Mao Tse-Tung was different. Different from other great leaders, Different from other distinguished people and Different from the rest of the world. His difference set him apart from other members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and his difference inspired many to support him. Mao was a different type of leader; He led because he thought he was the best person to lead, not because the people thought he was the best suited. He led because he believed he could change china from a distant city to a forerunner of Politics and Ideas. Mao was different, and when you are different from all other people, you can present ideas and actions that lead others to be different as well.

Mao had many different ideas and virtues that were to spread around china. He envisioned china as a great school, a place where everybody is different, everybody is equal, and everybody learns new things. He envisioned China as a perfect school. Over time more people began to realize his ideas and His ideas were put under their own sub category of Maoism. The support behind Maoism and the energy that Mao focused into bringing his ideas to life gave Maoism the fuel that it needed to start on the path forward to bring those ideas to life.

Mao was a distinguished person in many ways and his difference preventing him from becoming just another person. During the beginning of his life Mao became a notable and influential person swaying many to his visions of Maoism. Mao was also very influenced by a man named Karl Marx. Marx was a communist advocate who worked with the working class to establish improvements to communism. Marx also applied the theory that “no group could exist without its opposite (a slave could not exist without its master and vice versa)”. Marx had many ideas but few of them were useful without further adaptation.

During his later years working for the Chinese Communist Party Mao, as well as two other Chinese Communist party workers, Zhu De and Zhou Enlai, adapted the ideas of Vladimir Illich Ulyanov. Ulyanov had also been inspired by Marx and had successfully created a revolution in Russia. All of These Ideas and Values led to the Cultural Revolution of China, one of the great turning points in Chinese history.

The beginning of the Cultural Revolution was rocky and seemed to spawn from nothing in particular, perhaps it was spawn of Mao’s difference or perhaps it was spawned from an apparent stumbling point of communist China. Nothing was published about the Cultural Revolution until November of 1965 when Zhou Enlai added a note to an article written by Mao condemning a playwright and many other artists as “reactionary bourgeois authorities” (anti progress, capitalist, authorities). Zhou said that Cultural Revolution was to be an academic discussion. This was supposed to mean that the government was not to support either side of the argument.

In February of 1966 the Political Bureau passed the February resolution which said that academic discussions must not lead to persecution. Mao had objected to this resolution but was ignored in the favor of the resolution. Three months later Mao canceled the February Resolution and claimed that all dissident scholars and their ideas had to be eliminated. All over china it was very clear that the revolution had started. Articles in papers were condemning these artists and many were persecuted. All of this marked the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution Mao had a problem, how to get the revolution to spread everywhere in china. He found a solution to that problem with the Red Guard. The Red Guard was a group of students who were offered the chance to see china and in return spread the Cultural Revolution to all of china. The main job of the Red Guard was to search out Mao’s enemies and deal with them violently. However, as with all revolutions, there was some opposition to the Cultural Revolution. Some of the Red Guard had begun to question the violent methods Mao was using against his enemies. The resistance then marched on Beijing; this greatly infuriated the leaders of the Cultural Revolution; the resistance was hunted down and killed shortly after their march on the nation’s capital.

The people and leaders of china began to resist more as the revolution progressed and the Red Guard became scattered, meeting conflicts in all parts of china. Even when this happened the authorities behind the Cultural Revolution were contented to blame it on the “reactionary bourgeois authorities”. Though Zhou Enlai had gotten approval from Mao to protect some of the scholars that were being discriminated against, the Cultural Revolution could not be stopped and so Mao and Zhou had to let it carry on its dreadful road of destruction.

Only two years after starting the brutal Cultural Revolution Mao was now trying to find a way to close the war in favor of the rebels. Mao tried to convene the ninth Congress to find the best way for china to move forward out of this revolution. But by the time he came up with this idea two people had already seized control of the two sides of the revolution and because of the enormous amount of power that they controlled they had no wish for the revolution to stop.

The confusion caused by this conflict sent the government in to a downward spiral. The rightfully elected chairman was sentenced to death, so the government needed to be rebuilt. And so, national people’s congress reconvened. During this time that the government was restructured one of the leaders of the two sides of the revolution, Lin Biao wanted to seize the power of the chairman of the national people’s congress. He intended to do this by winning over Mao even though Mao had said himself that there would be no single chairman. After denying to be a chairman Lin made plans to kill Mao and take power himself. Mao had taken precautions against this, thinking that Lin would try this is not given his way, so Lin was thwarted.

The end of the Cultural Revolution came when the Chinese communist party found that Lin had planned to kill Mao. They were appalled that any person would try to kill a peace maker for the sake of keeping their own power; they condemned Lin to death. Mao was the leader in the creation of a great useless tragedy, the creator of peace in this tragedy and the person who led the party of communists. He did all of this because he was different from all of the other leaders. He was not one of the leaders that said “It has already happened, I don’t care anymore”, he was a leader who noticed he was wrong and took actions to prevent further wrongdoing. On September 9th 1976 Mao Tse-Tung, a savior and creator of a new china and a creator of tragedy, died. Though Mao died a new China lives on, different from other countries, just as Mao was different from everyone else.

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