ANITA DUNN'S SPEECH (EXCERPT)

A lot of you have a great deal of ability. A lot of you work hard. Put them together and that answers the why not question. There is usually not a good reason. And then the third lesson and tip actually come from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa, not often coupled with each other, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is you're going to make choices, you're going to challenge, you're going to say, "Why not?" You're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here's the deal: these are your choices, they're no one else's.

In 1947, when Mao Tse-Tung was being challenged within his own party, on his plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-Shek and the nationalist Chinese held the cities. They had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side. And people said, "How can you win? How can you do this? How can you do this against all odds against you?" And Mao Tse-Tung said, "You fight your war and I'll fight mine."

Think about that for a second. You don't have to accept the definition of how to do things and you don't have to follow other people's choices and paths [or, in the past?]. Okay. It is about your choices and your paths. You fight your own war. You lay out your own path. You figure out what is right for you. You don't let external definition define how good you are internally. You fight your own war. You let them fight their's. Everybody has their own path.
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GLENCOE WORLD HISTORY TEXTBOOK (EXCERPTS)

Some party members fled to the mountainous Jiangxi Province south of the Chiang Jiang. They were led by the young Communist organizer Mao Zedong. Unlike most other leading members of the Communist Party, Mao was convinced that a Chinese revolution would be driven by the poverty-stricken peasants in the countryside rather than by the urban working class.

Chiang Kai-Shek now tried to root the Communists out of their urban base in Shanghai and their rural base in Jiangxi Province. He succeeded in the first task in 1931. Most party leaders in Shanghai were forced to flee to Mao's base in South China.

Chaing Kai-Shek then turned his forces against Mao's stronghold in Jiangxi Province. Chiang's forces far outnumbered Mao's, but Mao made effective use of guerilla tactics, using unexpected maneuvers like sabotage and subterfuge to fight the enemy. Four slogans describe his methods: "When the enemy advances, we retreat! When the enemy halts and camps, we trouble them! When the enemy tries to avoid battle, we attack! When the enemy retreats, we pursue!"
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CHIANG KAI-SHEK ON COMMUNISM

"...the Communists are a disease of the heart."
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GLENCOE WORLD HISTORY TEXTBOOK (EXCERPTS CONTINUED)

The Communist Party, under the leadership of its chairman, Mao Zedong, now ruled China. In 1955, the Chinese government launched a program to build a socialist society. To win the support of the peasants, lands were taken from the wealthy landlords and given to poor peasants. About two-thirds of the peasant households in China received land under the new program. Most private farmland was collectivized, and most industry commerce was nationalized.

Chinese leaders hoped that collective farms would increase food production, allowing more people to work in industry. Food production, however, did not grow.

To speed up economic growth, Mao began a more radical program, know as the Great Leap Forward, in 1958. Existing collective farms, normally the size of a village, were combined into vast communes. Each commune contained more than thirty thousand people who lived and worked together. Mao hoped this program would enable China to reach the final stage of communism--the classless society--before the end of the twentieth century. The government official slogan promised the following: "Hard work for a few years, happiness for a thousand."

The Great Leap Forward was a disaster. Bad weather and the peasants' hatred of the new system drove food production down. As a result, almost fifteen million people died of starvation. In 1960, the government began to break up the communes and return to collective farms and some private plots.

In 1966, Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The Chinese name literally meant "great revolution to create a proletarian (working-class) culture." A collection of Mao's thoughts, called the Little Red Book, was hailed as the most important source of knowledge in all areas.

To further the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards were formed. These were revolutionary groups composed largely of young people. Red Guards set out across the nation to eliminate the "Four Olds"--old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. The Red Guard destroyed temples, books written by foreigners, and foreign music. They tore down street signs and replaced them with ones carrying revolutionary names. The city of Shanghai even ordered that red (the revolutionary color) traffic lights would indicate that traffic could move, not stop.

Vicious attacks were made on individuals who had supposedly deviated from Mao's plan. Intellectuals and artists accused of being pro-Western were especially open to attack. Key groups, however, including Communist Party members, urban professionals, and military officers, did not share Mao's desire for permanent revolution. People, disgusted by the actions of the Red Guards, began to turn against the movement.
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ESSORTMENT WEBSITE: "WHO IS MAO TSE TUNG?"

The Communist successes under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung propelled Mao into legendary status as leader of the Chinese Communist Party, having proved that under the proper leadership, his people could march to victory. In the fifties and sixties, Mao Tse-tung acted as leader of the both the Chinese revolution and the Chinese Communist Party. Distraught at the present state of his country, whose fruits of victory were being to sour, he became determined to launch a second revolution with an objective of a socialist utopia. Then Mao was suspicious almost to the point of paranoia, fearing that those who had sworn loyalty to him were turning against him in droves. He also had an ingrained distrust for the intellectuals whose interests were slowly turning from the ideological to the technological. He feared that the increasing professional bureaucracy he had witnessed taking place in the Soviet Union was destined to occur in his own country as well.

During this time period, Marxism was fast becoming an intriguing alternative for many Chinese intellectuals, with Communism appealing directly to their growing fears of the ongoing dissension within Chinese society. China's intellectuals realized that they were no longer standing on high moral ground, and became confused about what their purpose was in relation to the state. The Chinese people were also growing weary of Mao's ideologies and were even beginning to question whether the implementation of those ideologies had done more harm than good. This was something he could not tolerate.

This intolerance marked the beginning of what is known to historians as "The Great Leap Forward," a misguided program aimed at increasing agricultural production and creating overnight economic success. The plan was to employ millions of farmers in the construction of roads, dams, and backyard steel furnaces, but the only notable result from this plan was a sharp reduction in the amount of food being produced. Although the transfer of industries to local control began as the primary agenda in "The Great Leap Forward," through causing an epidemic of famine, it wound up killing approximately 30 million people. "The Great Leap Forward" in reality forced China to take huge steps backward in its economic and social development. This breakdown of Chinese society was a direct result of a totalitarian regime's effort to industrialize too rapidly, and the death count is reflective of the regime's blatant disregard for humanity.

Chairman Mao also launched "The Socialist Education Movement" in the early sixties, whose primary purpose was to restore ideological purity. This movement was designed to stir up excitement and ardent support for the revolution, while at the same time intensifying the class struggles which were already prevalent. The drafting of intellectuals for manual labor was part of the party's plan to inspire professionals and intellectuals to develop a higher regard for the party's objectives. Anti-Maoists were especially annoyed with Mao's relentless efforts to promote his propaganda, which not only served to reinforce the party's ideologies, but to slander the priority system and beliefs of the intellectuals.

After the Mao had no choice but to resign himself to the failures of "The Great Leap Forward" and "The Socialist Education Movement," he began to become increasingly less important in Chinese Government, acting almost solely as a figurehead. The one place where Mao's influence had not yet diminished, however, was within the People's Liberation Army. Mao used the influence he had over its governing Defense Committee to instigate "The Cultural Revolution," which lasted from 1966 to 1976.
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