China: The relationship between Taiwan and China

Taiwan is an island off of the mainland of China. China has many people who believe in the teachings of Confucius where a ruler must protect his people and in return his people must obey him. The relationship between Taiwan and China is interesting because both of them think they are the ruler in the relationship. Taiwan  think they rule China, but China has been taken over by an alien and corrupt government and China thinks the same thing of Taiwan. For this reason they will never sever the relationship between the two, because they believe in order to be responsible rulers they cannot abandon their people. China has other "provinces" which they believe are necessary to be looked after. Two examples of this are Mongolia and Tibet. It is sometimes difficult for western countries to understand why China would continue to rule these countries after they  have made it clear that they want independence, but through looking at the teachings of Confucius we can see the China is doing the responsible thing according to their religion. Probably eventually China and Taiwan will have a war, with America sending airplanes and weapons to Taiwan, but for now it is just a tense relationship between the two. To make matters Taiwan doesn't even have a representative in the UN, and they haven't since 1972 because the Un recognizes the two as part of the same country and therefore they are only allowed one representative. 

China - Great Leap Forward

What happened to China was a complete result of internal issues dealing with Mao. However, they stemmed from a desire to be better than everyone else. I'm talking specifically about the Great Leap Forward. Mao wanted to use, what seemed like good ideas to push China to be surpass the U.S. but ironically hurt them even more. Mao wanted to do this with industrialization and agriculture. He thought that he could take advantage of China's vast numbers and collectively work together to achieve his goals. Many things changed under Mao's command. Private farming ended, and anyone who chose to take part in their own farming was counter revolutionary. Instead, they were groups of farming communities (Communes) where no specific person owned the tools. They all would work together to produce as much grain as possible which would be taken by the government to feed other people, like those in cities who do not grow any of their own food. The government did a good job of convincing each commune to produce as much grain as they could by almost pitting the communes against each other. Mao also established communal kitchens. Like the farming communes, it involved no one owning their own tools such as pots, pans, kettles etc. Instead these were all taken by the government to help them create steel. Instead of cooking at home, people would go to a public kitchen where they would all be fed the same meal. The consequences of all this were much greater than any benefits that were intended by Mao. It, along with the droughts and flooding of the Yellow river, led to extreme famine where about 2 million Chinese people died.

China's Internal Problems

I believe that most of what happened to China was as a result of their internal issues. The biggest issue that China had was the communist government that they had at the time. One of the first things that happened because of China's communist beliefs was that they were forced into the Korean war. The Korean war started because the Americans invaded Northern Korea which was communist. The Chinese felt the need to fight because they thought that maybe they would be the next ones to get invaded if they didn't try and fight off the annoying American Armies. 400,000 chinese citizens ended up dying as a result. Another big problem that China created for themselves was the Great Leap Forward. This was pretty much the idea that everyone in China should work together to one day surpass the Americans. The Chinese set up a good number of competitive communes to try and increase the harvest of China. While the idea of a group of people sharing a farm sounds alright it ended up being a terrible idea. Communes promised way much more harvest than they could produce to show power among surrounding communes. Since they didn't produce enough food, the government took all they had promised leaving them to starve. People died of starvation, and at the end the number of dead people rose to 20 million. 

China: events were a result of internal issues or external influence?

China was led through many issues in their country in which the country's social and economical aspects drastically changed. At first, all these things occurred only because of the internal issues. After WWII, China returned to the Civil War in which there were two groups: Nationalists(GMD) vs. Communists(CCP). The Nationalists were led by Chiang, who fled to Taiwan, and the Communists were led by Mao. Up until now, all issues were happening because of the internal events in the country. On the other hand, the U.S. decided to bomb the coast line of China because their goal was to contain communism. This became a threat to China, and marked the point of where external influence was causing changes in the country of China. Mao made a plan called the "Great Leap Forward" in which everyone worked to "surpass America" in any way they could. As a leader, Mao retires for a short period of time and returns to re-seize power with the support of the army. There was lack of sufficient years of academics in which Mao decided to  eliminate the "4 Olds." The old thoughts, culture, customs, and habits were all changed to allow students to learn from the core farmers. This strategy was not enough years of academics, so a new leader Deng Xiaping took over after Mao and modernized the education and lifestyle to focus on agriculture, science, industry, and defense. As you can see, China was influenced by both external and internal issues. 

Mao: His Impact and Leadership

Some of the main issues that caused a downfall for China were mostly tied to Mao who was for Communism. He thought that everyone should work together and that way they could over power the United States. He tried to get involved in the Korean war but many thousands of soldiers died. He also tried what he called the Great Leap which ironically caused them to fall or go backwards. He wanted everyone to work together so that they could "surpass America" by killing the sparrows because they ate some of their grain. Mao didn't really think of the "then what" or what came after he killed the sparrows. What ended up happening was that then there were too many insects and they ended up eating a lot of the grain which cause a famine. Mao failed to think ahead and that is why many of his ideas were failures. The plan sounded great the problem resulted after the plan had been achieved. Like when he tried to increase harvests. He thought that having people work harder would make them produce more and indeed it did, but it was more of a unrealistic competition. They would say they would produce a ton and so the government would take that as a promise that they could collect a certain amount of what they were going to produce. But when it came time for the government to collect, they hadn't produced what they thought they would and so the government would take what they were promised and left the country workers with nothing.

Mao had great ideas like getting them motivated with competition and to work together to be more efficient, but as I have said before it only lead to disaster. Mao wasn't a good leader in the sense that he didn't think ahead. He thought of what they could do at that moment and then he would try it out. He experimented but it was like testing ideas with people's lives. If his plan failed, which most of them sort of did, then lots of people would die. He was not aware that some many people of the country side were dying when they were supposed to be prospering because of the hypothetical amounts of grain. But the people were actually dying of starvation. A leader needs to be in contact with all the different parts of land and all the different kinds of people, that way he can prevent a chain of deaths from starvation. A leader also needs to be able to think ahead of what could happen if I did this, or what might go wrong and if it does go wrong what can I do to help the people. I think he was so consumed in his own ideas that he got overwhelmed with how well he thought things would turn out.

Who was involved with the Korean War

On June 25, 1950 the Korean war reached the climax of the battle. Once North Korea bombarded and invaded South Korea the finances and other countries began to get in the middle of the war. The US and UN helped North Korea with the chaotic army. Since World War II ended about five years after the US had a lot of military material which was helpful for the korean army because their weapons were up to date and powerful, Airplanes, machinery. Because the UN army swiftly moved through North Korea, China jumped ship thinking it would be a careless win, however the soviet union was not as willing to join the war. In the middle of the war the South Koreans fought back and pushed them back making china "give up" essentially. The US army became even more stronger and powerful but very expensive. The war came to closure on July 27, 1953, the USSR concluded it was a waste of financial resources and needed to end. It was considered a waste for four decades, until they were able to make up for all the wasted money.