Communist China

When we discuss the reign of Chairman Mao in class, every time I find myself asking, was Mao Zedong a strong leader. There really is no simple answer to this question as Mr. Zedong has some pros going for him, but also has some serious cons. I guess we should start with the pros. Mao Zedong was responsible for the first five year plan in China (1953-58) , which is credited with getting the country off its feet and to an economically stable point. The first five year plan was so successful that China was able to take itself off the Soviet lifeline and support itself. Mao also upheld the traditional communist ideals that women are equal to men and should be treated as such. This lead to an increase in the population of women in the workplace. Unfortunately for Mao, the good things end there. After the success of the first five year plan, Mao was inspired to start the second one, more commonly known as the Great Leap Forward. It was this so called "Great leap" that was responsible for the deaths of millions. Mao was forcing people to meet impossible deadlines, in regards to agriculture production, so when it came time to collect the harvest, the peasants had to give it all away and had none for themselves. Mao is also responsible for the notorious re education through labour and his purging of his political enemies. This purging culminated during Mao's Cultural Revolution where millions more lost their lives. In my opinion, if a leader kills this many of his own people, no matter what he does to strengthen his country, he simply cannot be considered good.

Gandhi, a Success or Failure?

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Mohandas Gandhi, the leader of the Indian independence and the founder of Satyagraha was, undoubtably, a great and virtuous man. He advocated constantly for the use of non violence instead of fighting and was responsible for many peaceful protests that might have otherwise been laden with violence. But when I think of Gandhi, one question really gets stuck in my mind. Although a great man and source of inspiration for many others, was Gandhi, as a leader and to himself, a failure? The question of whether he was a failure to himself has a very simple and short answer, yes. After the tragedy of Partition, where all his values were completely ignored, in my mind it would be impossible to continue to se yourself as a success. This is especially true for a man like Gandhi, who valued truth so much. He would never lie to himself or ignore the facts to create a false truth. With that part of the question answered, its time to address the more complicated of the two. Was Gandhi a failure as a leader. My personal outlook on this question is yes. Gandhi's values and rules, if you will, as a leader were no violence, at all. However, throughout the course of the Indian independence movement, these proved to be very far fetched and somewhat ineffective. After WWII, England was leaving India, no questions asked. That takes away the common misconception that Gandhi was responsible for the independence of India. After the British were out, Gandhi had one major goal, to get the new nation of India on its feet and walking. Well unfortunately for millions of Indians, something very grave was about to happen. As mentioned before, the tragedy of partition was about to take place. In this tragedy 500,000 people would lose their lives with another 1,000,000 displaced. It was Gandhi's duty as a leader to prevent this tragedy from happening. Seeing as he didn't prevent these thousand upon thousands of deaths, he failed. How could someone be considered a strong leader when they can;t protect their people from slaughter. In my humble and completely unqualified opinion, one cannot.