A Historical Choice Transforming China And The World

Mao Zedong is the first one of the persons who have ever made significant contributions to the localization of Marxism in China and obtained great achievements in this respect. Therefore, Mao Zedong's thoughts and cultural state before he accepted Marxism is significant in the historical course of the localization of Marxism in China, and is worth deep research; sorting out Mao Zedong's early ideas and their developments will bring back to life the hard process and historical inevitability of Chinese intellectuals' choice of Marxism; the research will also provide ideological and theoretical basis for our further study of a series of theoretical and practical questions in relation to the localization of Marxism in China; the research will also exert a very important theoretical and practical influence upon how we regard and tackle the relationship between China and the West.This paper, first of all, makes use of the first-hand documents including "Mao Zedong's Early Drafts", " Autobiography of Mao Zedong ", "Historical Data of Xinmin Institute " and so on, and the second-hand materials including some works and papers studying Mao Zedong's early ideas; next, the paper, considering the real situation of the important historical events at the time, New Cultural Movement and the dissimination and influence of the western cultural trends, makes a historical research, a logical analysis of and a comment on Mao Zedong's ideas; by comparing the ideas of the important figures at home and abroad who influenced Mao Zedong, the paper will analyze the theoretical features of Mao Zedong's early ideas and the successful practises of dealing with the cultural relationship between China and the West.From the perspective of culturology, the paper will probe into Mao Zedong's sparks of ideas and his hard journey of choosing Marxism during the process of searching for theoretical weapons to transform China and the world against the background of the conflict and merging of Chinese and Western cultures before the Chinese communism was founded in 1921. The content of the paper includes: the general tendency of the conflict and merging of modern Chinese and Western cultures, the profound exploration of the tropism of cultural value, and the preliminary attempts to merge Chinese and Western cultures. In philosophy: the search for the truth of the world: the idea that spirit never dies and substance never dies; the practical view that change and struggle are the general rules in life and action should be guided by rules, etc.. In ethic ideas: regarding self-accomplishment as the pursuit of value; focusing on "self-treasuring"; the ideal personality of self-cultivation and ruling the world. Historical view: history is used to make suitable judgements for the present world; without change of times, there would be no historical life; concepts result in civilization and saints save the world and people should be united. Social political ideals: to change countryfellows' nature; to conceive of and pursue an ideal society of great harmony and Hunan Monroeism. Ideas in military affairs: the first employment of the military idea of "knowing both your opponent and yourself; "soldiers are guardians of a country"; "some lands should be occupied and some cities should be attacked". Educational ideas: civilian education; education is the instrument to help the society develop; education is the organic combination of school education, family education and society education; school education should pay equal attention to three cultivations (cultivation of morality, intelligence, and physical body) and both mind and body should be kept healthy; advocation of self-education, etc.. At last, Mao Zedong's final cultural choice of transforming china and the world: at the junction of 1920 and 1921, Mao Zedong underwent his qualitative ideological change in terms of cultural value tropism, politics, and philosophical world view, and became a primary Marxisist.Mao Zedong's early ideas are the products of the merging of Chinese and Western cultures. During this period, every kind of cultural idea chosen by Mao Zedong was an ideological weapon he used to transform Chinese society. Exploring ideological weapons to transform China and the world runs through his early ideas. Under the conditions of the invalidity and failure of various options and attempts, he finally chose Marxism. In terms of cultural interrelationship, this change indicates that Mao Zedong's reflections and criticism of traditional culture is the logic starting point and ideological premise of his acceptance of Western culture including Marxism, modern Western culture is the ideological and theoretical premise of his acceptance of Marxism, and Chinese traditional culture is the national and cultural basis of his acceptance of Western culture including Marxism. Just due to Mao Zedong's extensive and profound research and comparision of Chinese and Western cultures and his dialectic view of Chinese and Western cultures, and his deep understanding of China's national state, he could integrate Marxism with Chinese realities.