Evaluating Mao and China

To what extent has nationalism driven Chinese history?
Chinese history has been guided to the global economic power player that it has become today, based largely on its nationalism. A strong sense of national pride and subsequent perceived competition with the rest of the world for superiority has given birth to a ‘technological revolution’ in more recent years. One of the fundamental principles inherent of a nationalistic society is the shared sense of “all for one, one for all”, which in turn creates an ‘us versus them’ philosophy, and has been present in Chinese history for hundreds of years. Thus one can deduce that nationalism has greatly driven Chinese history.

Was Maoism successful for unsuccessful?
I feel that Maoism significantly diminished the quality of life for the peasant communities. In the beginning those communities were hopeful that Mao’s vision for change would improve the peoples ability to feed and support their families by giving them land through the land reform, as well as healthcare, education and housing. The people were able to take control of their lives in order to achieve sustainability. By these events the peasants saw they would benefit from Maoism and therefore supported the communistic regime. Soon after the peasants quickly realized that Maoism was not as it seemed. With the start of industrial projects, Mao began looking to the peasants to pay for his vision through socialized agriculture called cooperatives. This movement created the next phase of Mao’s regime and moved the country quickly into collectivization. The peasants were forced to give up their land, livestock, and tools allowing the government to control the crops grown by each cooperative as well as how much of the crop each family could keep and forcing the rest to be sold to the state for unreasonably low prices. Rightfully so, the peasants were very upset by this and Mao was forced to reconsider ways to finance his industrial goals for China. Maoism was successful in leading to the modernization of China; however, it was unsuccessful as an ideology due to its destructive effects on its people.

How do you evaluate the transformation of China?
The transformation of China would not have been set in motion without the necessary disadvantages that accompanied Maoism. The give and take philosophy presented by Mao forced the producers back into peasantry by forcing them to relinquish their part of production back to the government for the betterment of China.

Clearly the Great Leap Forward was a failure, but was the transformation of China in such a radical way necessary before the new "modern" China could emerge?
Yes. The Great Leap Forward may have been a failure overall, but was most definitely necessary due in large part to the large amount of capital, agriculture, & overall industry it produced. This catapulted China into a modern era of newly realized ability to compete with the rest of the world’s powers.

Has command economy been successful/unsuccessful?
A command economy has been very successful for China. Their recent history of global competition and rise to that point in the world can be attributed in large part to the government control. Reinvestment in technological advances and labor has transformed China into one of the most successfully industrialized and export driven economies on Earth.