leader to have better control of the country and it has the people on their good side which is what they want because then it will be easier for them to have complete control of the country. Struggle meetings are a good to keep everyone at equal terms which causes the people to keep the loyalty to the new leader because they feel like they aren’t just favoring one social class. Another thing would probably to change party leaders every once in a while. By this I mean like political party because this would keep the people from questioning the government. If they see that they same party is constantly in power the people would start questioning the government’s authority. Last but not least I feel like the new leader should industrialize as much as they possibly can.
ReplyDeleteAndrea Mackey
Mao advice would recommend a fully standardized and industrialized nation that has a population that can be regulated through social campaigns and ideology control in order to achieve maximum efficiency.
ReplyDeleteMao would recommend the nations to stray away from countries that have conflicting ideologies in order to avoid outside influences interfere with the people of the nation. If people of the developing communist nation were exposed to outside ideals then it could catalyze a loss in power and loyalty, something Mao frowned upon. In order to maintain approved government ideology and policy, he would suggest to implement socially-concentrated punishments and policies such as struggle meetings and the Three and Five Antis Campaign. Through the campaigns, the leaders can promote their image, monitor and moderate opinions, and create loyalty.The conformity allows for the complete control for the government and the leader. This maintained popular opinion in case some sort of government created quota or economic policy ends up in disaster.
Another thing Mao would suggest is to build an industrialized nation that is comparable to developed nations such as Great Britain . Considering that he believed that industrialization was one of the significant factors to strengthen a country and compete with other countries, he made sure to implement quotas and forcibly recommended the creation of iron to achieve such goal. By creating an industrialized nation with desired goods, the need to depend on other countries would be minimal. Mao believed that a country does not depend on their nations for goods or resources is a strong, independant country.
If the country maintains a strong authoritarian leadership that pushes for an industrialized nation with a loyal and controlled population, the country will model or be more successful than that of Mao if revolutionary thought and the spread of ideals was successfully suppressed
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