Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: perspectives on modern China's History
- 2 China's international relations 1911–1931
- 3 Nationalist China during the Nanking decade 1927–1937
- 4 The Communist movement 1927–1937
- 5 The agrarian system
- 6 Peasant movements
- 7 The development of local government
- 8 The growth of the academic community 1912–1949
- 9 Literary trends: the road to revolution 1927–1949
- 10 Japanese aggression and China's international position 1931–1949
- 11 Nationalist China during the Sino-Japanese War 1937–1945
- 12 The Chinese Communist movement during the Sino-Japanese War 1937–1945
- 13 The KMT-CCP conflict 1945–1949
- 14 Mao Tse-Tung's thought to 1949
- Bibliographical Essays
- Bibliography
- Conversion table: pinyin to Wade-Giles
- Index
- Republican China - physical features">
- References
14 - Mao Tse-Tung's thought to 1949
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: perspectives on modern China's History
- 2 China's international relations 1911–1931
- 3 Nationalist China during the Nanking decade 1927–1937
- 4 The Communist movement 1927–1937
- 5 The agrarian system
- 6 Peasant movements
- 7 The development of local government
- 8 The growth of the academic community 1912–1949
- 9 Literary trends: the road to revolution 1927–1949
- 10 Japanese aggression and China's international position 1931–1949
- 11 Nationalist China during the Sino-Japanese War 1937–1945
- 12 The Chinese Communist movement during the Sino-Japanese War 1937–1945
- 13 The KMT-CCP conflict 1945–1949
- 14 Mao Tse-Tung's thought to 1949
- Bibliographical Essays
- Bibliography
- Conversion table: pinyin to Wade-Giles
- Index
- Republican China - physical features">
- References
Summary
Mao Tse-tung's thought, as it had found expression prior to the establishment of the Chinese People's Republic, was at once the synthesis of his experience down to 1949, and the matrix out of which many of his later policies were to grow. This chapter seeks to document and interpret the development of Mao's thought during the first three decades of his active political life. It also tries to prepare the reader better to understand what came after the conquest of power. While stressing those concerns which were uppermost in Mao's own mind in the earlier years, it also devotes attention to ideas of which the implications were fully spelled out only in the 1950s and 1960s.
As will be abundantly clear from earlier chapters, the period from 1912 (when Mao, at the age of 18½, returned to his studies after half a year as a soldier in the revolutionary army) to 1949 (when he became the titular and effective ruler of a united China) was one of ceaseless and far-reaching political, social and cultural change. Mao lived, in effect, through several distinct eras in the history of his country during the first half-century of his life, and the experience which shaped his perception of China's problems, and his ideas of what to do about them, therefore varied radically not only from decade to decade, but in many cases from year to year. The present effort to bring some order and clarity to the very complex record of Mao's thought and action adopts an approach partly chronological and partly thematic.
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- The Cambridge History of China , pp. 789 - 870Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986
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