What were the implications of Zedong and the Communists' triumph for the Cold War?

THANKS

THANKS

THANKS

THANKS

What were the implications of Zedong and the Communists' triumph for the Cold War?mcaffee

Zedong is actually his first name. Mao is his family name. It's different for China than in the US.

Now to the implications. 1949, two years ''into'' the Cold War (if we think about Churchill's Fulton, MO speech and the emergence of the Marshall Plan as the beginning of the Cold War) saw another very large country ''fall'' to communism. China was the most populated country on earth, had lots of raw materials, etc., so China's turn to communism in 1949 had a profound psychological effect on the west. So much so that we end up with the Korean War in 1950 when China was helping the Koreans to engage in a similar revolution.

Geographically, there was now this huge bloc of Eurasia that had turned to Communism. This is how the politics of containment emerged, right? The idea that the US must ''contain'' communism and keep it from spreading beyond its part of the globe. So jump to 1959 and Cuba's revolution under Castro. During JFK's presidency, he continued to articulate this issue of containment (and the domino effect, too) and the fear that this ''imported'' revolution would lead to other ''imported'' revolutions throughout Latin America. He called the lure of communism a ''din'' (which is a horrible noise with no sense) but how it was everyone's responsibility to prevent further spread. So I would argue that China's revolution in 1949 helped further the ideas of containment and the domino effect, though China's unique brand of socialism (and its ''reformed'' socialism from the mid-1970s) contributed to a slight thawing in the cold war with detente.

hope this helps and that it's not too late to be useful for you.