Tuesday, March 10, 2015

DOWN WITH CHIANG KAI-SHEK! LONG LOVE NEW CHINA!

On October 10th 1947 Mao Zedong presented The Manifesto of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army as a means of analyzing the political circumstances of the time. There had been a series of events leading up to this manifesto beginning back in the 1920s. When Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the Kuomingtang (KMT), the Chinese Nationalist Party, passed away Chiang Kai-shek took his place. Unfortunately, unlike Sun, Chiang was unable or rather unwilling to maintain good relations with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).



Chiang desired to wipe out the CCP and so he began a civil war, but this civil war was poorly timed. Not long after it began Japan invaded China forcing the Nationalists and the Communists to form a truce. After the Japanese surrendered the two parties refocused their anger on one another. For a time Chiang received aid from the United States as the attempted to help negotiate an alliance between the two parties. This upset the CCP even more.

Mao Zedong, the leader of the CCP had recently come across some Marxist literature which inspired him to write the manifesto. The words he used were powerful and the manifesto had a great effect on the people. It rallied the people behind Mao and it ultimately led to Chiang’s evacuation to Taiwan.
Mao begins by sharing a narrative of the status of the war. He reminds the people of the strength of his Red Army and their superiority over Chiang’s army. “Wherever our troops go, the enemy flees pell-mell before us…”

He continues on by bringing shame to Chiang Kai-shek’s name by accusing him of being “…devoid of all gratitude… traitorous, dictatorial and against the people.” This is a theme that we see repeated throughout the manifesto.

Mao then quickly sets forth 8 policies that he plans to put into effect. I believe this has an immense effect on the people. He is not only saying Chiang is bad, I am good, follow me. He took the time to present his plan to the people and he appeals to their desires and emotions by proving to them that he supports them. He said, “We are the army of the Chinese people and in all things we take the will of the Chinese people as our will.”


To end, Mao uses his powerful words once more to enthuse the people and to invite them to join his great cause. He explains that they “are shouldering the most important, the most glorious task in the history of [their] country’s revolution.”

3 comments:

  1. Great post, I like how you used a lot of examples from the text to back different rhetorical terms. The context was very clear as well!

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  2. So he addresses the issue and places blame, then provides the solution in order to fulfill the logical aspect of his appeal and then reinforces it by instilling pride into the people that already agree logically with the message. He reinforces the ethos with logos and the logos with pathos and round and round. Seems like a good structure to me. Actually, it sounds alot like a general conference talk.

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  3. When I was reading the document I noted that he mentioned and directed his attack completely against Chaing Kai-Shek. It seemed like hatred towards that man and his regime was a larger uniting factor for the Chinese communist party at this time than the ideals of communism itself.

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