DISASTER PLAN

How a lethal mixture of arrogance, fear and blind faith condemned millions of Chinese to death

- Chris Fenton

In 1940 China was in a state of utter turmoil. The country was overrun with foreign invaders, the government was powerless, and the workers fought among themselves for the scraps falling from the tables of petty warlords. How had the celestial kingdom come to this? The communists knew the answer - through the arrogance and pomposity of China's noble emperors. Communism changed all that and chased away the ‘foreign devils’, pushed aside their rightist puppets and by 1949 had established a people's China. The self-styled driving force behind this revolution was Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and a man of the people.

Rising from proletariat beginnings in rural Hunan, Mao had grown up with revolutionary fervour in his veins. Having witnessed the destruction of Chinese power and heritage during the early 20th century, he had become a committed nationalist and later a communist, dedicating himself to the restoration of Chinese power through collective struggle. He had seen the Chinese people's spirit when properly motivated during the Communist Party's retreat into the mountains (the Long March), and the triumph of communist ideals after the destruction of the fascists led by Chiang Kai-shek, his greatest rival. Now, under his leadership, China would be great again.