The simple facts of Mao's career seem incredible: in a vast land of 400 million people, at age 28 with a dozen others to found a party and in the next fifty years to win power, organize, and remold the people and reshape the land—history records no greater achievement. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, all the kings of Europe, Napoleon, Bismarck, Lenin—no predecessor can equal Mao Tse-tung's scope of accomplishment, for no other country was ever so ancient and so big as China. Indeed Mao's achievement is almost beyond our comprehension, unless we note the trends which culminated in his career: first, the new growth of Chinese mass nationalism in response to Western and then Japanese invasion; second, the movement of upper-class literati to lead the peasant masses toward a better life; third, Soviet Russia's transmission of its theory and practice of revolution, including united front tactics, through the Communist International (Comintern). Sun Yat-sen got Comintern help only at the end of his career in 1923, two years before his death. Mao and his colleagues began with it. They got started also with Kuomintang help.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The simple facts of Mao's career seem incredible: in a vast land of 400 million people, at age 28 with a dozen others to found a party and in the next fifty years to win power, organize, and remold the people and reshape the land—history records no greater achievement. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, all the kings of Europe, Napoleon, Bismarck, Lenin—no predecessor can equal Mao Tse-tung's scope of accomplishment, for no other country was ever so ancient and so big as China. Indeed Mao's achievement is almost beyond our comprehension, unless we note the trends which culminated in his career: first, the new growth of Chinese mass nationalism in response to Western and then Japanese invasion; second, the movement of upper-class literati to lead the peasant masses toward a better life; third, Soviet Russia's transmission of its theory and practice of revolution, including united front tactics, through the Communist International (Comintern). Sun Yat-sen got Comintern help only at the end of his career in 1923, two years before his death. Mao and his colleagues began with it. They got started also with Kuomintang help." in the context of "John King Fairbank, The United States and China (1983), Chap. 11 : The Rise of Communist Party" to mean that wisdom is timeless.