It wasn’t said about Mao however it adapts to his ideas and aspirations. There are numerous hypotheses regarding the impact that Mao’s leadership has had over China. Mao’s legacy is that the system he established was idealistic. It did not align with the rest of Western culture after the Second World War, but with the population and vast resources that were readily available, “Mao founded Marxist study groups in Changsha.”2 This source from a school history textbook is highly trustworthy as there are many other sources backing up the truth behind it. China was left with a regime that did not respond in correlation with the rest of the world.
Buddhism originated in India, but after the fall of the Han Dynasty in 220 C.E., it gained many converts in China. The people responded rather positively to the spread of Buddhism in China, because after their kingdom fell into turmoil, it was also torn apart by power hungry warlords. They responded this way, because not only did China have to deal with nomadic invaders from the north, but they also had feudal warlords fighting over the land. Because of this, people needed something to have faith in, so they turned and found it in Buddhism. People also tried to turn away from all the sorrow, so they accepted this new foreign religion coming in, regardless of the political situation in China at the time.
The “drama” of the visit created hype as never seen before.14 The American people believed in the sentimentality of the trip.15 They really thought that this trip would change the course of the whole world forever, which needless to say, it was not. Television turned “what should have been a useful, diplomatic operation into a theatrical piece,” remarked a disgusted writer of the time. He believes that television was used to make the trip more than it was. He thinks that the trip to China was “propaganda-d” into the hearts and minds of the American people to show Nixon as the favorable candidate.16 Gallup polls indicate that the President’s approval rating before the announcement of his trip to China was 40.2%. But after the announcement it rose to 49.7%, an increase of almost ten percent!17 It is clear that the Nixon administration wished for the visit to China to affect the voting preferences of the American people and to make them see their President in a new light.
The Hundred Flowers campaign and the Cultural Revolution had several benefits for Mao, in some respects they allowed for Mao to gage the feeling of the country and try to reconnect the party with the people to prevent bureaucracy. Another possible advantage could’ve been the advancement of agricultural and industrial policies given the right outcome. However to ignore the idea that the Cultural Revolution didn’t help Mao consolidate his political control would be foolhardy as both campaigns helped Mao both expose and purge political opponents from within the CCP and from Chinese society as a whole. One point that suggests that the Hundred Flowers campaign was carried out for reasons other than consolidating political control is the idea suggested by Mao's personal physician Li Zhisui which stipulates that Mao hoped that Chinese society would make criticisms of the soviet inspired 5 year plans and that Mao could use this as evidence of popular support to advance his own style industrial and agricultural plans. It is suggested that only after this had failed and criticism began to stack up against the policies of the CCP that Mao decided to begin his anti-rightist campaigns as some form of damage control to lessen the disastrous impact that the hundred flowers campaign had taken on the CCP by 1957.
The emancipation of the serfs appeared to have strengthened the loyalty of most peasants to the tsarist regime leading the peasants to greet the Populists with hostility due to their loyalty to the tsar. The serfs were hostile towards the populists as the serfs felt that populists did not understand their way of life through the involvement of ‘going to the people’ which was an idea from Lavrov in order to encourage peasants to rise up to revolution. The church taught the peasants to see Alexander as ‘little father’ which meant someone who was on their side. In my opinion Alexander II dealt with opposition very successfully between 1855-81 as he had the majority of the population against the Populists as serfs took up 80% of the population. Another way Alexander II successfully dealt with opposition was through censorship, he had utter control of media throughout Russia making it very difficult for opposition groups to spread their ideas and communicate with each other.
It should be recognised that before Chiang became ruler, there were many domestic problems which overshadowed China which created an unstable society. China was in desperate need for reform, democracy and strong leadership after the torment of the warlord era. China’s most major domestic problem was undoubtedly the warlords which had shattered and fragmented China and had led to political unrest. Chiang was able to launch an offensive called the Northern Expedition to remove the warlords and their hold over China with an alliance with the CCP. This had a massive impact on the country as it had successfully stopped civil and political unrest which had previously been threating the harmony of the country.
After 570 C.E. when the imperial structure was restored, Buddhism quickly gave way to criticism which ended in the eradication of Buddhism (As stated in documents 4 and 6). It is meaningful to stand out that the previous 6 documents were all written by scholars or the Emperor, so we don’t really know what the peasants and the majority of the Chinese population believed and thought about Buddhism. If there was an additional document written by a regular peasant which would probably state that they (peasants) accepted Buddhism due to their poor living conditions in their agricultural work, then it would be proven that the majority of China accepted Buddhism; while the rich (scholars and Emperor) rejected Buddhism because they thought it was a threat to their regime. When Buddhism reached China thanks to the construction of the Silk road during the first century C.E., the initial feeling among Chinese, or at least their scholars, was that of acceptance and admiration towards Buddhist monks.
The spread of Buddhism in China was liked by many people such as scholars, but some people did not like Buddhism such as Emperors and people from other religions. The first document doesn’t relate to the spread of Buddhism in China, but Zhi Dun, a Chinese scholar, author, and confidant of Chinese aristocrats and high officials appreciated the spread of Buddhism. He said that the Buddha correctly observes the commandments. Like Zhi Dun, in “The Disposition of Error” the Chinese scholar says that Confucius’s written works do not have everything in them and that Buddhism is like a wonderful creature because it is compared to both a unicorn and a phoenix. So the Chinese scholar in Document 3 must think Buddhism is good.
To what extent did the French people benefit from the reforms during the consulate? ESSAY PLAN FOR REVISION INTRODUCTION (KEEP IT BRIEF) * Many historians debate about whether the French public benefited from the reforms during the consulate or whether they were purely there to put forth the image of a democratic France. * Reforms during the consulate involved the economy, education, government, religion and the civil code. * Some say these reforms aided the French public, others argue Napoleon’s reasons were purely selfish and did not aid the public at all. * Napoleon bought stability which inevitably benefitted everyone after the chaos of the revolution FIRST PARAGRAPH (FACTOR IN THE QUESTION....IF THERE ISN’T ONE, START WITH MOST IMPORTANT) * Religious reforms (most important as it showed Napoleon exercising religious toleration) * Benefitted everyone, including the poor, peasants were very religious and had been afraid of the prospect of hell after the French revolution had effectively wiped out religion in France; therefore, when Napoleon introduced the concordat in 1801, the peasants were happy with the reinstating of Catholicism in France.
Mao Zedong escaped imprisonment and helps rebuild a stronger communist party in China. Spreading their beliefs through China which gain a lot of support from the poor class like farmers because of their beliefs being about equality in a country. For example in document eleven, “communist cartoon criticizing nationalist