Mao’s practice of his ‘‘seeking truth from facts’’ before 1949 seems
to contrast with that after 1949. During the Chinese Revolutionary
War (1921–1937), the Anti-Japan War (1937–1945), and the Chinese
Civil War with Chiang Kai-shek (1945–1949), Mao did faithfully
practice his leadership philosophy of ‘‘seeking truth from facts.’’
In 1927, for instance, Chiang Kai-shek’s attempts to purge the Com-
munists almost destroyed them. Mao decided that unique Chinese
conditions (with the bulk of the Chinese population being peasants
and the bulk of China being rural) necessitated an adaptation of
the orthodox Marxist notion that the Communist revolution must
proceed from major cities with the leadership of the urban working
class. Mao believed that the CCP could only succeed at that time
by ‘‘encircling the cities from the countryside.’’ Mao’s unorthodox
strategy emerged from following his principle of ‘‘seeking truth from
facts,’’ the facts of actual Chinese conditions. He had acquired an
intimate understanding of the Chinese countryside through his back-
ground of growing up in rural China and his painstaking in-depth
investigation of rural China (see, for instance, his article of March
1927, ‘‘Report on an investigation of the peasant movement in Hunan,’’
in Mao,1954a). Mao did not overlook the important fact that the
peasantry then accounted for the bulk of the Chinese population.
Mao successfully consolidated the power of the CCP by soliciting
and depending on the vast Chinese peasant class by means of the
implementation of land reforms and the imposition of stringent dis-
cipline in the Red Army (Knight, 2005 ; Shan, 2005 ). Mao’s bold
modification of orthodox Marxism worked brilliantly. The leadership
philosophy of ‘‘seeking truth from facts’’ was also plentifully reflected
in his leadership practice of the ‘‘mass line,’’ as will be explained later
in this chapter.
Concerning Mao’s post-1949 practice of his own leadership philo-
sophy of ‘‘seeking truth from facts,’’ there exists controversy. Some
believe that he was sincerely practicing his leadership philosophy; it
was because of ‘‘technical miscalculations and insufficiently informed
lieutenants’’ (Wilson, 1977 : 8) that Mao failed to achieve planned
results in the Great Leap Forward (1958–1959) and the Cultural
Revolution (1966–1976). Other scholars (e.g. Li, 1994 ; Shan, 2005 )
contend, however, that the post-1949 Mao was unduly influenced by
overambitious utopianism and power struggles within the CCP; Mao
did not faithfully practice his own leadership philosophy of ‘‘seeking
210 Xin-an Lu and Jie Lu