What were the pains and hardships faced by Mao Zedong?

Answer 1

Official Communist biographies make much of the trials and tribulations Mao had to face before the Communist party took power in October, 1949. In reality though, Mao's life was not all that hard. He came from a land-owning family and so did not have a poor or deprived childhood. As a university student he lived in cramped quarters and the big-city students generally looked down on him because his rural accent betrayed him as a country bumpkin. But that hardly counts as 'pains and hardships'.

When he entered the Communist party he had to face several bouts of political infighting and struggles for power. That can be seen as par for the course if your aim is to wring the Party's leadership out of other peoples' hands. The WW 2 period is in the official biographies usually described as a period of deprivation, struggles and battles against Japanese occupation. In reality - most historians now agree - his 'resistance fighter' record during that period is nothing to write home about. Mao most of all tried to stay away from Japanese forces as he tried to preserve his army's strenghth for the post-war battle against the rival Kuomintang movement.

Many of the struggles and 'battles' with the Japanese described in the later Party records have been shown to have been either invented or exaggerated. The Japanese in turn left Mao largely alone since they saw the Communists as a useful deterrent from the 'official' Chinese resistance efforts by the Kuomintang - who by the way also showed themselves very little inclined to fight and whose top officials were thoroughly corrupt. Although Mao of course participated in the Long March during the war, his creature comforts were largely those of any commanding general; so - not too bad.

After the Communist takeover, Mao according to all available sources lived the good life still enjoyed today by China's Communist leaders and according to the memoirs of his personal physician, decided that the best way to keep his private parts clean was to 'bathe' them regularly in virgins provided to him for the purpose.

All in all, his trials were little different from those of any politician who has to fight his way to the top of his party and to absolute power. His 'Great Leap Forward' on the other hand led to pains, hardships an death for millions of ordinary Chinese.