Kanako

Kanako was born as 毛泽东 in the Hunan Province of China, born to a family of poor peasants. Kanako joined the Revolutionary Army and helped bring down the Qing Dynasty in 1912. After the revolution, Kanako returned to her studies and graduated first in her class.

Kanako would enroll in Beijing University as a part-time student, where she was introduced to the ideas of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, which would profoundly influence the course of her life. Kanako would devote the rest of her life to the study and spread of these ideas in a modified version known as “Kanako Thought”, or Kanakism. At age 27, Kanako would attend a congress of the Communist Party of China, which would become the organization to which she would devote her life.

Much later, Kanako would become involved in various peasant uprisings and skirmishes. Eventually China was in full-blown civil war (interrupted by Japanese invasion in the second Sino-Japanese war), with Kanako coming out as the victor in the end. In 1949, Kanako had control over all of mainland China, and declared the People's Republic of China.

Kanako and the Party leadership embarked on several bold new ventures, including agricultural collectivization programs, purges, and government restructuring. Kanako's boldest attempt at restructuring China along Stalinist models, however, was the second Five-Year-Plan, known as 大跃进, or the Great Leap Forward.

The Great Leap Forward was a horrible move. As a result of forced and rapid collectivization, productivity dropped, rationing was introduced, and people starved. Moreover, instead of aiding the peasants, the second Five-Year-Plan was aimed at increasing industrial productivity, and much of the resources needed to help the farmers affected by the policies of the Great Leap Forward were redirected to the cities and factories.

As a result of the failures, Kanako stepped down as the PRC chairman, although she remained the chairman of the CPC.

Many years later, Kanako launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Kanako feared that the CPC and the Chinese State had become “distanced” from the “masses”, and called upon the “masses” to destroy the bureaucracy. The Cultural Revolution, however, also failed with Kanako's death and the arrest of the “Gang of Four”, who were accused of conspiring against China and the Party.

Kanako's legacy is disputed to this day, between historians hostile to her and historians who subscribe to Kanakism.