Mao Zedong

"Mao" redirects here. For other uses, see Mao (disambiguation).

Chairman Mao Zedong
毛泽东
File:Mao.jpg Official 1960-1966 portrait of Mao Zedong
1st Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
In office June 19, 1945 – September 9, 1976
Deputy	Liu Shaoqi Lin Biao Zhou Enlai Hua Guofeng
Preceded by	Himself (as Central Politburo Chairman)
Succeeded by	Hua Guofeng
1st Chairman of the Central Politburo of the Communist Party of China
In office March 20, 1943 – April 24, 1969
Preceded by	Zhang Wentian (as Central Committee General Secretary)
Succeeded by	Himself (as Central Committee Chairman)
1st Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission
In office August 23, 1945 – 1949 September 8, 1954 – September 9, 1976
Preceded by	Position created
Succeeded by	Hua Guofeng
1st Chairman of the National Committee Of the CPPCC
In office September 21, 1949 – December 25, 1954 Honorary Chairman December 25, 1954 – September 9, 1976
Preceded by	Position Created
Succeeded by	Zhou Enlai
1st Chairman of the People's Republic of China
In office September 27, 1954 – April 27, 1959
Premier	Zhou Enlai
Deputy	Zhu De
Preceded by	Position Created
Succeeded by	Liu Shaoqi
Member of the National People's Congress
In office September 15, 1954 – April 18, 1959 December 21, 1964 – September 9, 1976
Constituency	Beijing At-large
Personal details
Born	(1893-12-26)December 26, 1893 Shaoshan, Hunan
Died	September 9, 1976(1976-09-09) (aged 82) Beijing
Resting place	Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, Beijing
Nationality	Han Chinese
Political party	Communist Party of China
Spouse(s)	Luo Yixiu (1907–1910) Yang Kaihui (1920–1930) He Zizhen (1930–1937) Jiang Qing (1939–1976)
Signature

Mao Zedong
Simplified Chinese	毛泽东
Traditional Chinese	毛澤東
Hanyu Pinyin	Máo Zédōng [mɑ̌ʊ tsɤ̌tʊ́ŋ]
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Máo Zédōng [mɑ̌ʊ tsɤ̌tʊ́ŋ] Wade–Giles Mao Tse-tung Hakka Romanization Mô Chhe̍t-tûng Yue: Cantonese Jyutping mou4 zaak6dung1 Southern Min Hokkien POJ Mô͘ Te̍k-tong
Chairman Mao
Chinese	毛主席
Hanyu Pinyin	Máo zhǔxí
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Máo zhǔxí Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Mou4 zyu2zik6

Mao Zedong (also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung ), commonly referred to as Chairman Mao (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976), was a Chinese communist revolutionary, political theorist and politician. The founding father of the People's Republic of China from its establishment in 1949, he governed the country as Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China until his death. In this position he converted China into a single-party socialist state, with industry and business being nationalized under state ownership and socialist reforms implemented in all areas of society. Politically a Marxist-Leninist, his theoretical contribution to the ideology along with his military strategies and brand of policies are collectively known as Maoism.

Born the son of a wealthy farmer in Shaoshan, Hunan, Mao adopted a Chinese nationalist and anti-imperialist outlook in early life, particularly influenced by the events of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and May Fourth Movement of 1919. Coming to adopt Marxism-Leninism, he became an early member of the Communist Party of China (CPC), soon rising to a senior position. In 1922, the Communists agreed to an alliance with the larger Kuomintang (KMT), a nationalist revolutionary party, whom Mao aided in creating a revolutionary peasant army and organizing rural land reform. In 1927 the KMT's military leader Chiang Kai-shek broke the alliance and set about on an anti-communist purge; in turn, the CPC formed an army of peasant militia, and the two sides clashed in the Chinese Civil War. Mao was responsible for commanding a part of the CPC's Red Army, and after several set backs, rose to power in the party by leading the Long March. When the Empire of Japan invaded China in 1937, sparking the Second Sino-Japanese War, Mao agreed to a united front with the KMT, resulting in a CPC-KMT victory in 1945. The Chinese Civil War then resumed, in which Mao led the Red Army to victory as Chiang and his supporters fled to Taiwan.

In 1949 Mao proclaimed the foundation of the People's Republic of China, a one-party socialist state controlled by the Communist Party. After solidifying the reunification of China through his Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, Mao enacted sweeping land reform, overthrowing the feudal landlords before seizing their large estates and dividing the land into people's communes. He proceeded to lead a nationwide political campaign known as the Great Leap Forward from 1958 through to 1961, designed to modernize and industrialize the country, however agrarian problems exasperated by his policies led to widespread famine. In 1966, he initiated the Cultural Revolution, a program to weed out counter-revolutionary elements in Chinese society, which continued until his death.

A deeply controversial figure, Mao is regarded as one of the most important individuals in modern world history. Supporters praise him for modernizing China and building it into a world power, through promoting the status of women, improving education and health care, providing universal housing and raising life expectancy. In addition, China's population almost doubled during the period of Mao's leadership, from around 550 to over 900 million. As a result, Mao is still officially held in high regard by many Chinese as a great political strategist, military mastermind, and savior of the nation. Maoists furthermore promote his role as a theorist, statesman, poet, and visionary, who has inspired revolutionary movements across the globe. In contrast, critics have labeled him a dictator whose administration oversaw systematic human rights abuses, and whose rule is estimated to have caused the deaths of between 40–70 million people through starvation and executions.

Early life

Childhood: 1893–1911

Mao was born on December 26, 1893 in a rural village in Shaoshan, Hunan Province. His father, Mao Shun-sheng (1870–1920), had been born into a poverty-stricken peasant family, and had gained two years worth of education before joining the army. Eventually returning to agriculture, he earned a living as both a moneylender and a grain merchant, buying up local grain and then selling it on in the city for a higher price, allowing him to become one of the wealthiest farmers in Shaoshan, with 20 acres of land. Mao Zedong would describe his father as a stern disciplinarian, who would often punish his son and other children – two boys, Tse-min (b.1896) and Tse-tan (b.1905), and an adopted girl, Zejian – for any perceived wrongdoings, sometimes by beating them. His wife, Wen Ch'i-mei, was illiterate but a devout Buddhist who tried to temper her husband's strict attitude towards both his children and other locals. Following his mother's example, Mao also became a practising Buddhist from an early age, venerating a bronze statue of the Buddha which was in their home, but abandoned this faith in his mid-teenage years. His father was largely irreligious, although after surviving an encounter with a tiger, began to give offerings to the gods in thanks.

Mao's childhood home in Shaoshan, in 2010, by which time it had become a tourist destination.

Aged 8, Mao was sent to the local Shaoshan Primary School by his father, who recognised the financial value of a basic education. Here, Mao was taught the value systems of Confucianism, one of the dominant moral ideologies in China, but he would later admit that he did not enjoy reading the classical Chinese texts which preached Confucian morals, instead favouring popular novels such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin. Reacting against his Confucian upbringing, aged 11 Mao ran away from home, heading for what he believed was a nearby town, but eventually his father found him and brought him home.

Aged 13, Mao finished primary education, and his father had him married to Luo Yixiu (1889–1910), a woman four years his senior, in order to unite their two land-owning families. They never lived together and Mao refused to recognise her as his wife, becoming a fierce critic of arranged marriage. He began work on his father's farm, but continued to read voraciously in his spare time. One of the most influential texts that he read was Cheng Kuan-ying's Sheng-shih Wei-yen (Words of Warning to an Affluent Age), a political tract that lamented the deterioration of Chinese power in East Asia, arguing for technological, economic and political reform, modelling China on the representative democracies of the western world. Mao would later claim that he first developed a "political consciousness" from that booklet. Another influential book which he read at the time was a translation of Great Heroes of the World, becoming inspired by the American revolutionary George Washington and French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, whose military prowess and nationalistic fervour greatly impressed him.

His political views of the time were also shaped by popular protests that had erupted following a famine in Changsha, the capital of Hunan; Mao supported the protester's demands, but the armed forces soon suppressed the dissenters and executed their leaders. The famine soon spread throughout Hunan, reaching Shaoshan; here, starving peasants seized some of his father's grain, and while Mao disapproved of their actions as morally wrong, he also claimed a great deal of sympathy for their situation. Aged 16, Mao moved on to study at a higher primary school in nearby Tungshan. Here, he was taught alongside students of a higher social standing, and was often bullied for his scruffy appearance and peasant background; being much older than the other pupils, he failed to fit in.

The Xinhai Revolution: 1911–1912

In 1911, Mao convinced his father to allow him to attend middle school in the city of Changsha. At the time, the city was "a revolutionary hotbed", with widespread animosity towards the governing Emperor Puyi (1906–1967) and the concept of absolute monarchy itself. While some advocated a reformist transition to a constitutional monarchy, most revolutionaries advocated republicanism, hoping to overthrow the Emperor and replace him with a democratically elected president. The primary figurehead behind this republican movement was Dr. Sun Yat-Sen (1867–1925), the leader of a secret society known as the Tongmenghui who had spent time in the United States and converted to Christianity. At Changsha, Mao first read a copy of Sun's newspaper, The People's Strength (Min-lin-pao), and was greatly influenced by it. Inspired by Sun's example, Mao penned his first political essay, which he stuck to the school wall; later admitting that it was "somewhat muddled", it involved a plan for overthrowing the monarchy and replacing it with a republic governed by the presidency of Sun, but with concessions made to the moderates by having Kang Youwei as premier and Liang Qichao as minister of foreign affairs. As a symbol of rebellion against the Manchu monarch, he and a friend cut off their queue pigtails – a sign of subservience to the emperor – before forcibly cutting off those of some of their classmates too.

Later that year, the Chinese armed forces, inspired by the republican ideas of Sun, rose up in insurrection against the Emperor across southern China, sparking the Xinhai Revolution. The city of Changsha initially remained under the control of the monarch, with the governor proclaiming martial law on its streets to quell any popular protests. Soon however, the infantry brigade guarding the city proclaimed their support for the revolution, and the governor was forced to flee, leaving the city in republican hands. Eager to support the revolutionary cause, Mao joined the rebel army as a private soldier, but was not involved in the fighting. The northern provinces had remained loyal to the Emperor, and hoping to avoid a civil war, Sun Yat-Sen – already proclaimed "provisional president" by his supporters – had come to a compromise with the Emperor's key ally Yuan Shikai (1859–1916); the monarchy would be abolished, and Late Imperial China would be converted into a new Republic of China, but it would be the royalist Yuan and not the revolutionary Sun who would become its first President. The Xinhai Revolution over, Mao resigned from the army in 1912, after six months of being a soldier. It had been during this period that Mao had first learned of the imported western concept of socialism from a newspaper article, and intrigued, he read several pamphlets by Jiang Kanghu (1883–1954), a student who had founded the Chinese Socialist Party in November 1911. Nevertheless, while remaining convinced of the need of a republican government, he was not yet convinced by the need for a socialist economy.

Fourth Normal School of Changsha: 1912–1917

Returning his attention to education, Mao enrolled and dropped out of a series of schools in quick succession; a police academy, a soap-production school, a law school and an economics school, the latter being the only course which his father approved of. However, the lectures were given in the English language, which Mao could not understand, and so he soon abandoned this and began attendance at the government-run Changsha Middle School; he soon dropped out of this too, finding its courses too rooted in old Confucian ideas and traditions. Deciding to undertake his studies independently, he spent much time in the newly opened public library at Changsha, reading the core works of classical liberalism such as Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws, as well as the works of western scientists and philosophers like Charles Darwin, J.S. Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Herbert Spencer. Seeing no use in his son's purely intellectual pursuits, Mao's father cut off his allowance, forcing Mao to move into a hostel for the destitute.

Deciding that he would like to become a professional teacher, Mao enrolled at a teacher training college, the Fourth Normal School of Changsha, which had high standards yet low fees and cheap accommodation. Several months later, it amalgamated with the prestigious First Normal School of Changsha, widely seen as the best school in Hunan province; Mao biographer Stuart Schram would later note that the environment of the school provided "an ideal training ground for his apprenticeship as a political worker." He was heavily influenced by several teachers at the school, including the professor of ethics, Yang Changji, who urged Mao and his other students to read a radical newspaper, New Youth (Hsien Ch'ing-nien), which was the creation of his friend Chen Duxiu (1879–1942), Dean of the Faculty of Letters at Peking University. Although a Chinese nationalist, Chen argued that in order to progress, China must look to the west, adopting "Mr. Democracy and Mr. Science" in order to cleanse itself of superstition and autocracy. Mao would publish his first article, "A Study of Physical Culture", in New Youth in April 1917, in which he instructed all Chinese people to increase their physical strength in order to serve the revolutionary cause. He also joined another revolutionary organisation, The Society for the Study of Wang Fuzhi (Chuan-shan Hsüeh-she) which had been founded by a number of Changsha literati who wished to emulate Wang Fuzhi (1619–1692), a philosopher who had become a symbol of Han resistance to Manchu invasion.

In his first year at the school, Mao befriended an older student, Siao Yu, and together they went on a walking holiday through the countryside, along the way begging in order to obtain food. Mao also remained active in school politics, in 1915 becoming elected to the position of secretary of the Students Society. He used his position to forge an Association for Student Self-Government, leading protests against various rules then implemented in the school. In spring 1917, he was also elected to command the students' volunteer army, set up to defend the school from potential attack after two warlords began fighting one another in Hunan. With two close friends, Mao began undertaking feats of physical endurance – such as sleeping outdoors and living on a frugal diet – and they began describing themselves as the "Three Heroes" after the rebels that featured in Chinese literature. They attracted other young people with radical political ideas around them, forming a society known as the New People's Study Society who debated Chen Duxiu's ideas. Having passed his exams, Mao graduated from the school in the spring of 1918.

Early revolutionary activity

Peking and Marxism: 1917–1919

Leaving Changsha, Mao moved to the capital city of Peking, where his school mentor Yang Changji had recently migrated to take up a job at Peking University. Yang was favourable towards Mao, writing in his journal that "it is truly difficult to imagine someone so intelligent and handsome [as him]." Yang secured Mao employment at the university library, where he became assistant to the librarian Li Dazhao (1888–1927), an early Chinese communist. Li authored a series of articles in New Youth on the subject of the October Revolution which had just occurred in Russia, during which the communist Bolshevik Party under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) had seized power. Lenin was an advocate of the socio-political theory of Marxism, first developed by the German sociologists Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) in the mid-19th century, and Li's articles helped bring an understanding of Marxism to the Chinese revolutionary movement, even though he failed to fully understand it himself.

Mao would claim that although he did not accept Marxism at first, he had come under the influence of anarchism and was becoming "more and more radical" as the months went on. Beginning to read and discuss the work of Marx with Li and other like-minded radicals at a Marxist Study Group, he eventually "developed rapidly toward Marxism" under Li's tutelage during the winter of 1918–19, looking for ways to combine it with ancient Chinese philosophies that would be applicable to modern China. Eventually coming to adopt an orthodox Marxist-Leninist position by accepting not only Marx's ideas but also those of Lenin, he came to view Chinese nationalism as a powerful tool in the national liberation struggle against western and Japanese dominance, but unlike orthodox Marxist-Leninists also viewed nationalism as something intrinsically valuable in itself.

Paid a low wage, Mao was forced to live in a cramped room near to the university with seven other Hunanese students, but believed that the beauty of Peking offered "vivid and living compensation." A number of his friends and future colleagues took advantage of the Mouvement Travail-Études to study in France, but Mao, perhaps because of a lack of ability to learn languages and the requirement to learn French, turned down the opportunity. Remaining at the university, he tried to strike up conversations with academics working there, but most snubbed him because of his rural Hunanese accent and lowly position as librarian's assistant. Nonetheless, by joining the university's Philosophy and Journalism Societies, he was able to attend various lectures and seminars by the likes of Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi, and Qian Xuantong, but various lecturers still treated him with contempt and refused to answer his questions. Mao's time in Peking came to an end in the spring of 1919, when he traveled to Shanghai with friends departing from the port for France. On the way visiting a number of historic sites such as Qufu, the burial place of Confucius, he traveled much of the journey on foot, at one point losing his shoes.

Student rebellions: 1919–1920

China had fallen victim to the expansionist policies of the Empire of Japan, who had conquered large areas of Chinese-controlled territory, namely Taiwan, Korea and South Manchuria. The Japanese had been supported by France, the U.K. and the U.S. at the Treaty of Versailles, who agreed that Japan could take control of all Chinese territories that had formerly been under the dominion of Germany. The Chinese Beiyang Government, under the control of the warlord Duan Qirui (1865–1936), had accepted Japanese dominance, agreeing to their Twenty-One Demands, despite popular opposition. In May 1919, the May Fourth Movement erupted in Peking, with Chinese patriots rallying against the Japanese and Duan's government. Duan's troops were sent in to crush the protests, but the mass unrest spread throughout China. In Changsha, Mao took advantage of the unrest to help organize protests against the Governor of Hunan Province, Zhang Jinghui, a supporter of Duan's. Mao was a founding member of the United Student Association and in July 1919 began production of a weekly radical magazine, Hsiang River Review (Hsiang-chiang P'ing-lun). Using vernacular language that would be understandable to the majority of China's populace, he put forward his revolutionary socialist views; in one notable article, he proclaimed the need for a "Great Union of the Popular Masses", but failed to present a Marxist analysis of how the revolution should proceed.

Students in Beijing rallied during the May Fourth Movement.

Zhang ordered the United Student Association and its associated weekly shut down, but Mao continued publishing his views after assuming editorship of the student magazine New Hunan (Hsin Hunan). When this in turn was also shut down by Zhang, Mao then began publishing in the popular local newspaper Ta Kung Po. Several of these articles advocated his staunchly feminist views, calling for the liberation of women in Chinese society; alongside his early experiences with forced arranged marriage, this was possibly influenced by the recent death of his mother and his romantic involvement with Yang Kaihui (1901–1930), the daughter of Mao's recently deceased mentor Yang Changji. In November 1919, Mao took a leading role in the re-organization of the banned United Student Association, and in December helped to organize a student strike in Changsha's schools, designed to cripple Zhang's control. The strike did secure some concessions, but Mao and other student leaders felt that they were now under threat from the furious Zhang, and were sent as representatives to China's provincial centers; thus, Mao once again traveled to Peking.

In Peking, Mao found that he had achieved a level of fame among the revolutionary movement for his fervent article writing, and set about soliciting support in overthrowing Zhang's rule in Hunan. In the city he came across newly translated Marxist literature, further committing him to the revolutionary socialist cause: these included Thomas Kirkup's A History of Socialism, Karl Kautsky's Karl Marx's Ökonomische Lehren and most importantly, Marx and Engels' political pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto. From Peking, Mao moved to Shanghai, working as a laundryman and meeting with the Marxist Chen Duxiu, recently freed from prison. Mao later noted that Chen's adoption of Marxism "deeply impressed me at what was probably a critical period in my life." In Shanghai, Mao also met with one of his old teachers, Yi Peiji, a revolutionary and member of the Kuomintang, or Chinese Nationalist Party, which at the time was gaining increasing support and influence across China. Yi Peiji introduced Mao to General Tan Yankai, a senior Kuomintang member who held the loyalty of the troops stationed along the border between Hunan and Kwantung. Tan was plotting to overthrow Zhang and his Hunanese administration, and Mao aided him by organizing the students of Changsha. In June 1920, Tan led his troops into Changsha, while Zhang fled. In the subsequent reorganization of the provincial administration, Mao was appointed headmaster of the junior section of the First Normal School. Now receiving a large income, he was able to marry Yang Kaihui in the winter of 1920.

Founding the Communist Party of China: 1921–1922

The Communist Party of China was founded by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao in the French concession of Shanghai in 1921 as a study society and an informal network. Mao soon set up his own branch in Changsha, also establishing a branch of the Socialist Youth Corps. He furthermore opened a bookstore under the control of his new Cultural Book Society, whose purpose was to propagate revolutionary literature throughout Hunan. Helping to organise workers' strikes in the winter of 1920–1921, Mao was also involved in the movement advocating autonomy for the province, a viewpoint shared by figures from a variety of different political persuasions. Mao's hope was that the creation of a Hunanese constitution would increase civil liberties in the province and thereby make his revolutionary activity easier; although it proved successful, in later life, he would subsequently deny any involvement in the movement.

Location of the first Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in July 1921, in Xintiandi, former French Concession, Shanghai.

By 1921, small groups of Marxists existed in six Chinese cities: Shanghai, Peking, Changsha, Wuhan, Canton and Tsinan, with a further group having been founded by Chinese students in Paris. It was decided that they should send delegates for a central meeting, which began in Shanghai on July 23, 1921. The first session of the National Congress of the Communist Party of China was attended by 13 delegates, Mao included, and initially met in a girls' school that had been closed for the summer. After the authorities learned of this meeting and sent a police spy to report on their subversive activities, the delegates instead moved their activities to a boat on South Lake near to Chiahsing, where they escaped detection by claiming to be on a holiday excursion. Although delegates from the Soviet Union and Comintern had attended, the first congress ignored Lenin's advice by refusing to accept a temporary alliance between the communists and the "bourgeois democrats" who also advocated national revolution; instead they stuck to the orthodox Marxist belief that only the urban proletariat could lead a socialist revolution.

Now the party secretary for Hunan, Mao stationed himself in Changsha, from where he went on a recruitment drive to gain support for the Communist Party. In August 1921, Mao founded the Self-Study University, through which readers could gain access to Marxist and other revolutionary literature, and which was housed in the premises of the Society for the Study of Wang Fuzhi (Chuan-shan Hsüeh-she). He also took part in the mass education movement to fight illiteracy, founded in 1921 by members of the Chinese Young Men's Christian Association with U.S. backing. Opening a Changsha branch, Mao replaced the usual textbooks with revolutionary tracts in order to spread Marxist ideas among the illiterate peasantry. He also continued with his work in organizing the labour movement to strike in an attempt to damage the administration of Hunanese Governor Zhao Hengti, particularly after the latter executed two anarchist activists.

In July 1922, the Second Congress of the Communist Party took place in Shanghai; while Mao lost the address and was unable to attend, the delegates decided to finally adopt the Leninist advice by agreeing to an alliance with the "bourgeois democrats" of the Kuomintang for the good of the "national revolution" to unite China and free it of foreign imperialist influence. As a result, members of the Communist Party began to join the Kuomintang, hoping to influence its politics in a leftward direction. Mao agreed with this decision, vocally arguing for an anti-imperialist alliance which constituted all of China's socio-economic classes, and not merely the urban proletariat; a vocal anti-imperialist, in his writings he lambasted the governments of Japan, Great Britain and the United States, describing the latter as "the most murderous of hangmen."

Collaboration with the Kuomintang: 1922–1927

Mao the revolutionary in 1927; he had spent the prior two years training peasants in the tactics of war under the aegis of the Kuomintang.

At the Third Congress of the Communist Party, held in Shanghai in June 1923, the delegates reaffirmed their commitment to working with the Kuomintang to overthrow the Beiyang Government and the imperialist powers then occupying parts of China. A staunch supporter of this position, at the Congress Mao was elected to the Communist Party Committee, taking up residence in the city. He became involved with the Kuomintang, attending their First Congress, held in Canton during January and February 1924. Soon elected an alternate member of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee, in February 1924 he put forward four resolutions that argued that power in the party was too centralized among a few cadres in Canton, and that power should instead he decentralized to urban and rural bureaus. His enthusiastic support for the nationalist party earned him the suspicion of some of the communists. Biographer Stuart Schram would later comment that during the period between 1925 and 1927, Mao was closer to the Kuomintang than he was to the Communist Party, something he attributed to Mao's belief that the good of China was more important than the cause of socialism.

In late 1924, Mao returned to his home village of Shaoshan for the first time in 15 years to recuperate from an illness. Here, he discovered that the peasantry were becoming increasingly restless as a result of the social and political upheaval of the past decade, with some seizing land from wealthy landowners and founding their own communes. These actions convinced him of the revolutionary potential of the peasants, an idea advocated by the Kuomintang but not the Communist Party. As a result, he was subsequently appointed to the leadership of the Kuomintang's Peasant Movement Training Institute, also becoming the Director of the Party's Propaganda Department. In doing so, he became the editor of the Kuomintang's newsletter, the Political Weekly (Zhengzhi zhoubao). Through the Peasant Movement Training Institute, Mao took an active role in organizing the revolutionary Hunanese peasants and preparing them for militant activity, taking them through military training exercises and getting them to study various left-wing texts. In the winter of 1925, Mao fled to Canton after his revolutionary activities attracted the attention of Zhao's regional authorities. At the time, the country was once more facing violent upheaval; on May 30, 1925, police from the Shanghai International Settlement followed the orders of a British policeman and opened fire on a group of protesters, killing 10 and wounding 50. The Chinese Chamber of Commerce agreed on a strike in solidarity with the protesters, which in turn led to increasingly repressive measures by the authorities.

Mao and the communists constituted the left wing of the Kuomintang, and were caught in power struggles with the party's right wing, some of whom urged a purge of the leftists. When party leader Sun Yat-Sen died in May 1925, he was succeeded by a rightist, Jiang Kaishek (1887–1977), who opposed Mao and other high ranking leftists, and who initiated moves to marginalize the position of the communists in the party. Mao nevertheless was supportive of Chiang when he decided to overthrow the Beiyang Government warlords and their foreign imperialist allies, leading his National Revolutionary Army on the Northern Expedition in order to do so. In the wake of the Northern Expedition, peasants continued to rise up, appropriating the land of the wealthy land-owners, whom were in many cases killed. Such peasant uprisings had angered many of the senior figures and generals in the Kuomintang, who were themselves wealthy land-owners, emphasizing the class and ideological divide that was becoming increasingly apparent in the revolutionary movement.

"Revolution is not a dinner party, nor an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another."

— Mao, February 1927.

Mao turned his attention to the issue of land appropriation and redistribution. In March 1927, he appeared at the Third Plenum of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee in Wuhan, which sought to reorganize the party and strip General Jiang of his power, appointing Wang Jingwei to the leadership. Mao played an active role in the discussions regarding the peasant issue at the Third Plenum, defending a set of "Regulations for the Repression of Local Bullies and Bad Gentry", which advocated the death penalty or life imprisonment for anyone found guilty of counter-revolutionary activity. Mao argued that in a revolutionary situation, "peaceful methods cannot suffice to overthrow the local bullies and bad gentry." In April 1927, Mao was appointed as one of the five-member Central Land Committee of the Kuomintang, and he continued to urge peasants to refuse to pay rents to the landlords. Mao led another group to put together a "Draft Resolution on the Land Question", which called for the confiscation of land belonging to "local bullies and bad gentry, corrupt officials, militarists and all counter-revolutionary elements in the villages." He proceeded to carry out a "Land Survey" in which he stated that anyone owning over 30 mou (four and a half acres), constituting 13% of the population, were uniformly counter-revolutionary. He nevertheless accepted that there was great variation in revolutionary enthusiasm across the country, and that a flexible policy of land redistribution was therefore necessary. He presented his conclusions at the Enlarged Land Committee meeting on 22 April, but many of those assembled expressed reservations, some believing that it went too far, and others expressing the opinion that it did not go far enough. Ultimately, Mao's suggestions were only partially implemented.

Civil War

Main articles: Chinese Civil War and Chinese Revolution (1949)

The Nanchang and Autumn Harvest Uprisings: 1927

Fresh from the success of the Northern Expedition to overthrow the warlords, General Jiang Kaishek turned on the communists, whom by now numbered in the tens of thousands across China. He ignored the orders sent to him by the Kuomintang civilian government based in Wuhan, instead marching on Shanghai, a city controlled by communist militias. Although the communists welcomed Jiang's arrival, believing him to be their ally, he turned on them, massacring 5000 with the aid of the Green Gang. Allies of Jiang across China began to do the same; in Peking, 19 leading communists were killed by General Zhang Zuolin, while in Changsha, General Ho Chien's forces turned on the local communists, machine gunning several hundred peasant militiamen. That May, tens of thousands of communists and radical peasants, workers and students were killed by nationalist forces, with the Communist Party losing approximately 15,000 of its 25,000 members. Jiang's army soon marched on Wuhan, but was prevented from taking the city by troops under the control of the communist General Yeh T'ing.

"'Eagles cleave the air,
Fish glide in the limpid deep;
Under freezing skies a million
creatures contend in freedom.
Brooding over this immensity,
I ask, on this boundless land
Who rules over man's destiny?"

— Excerpt from Mao's
poem "Changsha", September 1927.

In the face of the marauding generals, the Communist Party continued its support of the Kuomintang civilian government in Wuhan, a position Mao initially publicly supported. At the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party, the delegates ultimately decided to maintain this position, disgusting Mao, who wanted to stake all hope on the peasant militia. The question was rendered moot when the Wuhan government decided to expel all Communists from the Kuomintang on 15 July. The Communists subsequently agreed to raise their own army to battle Jiang, founding the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army of China, better known as the "Red Army". One group, under the leadership of General Zhu De, was ordered to take the city of Nanchang on 1 August 1927 in what became known as the Nanchang Uprising; initially successful, they were forced into retreat after five days, marching south to Swatow, and from there being driven into the wilderness of Fujian.

Meanwhile, having been appointed as commander-in-chief of the Red Army, Mao had led four regiments to undertake the Autumn Harvest Uprising in Changsha, in the hope of sparking peasant uprisings across Hunan. On the eve of the attack, Mao composed a poem – the earliest of his to survive – that was entitled simply "Changsha". His plan was to attack the nationalist-held city from three directions on 9 September, but they soon ran into trouble when his Fourth Regiment deserted to join the Kuomintang cause, attacking the Third Regiment. Despite this set back, Mao's army managed to make it to Changsha, but found the city to be heavily defended, and many of his men were gunned down my machine gun fire. By the 15 September, he accepted his defeat, and with his thousand surviving men marched east to the Jinggang Mountains of Jiangxi.

Base in Jinggangshan: 1927–1928

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Mao, a young revolutionary.

In the aftermath of the failed Autumn Harvest Uprising, the Communist Party Central Committee, then hiding in Shanghai, decided to punish Mao for "military opportunism", for focusing on rural rather than urban revolutionary activities, and for being too moderate in punishing "bad gentry". As such, they removed Mao both from their rank and from the Hunan Provincial Committee. They nevertheless chose to adopt three policies that he had long championed: the immediate formation of soviets, the confiscation of all land without exemption, and the complete rejection of the Kuomintang and their flag. Mao's response to their disapproval was simply to ignore them. Setting up base in Jinggangshan, an area of the Jinggang Mountains, Mao united five villages as a self-governing state with its own independent government, and initiated measures to further land reform by supporting the confiscation of land from rich landlords, who were "re-educated" and in some cases executed, a punishment Mao supported. He nevertheless ensured that no massacres took place under the region he controlled, pursuing a more moderate approach than that called for by the Central Committee. Mao decided to form a union with two groups of armed bandits, led by Yüan Wen-ts'ai and Wang Tso, whom he believed could be converted to the communist cause. In doing so, he assembled together a force of around 1800 troops. He successfully welcomed others to come and join his army, proclaiming that "Even the lame, the deaf and the blind could all come in useful for the revolutionary struggle." He laid down simple rules for his soldiers to follow: prompt obedience to orders, all confiscations from landlords and rich peasants were to be turned over to the government, and nothing was to be confiscated from the poor peasants. In doing so, he was able to mold his men into a disciplined, efficient fighting force.

"When the enemy advances, we retreat.
When the enemy retreats, we advance.
When the enemy rests, we harass him.
When the enemy avoids a battle, we attack."

— Mao's advice in combating the Kuomintang, 1928.

In the spring of 1928, the Central Committee ordered Mao to march his troops to southern Hunan, in the hope of sparking the Hunanese peasants in revolution. Mao was skeptical, but complied. When they reached Hunan, they were attacked by the Kuomintang and suffered heavy losses, being forced to flee. In the meantime, Kuomintang troops had also invaded Jinggangshan, leaving them without a base. Wandering the countryside, Mao's forces came across another communist army under the leadership of General Zhu De and Lin Biao, and it was decided that they would combine forces and attempt to retake Jinggangshan. Although initially successful, the Kuomintang forces counter-attacked, pushing the communists back; over the next few weeks, they involved themselves in guerrilla combat techniques against the enemy throughout the mountainous region. Central Committee once again ordered Mao to march to south Hunan, but this time he refused, deciding to stay at his base. In contrast, Zhu had complied, leading his armies to fight. The Kuomintang took the opportunity to attack Mao's base, and although his troops were able to fend them off for 25 days, he realized that they would soon fail, and so Mao left the camp at night. He proceeded to reunite with Zhu's army, who had been decimated in Hunan, and together they returned to Jinggangshan and retook the base once more. They were joined by both a Kuomintang regiment that had defected and the Fifth Red Army commanded by Peng Dehuai, but the mountainous area was unable to grow enough crops to feed everyone, leading to food shortages throughout the cold winter.

Jiangxi Soviet Republic of China: 1929–1934

Mao with his third wife, He Zizhen.

In January 1929, Mao and Zhu decided to evacuate their base and take their armies south, to the area around Tonggu and Xinfeng in Jiangxi, which they would then consolidate as a new base of operations. Together, they had 2000 men, with a further 800 being provided by Peng, but the evacuation led to a drop in morale, and many of the troops became disobedient and took to thieving; this worried Li Lisan and the Communist Central Committee, who saw Mao's army as belonging to the lumpenproletariat, and therefore unable to share in the class consciousness of the proletariat that was needed for a successful revolution. In keeping with orthodox Marxist thought, Li furthermore believed that only the urban proletariat could lead a successful revolution, and saw little need for Mao's peasant guerrillas; he subsequently ordered Mao to disband his army into units, which would be sent out to spread the revolutionary message throughout the country. Mao replied that while he concurred with Li's theoretical position regarding the urban proletariat, he would not disband his armed forces or give up his base.

Despite their disagreements, both Li and Mao saw the Chinese revolution as the key to world revolution, and believed that a Communist victory there would spark the overthrow of global imperialism and capitalism. In this, they disagreed with the official line adhered to by the Soviet government and Comintern, both based in Moscow. Officials in Moscow who wanted greater control over the CPC decided to remove Li from power within the party, so called him to Russia for an inquest into his errors. In turn, they sent a group of Soviet-educated Chinese communists, known as the "28 Bolsheviks", to China, where two of them, Bo Gu and Zhang Wentian, took control of the Party Central Committee. Mao disagreed with the new foreign-imposed leadership, believing that they grasped little of the situation in China, and soon emerged as their key rival. In February 1930, he oversaw the creation of the Southwest Jiangxi Provincial Soviet Government in the region that his army controlled, while in November he suffered emotional trauma after both his wife and sister were captured and beheaded by the Kuomintang general He Jian. In turn he married an 18-year old revolutionary named He Zizhen. He also faced internal problems, with members of the Kiangsi Soviet accusing him of being too moderate, and thereby anti-revolutionary. In December, they rose up, and tried to overthrow Mao, resulting in the Futian incident; putting down the rebels within his own ranks, he executed 2000 to 3000 of them, many of whom were also tortured.

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Flag of the Chinese Soviet Republic in Jiangxi

Seeing it as a secure area, the Communist Party Central Committee moved to Jiangxi, which in November was proclaimed to be the Soviet Republic of China, an independent Communist-governed state. Although proclaimed Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Mao's power was diminished, with control of the Red Army being allocated to Zhou Enlai; Mao meanwhile recovered from tuberculosis. Attempting to defeat the Communists, the Kuomintang armies had adopted a policy of encirclement and annihilation; outnumbered, Mao had been responding with guerrilla tactics influenced by the works of ancient military strategists like Sun Tzu, but Zhou and the new leadership disagreed with this approach, replacing it with a policy of open confrontation and conventional warfare. In doing so the Red Army successfully defeated the first and second encirclements. Angered at the failure of his armies, Jiang Kaishek personally arrived to lead the operation. He too however faced set backs and failures, and retreated to deal with the Mukden Incident, in which the Japanese had incurred further into China. Victorious, the Red Army expanded the area under its control, eventually encompassing a population of 3 million. Mao proceeded with his land reform program within the Soviet, in November 1931 announcing the start of a "land verification project" which would be expanded in June 1933. He also orchestrated education programs and implemented measures to increase the political participation of women. However, Jiang once more turned his attention to the Soviet, viewing the Communists as a greater threat to China than the Japanese. Returning to Jiangxi, he initiated the fifth encirclement campaign, which involved the construction of a concrete and barbed wire "wall of fire" around the state, accompanied by aerial bombardment of it. Zhou's tactics of conventional warfare proved ineffective in countering the enemy. Trapped inside, morale among the Red Army dropped as food and medicine became scarce, and the leadership decided that it was time for the Communists to evacuate.

The Long March: 1934–1935

Mao in 1931.

On 14 October 1934, the Red Army struck out at the Kuomintang line on the north-east corner of the Jiangxi Soviet. 85,000 soldiers and 15,000 party cadres broke through the encirclement at Hsinfeng and set out on what became known as the "Long March". In order to make the escape viable, many of the wounded and the ill, as well as women and children, were left behind, where they were defended by a group of guerrilla fighters who were subsequently massacred. The 100,000 who escaped the Soviet headed to Northern Jiangxi, where they crossed the Xiang River after heavy fighting, before crossing the Wu River, where they took Zunyi, Guizhou, in January 1935. Temporarily resting in the city, they held a conference; here, Mao was once again elected to a position of leadership, becoming Chairman of the Politburo, and de facto leader of both Party and Red Army, in part because his candidacy was supported by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. He once more insisted that they must work as a guerrilla force rather than a conventional army, in order to survive on the Long March. He also layed out a destination: the Shenshi Soviet in Shaanxi, Northern China, from where the Communists could focus on fighting the Japanese. Mao believed that in focusing on the anti-imperialist struggle, the Communists would earn the trust of the Chinese people, who would in turn renounce the Kuomintang.

From Zunyi, Mao led the Red Army to Loushan Pass, where they faced armed opposition but were successful in crossing the river. Jiang Kaishek flew into the area in order to lead his armies against Mao, but the Communists successfully outmaneuvered him and continued heading north, crossing the Jinsha River. From there they were faced with the more difficult task of crossing the Tatu River, which they managed by fighting a battle over the Luding Bridge in May, ultimately taking Luding. They marched onwards through the mountain ranges around Ma'anshan, before encountering the 50,000-strong Communist Fourth Front Army of Zhang Guotao in Moukung, Western Szechuan. The two forces united, and proceeded on to Maoerhkai and then Gansu. However, Zhang and Mao disagreed over what to do; the latter wished to proceed to Shaanxi where he would fight the Japanese, while Zhang wanted to take his armies and flee east, to Tibet or Sikkim, far from the threat of the Kuomintang armies. It was agreed that they would go their separate ways, with Zhu De deciding to join Zhang. Mao's forces proceeded north, through hundreds of miles of Grasslands, an area of quagmire where they were attacked by Manchu tribesman and where many soldiers succumbed to famine and disease. Finally reaching Shenshi, they fought off both the Kuomintang and an Islamic cavalry militia before crossing over both the Min Mountains and Mount Liupan and reaching the Shenshi Soviet with the 7-8000 survivors of the Long March.

Alliance with the Kuomintang: 1935–

In an effort to defeat the Japanese, Mao (left) agreed to collaborate with Jiang (right).

Arriving at the Soviet in October 1935, Mao ordered his troops to settle down in the town of Pao An. They remained there throughout the winter of 1935 spring of 1936, set to farming the local area, and developed good relations with the local communities, redistributing land, offering medical treatment and beginning literacy programs. Coupled with the troops already based in the Soviet, Mao had 15,000 soldiers at his command, which was boosted by the arrival of He Long's men from Hunan and the armies of Zhu Den and Zhang Guotao, returning from Tibet. Mao's wife was injured from a shrapnel wound to the head, and so traveled to Moscow for medical treatment; alone, Mao moved in to a cave and spent much of his time reading, tending his garden and theorizing, famously proclaiming "The people are the sea, and the army are the fish in the sea." He came to believe that alone, the Red Army was unable to defeat the invading Japanese, and that a Communist-led "government of national defense" should be formed with the Kuomintang and other "bourgeois nationalist" elements to achieve this goal. Although despising Jiang Kaishek, whom he labelled a "traitor to the nation", on May 5 he sent a telegram to the Military Council of the Nanking National Government proposing a military alliance, a course of action that was being advocated by Stalin. Although Jiang intended to ignore Mao's message and continue the civil war, he was arrested by one of his own generals, Zhang Xueliang in Xi'an, leading to the Xi'an Incident; Zhang forced Jiang to discuss the issue with the Communists, resulting in the formation of a United Front with concessions on both sides on December 25, 1937.

In July, the Japanese crossed the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking, and continued to advance into China; in August, the CPC agreed to form the New Fourth Army and the 8th Route Army, which were nominally under the command of Jiang's National Revolutionary Army.

During the Sino-Japanese War, Mao advocated a strategy of avoiding open confrontations with the Japanese army and concentrating on guerrilla warfare from his base in Yan'an, while leaving the KMT to take on the brunt of the fighting and suffer tremendous casualties. Instead Mao directed the CPC forces to concentrate on absorbing, and eliminating if necessary, Chinese militia behind enemy lines. This led to intensified conflicts between KMT and CPC forces, and the fragile alliance broke down after the New Fourth Army incident in January 1941. Mao further consolidated power over the Communist Party in 1942 by launching the Shu Fan movement, or "Rectification" campaign against rival CPC members such as Wang Ming, Wang Shiwei, and Ding Ling. Also while in Yan'an, Mao divorced He Zizhen and married the actress Lan Ping, who would become known as Jiang Qing.

Mao in 1938, writing On Protracted War

Mao also greatly expanded CPC's sphere of influence in areas outside of Japanese control, mainly through rural mass organizations, administrative, land and tax reform measures favouring poor peasants; while the Nationalists attempted to neutralize the spread of Communist influence by military blockade of areas controlled by CPC and fighting the Japanese at the same time.

In 1944, the Americans sent a special diplomatic envoy, called the Dixie Mission, to the Communist Party of China. According to Edwin Moise, in Modern China: A History 2nd Edition:

Most of the Americans were favourably impressed. The CPC seemed less corrupt, more unified, and more vigorous in its resistance to Japan than the KMT. United States fliers shot down over North China...confirmed to their superiors that the CPC was both strong and popular over a broad area. In the end, the contacts with the USA developed with the CPC led to very little.

General George Marshall and Mao Zedong in Yan'an

After the end of World War II, the U.S. continued their military assistance to Chiang Kai-shek and his KMT government forces against the People's Liberation Army (PLA) led by Mao Zedong in the civil war for control of China. Likewise, the Soviet Union gave quasi-covert support to Mao by their occupation of north east China, which allowed the PLA to move in en masse and took large supplies of arms left by the Japanese's Kwantung Army.

In 1948, under direct orders from Mao, the People's Liberation Army starved out the Kuomintang forces occupying the city of Changchun. At least 160,000 civilians are believed to have perished during the siege, which lasted from June until October. PLA lieutenant colonel Zhang Zhenglu, who documented the siege in his book White Snow, Red Blood, compared it to Hiroshima: "The casualties were about the same. Hiroshima took nine seconds; Changchun took five months." On January 21, 1949, Kuomintang forces suffered great losses in battles against Mao's forces. In the early morning of December 10, 1949, PLA troops laid siege to Chengdu, the last KMT-held city in mainland China, and Chiang Kai-shek evacuated from the mainland to Taiwan.{[fact}}

Leadership of China

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Mao Zedong declares the founding of the modern People's Republic of China, October 1, 1949

The People's Republic of China was established on October 1, 1949. It was the culmination of over two decades of civil and international wars. From 1943 to 1976, Mao was the Chairman of the Communist Party of China. During this period, Mao was called Chairman Mao (毛主席, Máo Zhǔxí) or the Great Leader Chairman Mao (伟大领袖毛主席, Wěidà Lǐngxiù Máo Zhǔxí). Mao famously announced: "The Chinese people have stood up."

Mao took up residence in Zhongnanhai, a compound next to the Forbidden City in Beijing, and there he ordered the construction of an indoor swimming pool and other buildings. Mao often did his work either in bed or by the side of the pool, preferring not to wear formal clothes unless absolutely necessary, according to Dr. Li Zhisui, his personal physician. (Li's book, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, is regarded as controversial, especially by those sympathetic to Mao.)

In October 1950, Mao made the decision to send the People's Volunteer Army into Korea and fight against the United Nations forces led by the U.S. Historical records showed that Mao directed the PVA campaigns in the Korean War to the minute details.

Mao with his fourth wife, Jiang Qing, called "Madame Mao," 1946

Along with land reform, during which significant numbers of landlords and well-to-do peasants were beaten to death at mass meetings organized by the Communist Party as land was taken from them and given to poorer peasants, there was also the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, which involved public executions targeting mainly former Kuomintang officials, businessmen accused of "disturbing" the market, former employees of Western companies and intellectuals whose loyalty was suspect. The U.S. State department in 1976 estimated that there may have been a million killed in the land reform, and 800,000 killed in the counterrevolutionary campaign.

Mao himself claimed that a total of 700,000 people were executed during the years 1949–53. However, because there was a policy to select "at least one landlord, and usually several, in virtually every village for public execution", the number of deaths range between 2 million and 5 million. In addition, at least 1.5 million people, perhaps as many as 4 to 6 million, were sent to "reform through labour" camps where many perished. Mao played a personal role in organizing the mass repressions and established a system of execution quotas, which were often exceeded. He defended these killings as necessary for the securing of power.

Starting in 1951, Mao initiated two successive movements in an effort to rid urban areas of corruption by targeting wealthy capitalists and political opponents, known as the three-anti/five-anti campaigns. A climate of raw terror developed as workers denounced their bosses, spouses turned on their spouses, and children informed on their parents; the victims often were humiliated at struggle sessions, a method designed to intimidate and terrify people to the maximum. Mao insisted that minor offenders be criticized and reformed or sent to labor camps, "while the worst among them should be shot." These campaigns took several hundred thousand additional lives, the vast majority via suicide.

In Shanghai, suicide by jumping from tall buildings became so commonplace that residents avoided walking on the pavement near skyscrapers for fear that suicides might land on them. Some biographers have pointed out that driving those perceived as enemies to suicide was a common tactic during the Mao-era. For example, in his biography of Mao, Philip Short notes that in the Yan'an Rectification Movement, Mao gave explicit instructions that "no cadre is to be killed," but in practice allowed security chief Kang Sheng to drive opponents to suicide and that "this pattern was repeated throughout his leadership of the People's Republic."

Mao at Joseph Stalin's 70th birthday celebration in Moscow, December 1949

Following the consolidation of power, Mao launched the First Five-Year Plan (1953–58). The plan aimed to end Chinese dependence upon agriculture in order to become a world power. With the Soviet Union's assistance, new industrial plants were built and agricultural production eventually fell to a point where industry was beginning to produce enough capital that China no longer needed the USSR's support. The success of the First-Five Year Plan was to encourage Mao to instigate the Second Five-Year Plan, the Great Leap Forward, in 1958. Mao also launched a phase of rapid collectivization. The CPC introduced price controls as well as a Chinese character simplification aimed at increasing literacy. Large-scale industrialization projects were also undertaken.

Programs pursued during this time include the Hundred Flowers Campaign, in which Mao indicated his supposed willingness to consider different opinions about how China should be governed. Given the freedom to express themselves, liberal and intellectual Chinese began opposing the Communist Party and questioning its leadership. This was initially tolerated and encouraged. After a few months, Mao's government reversed its policy and persecuted those, totalling perhaps 500,000, who criticized, as well as those who were merely alleged to have criticized, the party in what is called the Anti-Rightist Movement. Authors such as Jung Chang have alleged that the Hundred Flowers Campaign was merely a ruse to root out "dangerous" thinking.

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14th Dalai Lama shaking hands with Mao, October 13, 1954

Others such as Dr Li Zhisui have suggested that Mao had initially seen the policy as a way of weakening those within his party who opposed him, but was surprised by the extent of criticism and the fact that it began to be directed at his own leadership. It was only then that he used it as a method of identifying and subsequently persecuting those critical of his government. The Hundred Flowers movement led to the condemnation, silencing, and death of many citizens, also linked to Mao's Anti-Rightist Movement, with death tolls possibly in the millions.

Great Leap Forward

In January 1958, Mao Zedong launched the second Five-Year Plan, known as the Great Leap Forward, a plan intended as an alternative model for economic growth to the Soviet model focusing on heavy industry that was advocated by others in the party. Under this economic program, the relatively small agricultural collectives which had been formed to date were rapidly merged into far larger people's communes, and many of the peasants were ordered to work on massive infrastructure projects and on the production of iron and steel. Some private food production was banned; livestock and farm implements were brought under collective ownership.

Under the Great Leap Forward, Mao and other party leaders ordered the implementation of a variety of unproven and unscientific new agricultural techniques by the new communes. Combined with the diversion of labor to steel production and infrastructure projects, these projects combined with cyclical natural disasters led to an approximately 15% drop in grain production in 1959 followed by a further 10% decline in 1960 and no recovery in 1961.

In an effort to win favor with their superiors and avoid being purged, each layer in the party hierarchy exaggerated the amount of grain produced under them. Based upon the fabricated success, party cadres were ordered to requisition a disproportionately high amount of the true harvest for state use, primarily in the cities and urban areas but also for export. The net result, which was compounded in some areas by drought and in others by floods, left rural peasants with little food for themselves and many millions starved to death in the largest famine known as the Great Chinese Famine. This famine was a direct cause of the death of some 30 million Chinese peasants between 1959 and 1962 and about the same number of births were lost or postponed. Further, many children who became emaciated and malnourished during years of hardship and struggle for survival died shortly after the Great Leap Forward came to an end in 1962.

The extent of Mao's knowledge of the severity of the situation has been disputed. According to some, most notably Dr. Li Zhisui, Mao may not even have been aware that the situation amounted to more than a slight shortage of food and general supplies until late 1959.

In the beginning, commune members were able to eat for free at the commune canteens. This changed when food production slowed to a halt.

Hong Kong-based historian Frank Dikötter, who conducted extensive archival research on the Great Leap Forward in local and regional Chinese government archives, challenged the notion that Mao did not know about the famine until it was too late:

"The idea that the state mistakenly took too much grain from the countryside because it assumed that the harvest was much larger than it was is largely a myth – at most partially true for the autumn of 1958 only. In most cases the party knew very well that it was starving its own people to death. At a secret meeting in the Jinjiang Hotel in Shanghai dated March 25, 1959, Mao specifically ordered the party to procure up to one third of all the grain, much more than had ever been the case. At the meeting he announced that 'When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.'"

In Hungry Ghosts, Jasper Becker notes that Mao was dismissive of reports he received of food shortages in the countryside and refused to change course, believing that peasants were lying and that rightists and kulaks were hoarding grain. He refused to open state granaries, and instead launched a series of "anti-grain concealment" drives that resulted in numerous purges and suicides. Other violent campaigns followed in which party leaders went from village to village in search of hidden food reserves, and not only grain, as Mao issued quotas for pigs, chickens, ducks and eggs. Many peasants accused of hiding food were tortured and beaten to death.

In contrast, journals such as the Monthly Review have disputed the reliability of the figures commonly cited, the qualitative evidence of a "massive death toll", and Mao's complicity in those deaths which occurred.

Whatever the case, the Great Leap Forward caused Mao to lose esteem among many of the top party cadres and was eventually forced to abandon the policy in 1962, while losing some political power to moderate leaders, perhaps most notably Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping in the process. However, Mao, supported by national propaganda, claimed that he was only partly to blame. As a result, he was able to remain Chairman of the Communist Party, with the Presidency transferred to Liu Shaoqi.

The Great Leap Forward was a tragedy for the vast majority of the Chinese. Although the steel quotas were officially reached, almost all of the supposed steel made in the countryside was iron, as it had been made from assorted scrap metal in home-made furnaces with no reliable source of fuel such as coal. This meant that proper smelting conditions could not be achieved. According to Zhang Rongmei, a geometry teacher in rural Shanghai during the Great Leap Forward:

"We took all the furniture, pots, and pans we had in our house, and all our neighbors did likewise. We put everything in a big fire and melted down all the metal."

The worst of the famine was steered towards enemies of the state. As Jasper Becker explains:

"The most vulnerable section of China's population, around five per cent, were those whom Mao called 'enemies of the people'. Anyone who had in previous campaigns of repression been labeled a 'black element' was given the lowest priority in the allocation of food. Landlords, rich peasants, former members of the nationalist regime, religious leaders, rightists, counter-revolutionaries and the families of such individuals died in the greatest numbers."

Mao with Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai; Beijing, 1972.

Consequences

At the Lushan Conference in July/August 1959, several leaders expressed concern that the Great Leap Forward had not proved as successful as planned. The most direct of these was Minister of Defence and Korean War General Peng Dehuai. Mao, fearing loss of his position, orchestrated a purge of Peng and his supporters, stifling criticism of the Great Leap policies. Senior officials who reported the truth of the famine to Mao were branded as "right opportunists." A campaign against right opportunism was launched and resulted in party members and ordinary peasants being sent to camps where many would subsequently die in the famine. Years later the CPC would conclude that 6 million people were wrongly punished in the campaign.

The number of deaths by starvation during the Great Leap Forward is deeply controversial. Until the mid 1980s, when official census figures were finally published by the Chinese Government, little was known about the scale of the disaster in the Chinese countryside, as the handful of Western observers allowed access during this time had been restricted to model villages where they were deceived into believing that the Great Leap Forward had been a great success. There was also an assumption that the flow of individual reports of starvation that had been reaching the West, primarily through Hong Kong and Taiwan, must be localized or exaggerated as China was continuing to claim record harvests and was a net exporter of grain through the period. Because Mao wanted to pay back early to the Soviets debts totaling 1.973 billion yuan from 1960 to 1962, exports increased by 50%, and fellow Communist regimes in North Korea, North Vietnam and Albania were provided grain free of charge.

Censuses were carried out in China in 1953, 1964 and 1982. The first attempt to analyse this data in order to estimate the number of famine deaths was carried out by American demographer Dr. Judith Banister and published in 1984. Given the lengthy gaps between the censuses and doubts over the reliability of the data, an accurate figure is difficult to ascertain. Nevertheless, Banister concluded that the official data implied that around 15 million excess deaths incurred in China during 1958–61, and that based on her modelling of Chinese demographics during the period and taking account of assumed under-reporting during the famine years, the figure was around 30 million. The official statistic is 20 million deaths, as given by Hu Yaobang. Yang Jisheng, a former Xinhua News Agency reporter who had privileged access and connections available to no other scholars, estimates a death toll of 36 million. Frank Dikötter estimates that there were at least 45 million premature deaths attributable to the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962. Various other sources have put the figure at between 20 and 46 million.

On the international front, the period was dominated by the further isolation of China. The Sino-Soviet split resulted in Nikita Khrushchev's withdrawal of all Soviet technical experts and aid from the country. The split was triggered by arguments over the control and direction of world communism and other disputes pertaining to foreign policy. Most of the problems regarding communist unity resulted from the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953 and his replacement by Khrushchev. Only Albania under the leadership of Enver Hoxha openly sided with China against the Soviets, which began an alliance between the two countries which would last until the Sino-Albanian split after Mao's death in 1976.

Stalin had established himself as the successor of "correct" Marxist thought well before Mao controlled the Communist Party of China, and therefore Mao never challenged the suitability of any Stalinist doctrine (at least while Stalin was alive). Upon the death of Stalin, Mao believed (perhaps because of seniority) that the leadership of the "correct" Marxist doctrine would fall to him. The resulting tension between Khrushchev (at the head of a politically and militarily superior government), and Mao (believing he had a superior understanding of Marxist ideology) eroded the previous patron-client relationship between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the CPC. In China, the formerly favorable Soviets were now denounced as "revisionists" and listed alongside "American imperialism" as movements to oppose.

Partly surrounded by hostile American military bases (in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan), China was now confronted with a new Soviet threat from the north and west. Both the internal crisis and the external threat called for extraordinary statesmanship from Mao, but as China entered the new decade the statesmen of the People's Republic were in hostile confrontation with each other.

At a large Communist Party conference in Beijing in January 1962, called the "Conference of the Seven Thousand," State Chairman Liu Shaoqi denounced the Great Leap Forward as responsible for widespread famine. The overwhelming majority of delegates expressed agreement, but Defense Minister Lin Biao staunchly defended Mao. A brief period of liberalization followed while Mao and Lin plotted a comeback. Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping rescued the economy by disbanding the people's communes, introducing elements of private control of peasant smallholdings and importing grain from Canada and Australia to mitigate the worst effects of famine.

Cultural Revolution

Main article: Cultural Revolution

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Chinese propaganda poster from the Cultural Revolution: "Destroy the old world. Forge the new world." A Red Guard crushes the crucifix, Buddha, and classical Chinese texts with a hammer; 1967.

Mao was concerned with the nature of post-1959 China. He saw that the revolution had replaced the old elite with a new one. He was concerned that those in power were becoming estranged from the people they were supposed to serve.

Mao believed that a revolution of culture would unseat and unsettle the "ruling class" and keep China in a state of "perpetual revolution" that, theoretically, would serve the interests of the majority, not a tiny elite. Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, then the State Chairman and General Secretary, respectively, had favored the idea that Mao should be removed from actual power but maintain his ceremonial and symbolic role, with the party upholding all of his positive contributions to the revolution. They attempted to marginalize Mao by taking control of economic policy and asserting themselves politically as well. Many claim that Mao responded to Liu and Deng's movements by launching the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Some scholars, such as Mobo Gao, claim the case for this is perhaps overstated. Others, such as Frank Dikötter, hold that Mao launched the Cultural Revolution to wreak revenge on those who had dared to challenge him over the Great Leap Forward.

Believing that certain liberal bourgeois elements of society continued to threaten the socialist framework, groups of young people known as the Red Guards struggled against authorities at all levels of society and even set up their own tribunals. Chaos reigned in much of the nation, and millions were persecuted, including a famous philosopher, Chen Yuen. During the Cultural Revolution, the schools in China were closed and the young intellectuals living in cities were ordered to the countryside to be "re-educated" by the peasants, where they performed hard manual labor and other work.

The Revolution led to the destruction of much of China's traditional cultural heritage and the imprisonment of a huge number of Chinese citizens, as well as creating general economic and social chaos in the country. Millions of lives were ruined during this period, as the Cultural Revolution pierced into every part of Chinese life, depicted by such Chinese films as To Live, The Blue Kite and Farewell My Concubine. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, perished in the violence of the Cultural Revolution.

When Mao was informed of such losses, particularly that people had been driven to suicide, he is alleged to have commented: "People who try to commit suicide — don't attempt to save them! . . . China is such a populous nation, it is not as if we cannot do without a few people." The authorities allowed the Red Guards to abuse and kill opponents of the regime. Said Xie Fuzhi, national police chief: "Don't say it is wrong of them to beat up bad persons: if in anger they beat someone to death, then so be it." As a result, in August and September 1966, there were 1,772 people murdered in Beijing alone.

File:Nixon Mao 1972-02-29.png

Mao greets United States President Richard Nixon during his visit to China in 1972

It was during this period that Mao chose Lin Biao, who seemed to echo all of Mao's ideas, to become his successor. Lin was later officially named as Mao's successor. By 1971, however, a divide between the two men became apparent. Official history in China states that Lin was planning a military coup or an assassination attempt on Mao. Lin Biao died in a plane crash over the air space of Mongolia, presumably on his way to flee China, probably anticipating his arrest. The CPC declared that Lin was planning to depose Mao, and posthumously expelled Lin from the party. At this time, Mao lost trust in many of the top CPC figures. The highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa described his conversation with Nicolae Ceauşescu who told him about a plot to kill Mao Zedong with the help of Lin Biao organized by the KGB.

In 1969, Mao declared the Cultural Revolution to be over, although the official history of the People's Republic of China marks the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 with Mao's death. In the last years of his life, Mao was faced with declining health due to either Parkinson's disease or, according to Li Zhisui, motor neuron disease, as well as lung ailments due to smoking and heart trouble. Some also attributed Mao's decline in health to the betrayal of Lin Biao. Mao remained passive as various factions within the Communist Party mobilized for the power struggle anticipated after his death.

This period is often looked at in official circles in China and in the West as a great stagnation or even of reversal for China. While many—an estimated 100 million—did suffer, some scholars, such as Lee Feigon and Mobo Gao, claim there were many great advances, and in some sectors the Chinese economy continued to outperform the west. They hold that the Cultural Revolution period laid the foundation for the spectacular growth that continues in China. During the Cultural Revolution, China exploded its first H-Bomb (1967), launched the Dong Fang Hong satellite (January 30, 1970), commissioned its first nuclear submarines and made various advances in science and technology. Healthcare was free, and living standards in the countryside continued to improve.

Death

Mao had been in poorer health for several years and had declined visibly for at least six months prior to his death. There are unconfirmed reports that he possibly had ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. Mao's last public appearance was on May 27, 1976, where he met the visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto during the latter's one-day visit to Beijing.

At around 5:00 pm on September 2, 1976, Mao suffered a heart attack, far more severe than his previous two and affecting a much larger area of his heart. X-rays indicated that his current lung infection had worsened, and his urine output dropped to less than 300 cc a day. Mao was awake and alert throughout the crisis and asked his team of doctors, several times, whether he was in danger. His condition continued to fluctuate and his life hung in the balance. Three days later, on September 5, Mao's condition was still critical, and Hua Guofeng called Jiang Qing back from her trip. She spent only a few minutes visiting him in Building 202 (where Mao was staying) before returning to her own residence in the Spring Lotus Chamber. On the afternoon of September 7, Mao's condition took a turn for the worse. Jiang Qing went to Building 202 where she learned the news. Mao had just fallen asleep and needed the rest, but she insisted on rubbing his back and moving his limbs, and she sprinkled powder on his body. The medical team protested that the dust from the powder was not good for his lungs, but she instructed the nurses on duty to follow her example later. The next morning, September 8, she went again. She demanded the medical staff to change Mao's sleeping position, claiming that he had been lying too long on his left side. The doctor on duty objected, knowing that he could breathe only on his left side, but she had him moved nonetheless. Mao's breathing stopped and his face turned blue. Jiang Qing left the room while the medical staff put him on a respirator and performed emergency cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Mao barely revived and Hua Guofeng urged Jiang Qing not to interfere further with the doctors' work, as her actions were detrimental to Mao's health and helped cause his death faster. Mao's organs failed quickly and he fell into a coma shortly before noon where he was put on life support machines. He was taken off life support over 12 hours later quarter to midnight and was pronounced dead at 12:10 am on September 9, 1976. September 9 was chosen as the day to let Mao die because it was seen as an easy day to remember, being the ninth day of the ninth month of the calendar.

His body lay in state at the Great Hall of the People. A memorial service was held in Tiananmen Square on September 18, 1976. There was a three-minute silence observed during this service. His body was later placed into the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, even though he had wished to be cremated and had been one of the first high-ranking officials to sign the "Proposal that all Central Leaders be Cremated after Death" in November 1956.

As anticipated after Mao's death, there was a power struggle for control of China. On one side was the left wing led by the Gang of Four, who wanted to continue the policy of revolutionary mass mobilization. On the other side was the right wing opposing these policies. Among the latter group, the right wing restorationists, led by Chairman Hua Guofeng, advocated a return to central planning along the Soviet model, whereas the right wing reformers, led by Deng Xiaoping, wanted to overhaul the Chinese economy based on market-oriented policies and to de-emphasize the role of Maoist ideology in determining economic and political policy. Eventually, the reformers won control of the government. Deng Xiaoping, with clear seniority over Hua Guofeng, defeated Hua in a bloodless power struggle a few years later.

Legacy

A large portrait of Mao by Zhang Zhenshi at Tiananmen

"[Mao] turned China from a feudal backwater into one of the most powerful countries in the World ... The Chinese system he overthrew was backward and corrupt; few would argue the fact that he dragged China into the 20th century. But at a cost in human lives that is staggering."

—  Mao Tse Tung: China's Peasant Emperor, A&E Biography, 2005

Mao remains a controversial figure and there is little agreement over his legacy both in China and abroad. He is generally credited and praised with having unified China and ending the previous decades of civil war. He is also credited with having improved the status of women in China and improving literacy and education. His policies caused the deaths of tens of millions of people during his 27-year reign, more than any other Twentieth Century leader, however supporters point out that in spite of this, life expectancy improved during his reign. His supporters claim that he rapidly industrialized China however, others have claimed that his policies, particularly the controversially named 'Great Leap Forward' and the Cultural Revolution, were impediments to industrialization and modernization. His supporters claim that his policies laid the groundwork for China's later rise to become an economic superpower, while others claim that his policies delayed economic development and that China's economy only underwent its rapid growth after Mao's policies had been widely abandoned. Mao's revolutionary tactics continue to be used by insurgents, and his political ideology continues to be embraced by many communist organizations around the world.

In mainland China, Mao is still revered by many supporters of the Communist Party and respected by the majority of the general population as the "Founding Father of modern China", credited for giving "the Chinese people dignity and self-respect." Mobo Gao in his 2008 book The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution, credits Mao for raising the average life expectancy from 35 in 1949 to 63 by 1975, bringing "unity and stability to a country that had been plagued by civil wars and foreign invasions", and laying the foundation for China to "become the equal of the great global powers". Gao also lauds Mao for carrying out massive land reform, promoting the status of women, improving popular literacy, and positively "transform(ing) Chinese society beyond recognition."

However, Mao has many Chinese critics, both those who live inside and outside China. Opposition to Mao is subject to restriction and censorship in mainland China, but is especially strong elsewhere, where he is often reviled as a brutish ideologue. In the West, his name is generally associated with tyranny and his economic theories widely discredited – though to some political activists he remains a symbol against capitalism, imperialism and western influence. Even in China, key pillars of his economic theory have been largely dismantled by market reformers like Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang, who succeeded him as leaders of the Communist Party.

Statue of young Mao in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province

Though the Chinese Communist Party, which Mao led to power, has rejected in practice the economic fundamentals of much of Mao's ideology, it retains for itself many of the powers established under Mao's reign: it controls the Chinese army, police, courts and media and does not permit multi-party elections at the national or local level, except in Hong Kong. Thus it is difficult to gauge the true extent of support for the Chinese Communist Party and Mao's legacy within mainland China. For their part, the Chinese government continues to officially regard Mao as a national hero. In 2008, China opened the Mao Zedong Square to visitors in his hometown of central Hunan Province to mark the 115th anniversary of his birth.

There continue to be disagreements on Mao's legacy. Former Party official Su Shachi, has opined that "he was a great historical criminal, but he was also a great force for good." In a similar vein, journalist Liu Bin Yan has described Mao as "both monster and a genius." Some historians claim that Mao Zedong was "one of the great tyrants of the twentieth century", and a dictator comparable to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, with a death toll surpassing both. In The Black Book of Communism, Jean Louis Margolin writes that "Mao Zedong was so powerful that he was often known as the Red Emperor... the violence he erected into a whole system far exceeds any national tradition of violence that we might find in China." Mao was also frequently compared to China's First Emperor Qin Shi Huang, notorious for burying alive hundreds of scholars, and liked the comparison. During a speech to party cadre in 1958, Mao said he had far outdone Qin Shi Huang in his policy against intellectuals: "He buried 460 scholars alive; we have buried forty-six thousand scholars alive.... You [intellectuals] revile us for being Qin Shi Huangs. You are wrong. We have surpassed Qin Shi Huang a hundredfold." As a result of such tactics, critics have pointed out that:

The People's Republic of China under Mao exhibited the oppressive tendencies that were discernible in all the major absolutist regimes of the twentieth century. There are obvious parallels between Mao's China, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Each of these regimes witnessed deliberately ordered mass 'cleansing' and extermination.

Mao's English interpreter Sidney Rittenberg wrote in his memoir The Man Who Stayed Behind that whilst Mao "was a great leader in history", he was also "a great criminal because, not that he wanted to, not that he intended to, but in fact, his wild fantasies led to the deaths of tens of millions of people." Li Rui, Mao's personal secretary, goes further and claims he was dismissive of the suffering and death caused by his policies: "Mao's way of thinking and governing was terrifying. He put no value on human life. The deaths of others meant nothing to him." Biographer Jung Chang goes further still and argues that Mao was well aware that his policies would be responsible for the deaths of millions. While discussing labor-intensive projects such as waterworks and making steel, Chang claims Mao said to his inner circle in November 1958: "Working like this, with all these projects, half of China may well have to die. If not half, one-third, or one-tenth – 50 million – die." Thomas Bernstein of Columbia University argues that this quotation is taken out of context, claiming:

The Chinese original, however, is not quite as shocking. In the speech, Mao talks about massive earthmoving irrigation projects and numerous big industrial ones, all requiring huge numbers of people. If the projects, he said, are all undertaken simultaneously "half of China's population unquestionably will die; and if it's not half, it'll be a third or ten percent, a death toll of 50 million people." Mao then pointed to the example of Guangxi provincial Party secretary, Chén Mànyuǎn (陈漫远) who had been dismissed in 1957 for failing to prevent famine in the previous year, adding: "If with a death toll of 50 million you didn't lose your jobs, I at least should lose mine; whether I should lose my head would also be in question. Anhui wants to do so much, which is quite all right, but make it a principle to have no deaths."

Chang and Halliday take literally Mao's penchant for talking about mass death in highly irresponsible, provocative, callous and reckless ways, exemplified by his famous remark that in a nuclear war, half of China's population would perish but the rest would survive and rebuild. In 1958, when ruminating about the dialectics of life and death, he thought that deaths were beneficial, for without them, there could be no renewal. Imagine, he asked, what a disaster it would be if Confucius were still alive. "When people die there ought to be celebrations." In December 1958 he remarked that "destruction (mièwáng 灭亡, also extinction) [of people] has advantages. One can make fertilizer. You say you can't, but actually you can, but you must be spiritually prepared." The authors note that these kinds of remarks could well have justified the indifference of lower-level cadres to peasant deaths.

Jasper Becker and Frank Dikötter reach a similar conclusion. Becker notes that "archive material gathered by Dikötter... confirms that far from being ignorant or misled about the famine, the Chinese leadership were kept informed about it all the time. And he exposes the extent of the violence used against the peasants":

Mass killings are not usually associated with Mao and the Great Leap Forward, and China continues to benefit from a more favourable comparison with Cambodia or the Soviet Union. But as fresh and abundant archival evidence shows, coercion, terror and systematic violence were the foundation of the Great Leap, and between 1958 to 1962, by a rough approximation, some 6 to 8 per cent of those who died were tortured to death or summarily killed – amounting to at least 3 million victims. Countless others were deliberately deprived of food and consequently starved to death. Many more vanished because they were too old, weak or sick to work – and hence unable to earn their keep. People were killed selectively because they had the wrong class background, because they dragged their feet, because they spoke out or simply because they were not liked, for whatever reason, by the man who wielded the ladle in the canteen.

Sculptures in front of Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, Beijing, China

Dikötter argues that CPC leaders "glorified violence and were inured to massive loss of life. And all of them shared an ideology in which the end justified the means. In 1962, having lost millions of people in his province, Li Jingquan compared the Great Leap Forward to the Long March in which only one in ten had made it to the end: 'We are not weak, we are stronger, we have kept the backbone.'"

Regarding the large-scale irrigation projects, Dikötter stresses that, in spite of Mao being in a good position to see the human cost, they continued unabated for several years, and ultimately claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of exhausted villagers. He also notes that "In a chilling precursor of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, villagers in Qingshui and Gansu called these projects the 'killing fields'."

The United States placed a trade embargo on the People's Republic as a result of its involvement in the Korean War, lasting until Richard Nixon decided that developing relations with the PRC would be useful in dealing with the Soviet Union.

Roderick MacFarquhar has stated: "What Mao accomplished between 1949 and 1956 was in fact the fastest, most extensive, and least damaging socialist revolution carried out in any communist state."

Mao's military writings continue to have a large amount of influence both among those who seek to create an insurgency and those who seek to crush one, especially in manners of guerrilla warfare, at which Mao is popularly regarded as a genius. As an example, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) followed Mao's examples of guerrilla warfare to considerable political and military success even in the 21st century. Mao's major contribution to the military science is his theory of People's War, with not only guerrilla warfare but more importantly, Mobile Warfare methodologies. Mao had successfully applied Mobile Warfare in the Korean War, and was able to encircle, push back and then halt the UN forces in Korea, despite the clear superiority of UN firepower. Mao also gave the impression that he might even welcome a nuclear war. Soviet historians have written that Mao believed his country could survive a nuclear war, even if it lost 300 million people.

Statue of Mao in Lijiang

"Let us imagine how many people would die if war breaks out. There are 2.7 billion people in the world, and a third could be lost. If it is a little higher it could be half ... I say that if the worst came to the worst and one-half dies, there will still be one-half left, but imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist. After a few years there would be 2.7 billion people again"

But historians dispute the sincerity of Mao's words. Robert Service says that Mao "was deadly serious," while Frank Dikötter claims that "He was bluffing... the sabre-rattling was to show that he, not Khrushchev, was the more determined revolutionary."

Mao's poems and writings are frequently cited by both Chinese and non-Chinese. The official Chinese translation of President Barack Obama's inauguration speech used a famous line from one of Mao's poems. John McCain misattributed a campaign quote to Mao several times during his 2008 presidential election bid, saying "Remember the words of Chairman Mao: 'It's always darkest before it's totally black.'"

The ideology of Maoism has influenced many communists, mainly in the Third World, including revolutionary movements such as Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, Peru's Shining Path, and the Nepalese revolutionary movement. Under the influence of Mao's agrarian socialism and Cultural Revolution, Cambodia's Pol Pot conceived of his disastrous Year Zero policies which purged the nation of its teachers, artists and intellectuals and emptied its cities, resulting in the Cambodian Genocide.

The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA also claims Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as its ideology, as do other Communist Parties around the world which are part of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement. China itself has moved sharply away from Maoism since Mao's death, and most people outside of China who describe themselves as Maoist regard the Deng Xiaoping reforms to be a betrayal of Maoism, in line with Mao's view of "Capitalist roaders" within the Communist Party.

As the Chinese government instituted free market economic reforms starting in the late 1970s and as later Chinese leaders took power, less recognition was given to the status of Mao. This accompanied a decline in state recognition of Mao in later years in contrast to previous years when the state organized numerous events and seminars commemorating Mao's 100th birthday. Nevertheless, the Chinese government has never officially repudiated the tactics of Mao. Deng Xiaoping, who was opposed to the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, has to a certain extent rejected Mao's legacy, famously saying that Mao was "70% right and 30% wrong".

In the mid-1990s, Mao Zedong's picture began to appear on all new renminbi (人民幣) currency from the People's Republic of China. This was officially instituted as an anti-counterfeiting measure as Mao's face is widely recognized in contrast to the generic figures that appear in older currency. On March 13, 2006, a story in the People's Daily reported that a proposal had been made to print the portraits of Sun Yat-sen and Deng Xiaoping.

In 2006, the government in Shanghai issued a new set of high school history textbooks which omit Mao, with the exception of a single mention in a section on etiquette. Students in Shanghai now only learn about Mao in junior high school.

Public image

File:1950s 毛主席给我们的幸福生活.jpg

A 1950 Chinese propaganda poster showing a happy family of five enjoying life under the image of Mao Zedong. The caption above the picture says "The happy life Chairman Mao gives us".

Mao gave contradicting statements on the subject of personality cults. In 1955, as a response to the Khrushchev Report that criticized Joseph Stalin, Mao stated that personality cults are "poisonous ideological survivals of the old society", and reaffirmed China's commitment to collective leadership. But at the 1958 Party congress in Chengdu, Mao expressed support for the personality cults of people whom he labelled as genuinely worthy figures; not those that expressed "blind worship".

In 1962, Mao proposed the Socialist Education Movement (SEM) in an attempt to educate the peasants to resist the "temptations" of feudalism and the sprouts of capitalism that he saw re-emerging in the countryside from Liu's economic reforms. Large quantities of politicized art were produced and circulated — with Mao at the center. Numerous posters, badges and musical compositions referenced Mao in the phrase "Chairman Mao is the red sun in our hearts" (毛主席是我们心中的红太阳, Máo Zhǔxí Shì Wǒmen Xīnzhōng De Hóng Tàiyáng) and a "Savior of the people" (人民的大救星, Rénmín De Dà Jiùxīng).

In October 1966, Mao's Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, which was known as the Little Red Book was published. Party members were encouraged to carry a copy with them and possession was almost mandatory as a criterion for membership. Over the years, Mao's image became displayed almost everywhere, present in homes, offices and shops. His quotations were typographically emphasized by putting them in boldface or red type in even the most obscure writings. Music from the period emphasized Mao's stature, as did children's rhymes. The phrase "Long Live Chairman Mao for ten thousand years" was commonly heard during the era.

A line to enter Mao Zedong Mausoleum.

Mao also has a presence in China and around the world in popular culture, where his face adorns everything from t-shirts to coffee cups. Mao's granddaughter, Kong Dongmei, defended the phenomenon, stating that "it shows his influence, that he exists in people's consciousness and has influenced several generations of Chinese people's way of life. Just like Che Guevara's image, his has become a symbol of revolutionary culture." Since 1950, over 40 million people have visited Mao's birthplace in Shaoshan, Hunan.

Genealogy

Ancestors

His ancestors were:

• Máo Yíchāng (毛贻昌, born Xiangtan October 15, 1870, died Shaoshan January 23, 1920), father, courtesy name Máo Shùnshēng (毛顺生) or also known as Mao Jen-sheng
• Wén Qīmèi(文七妹, born Xiangxiang 1867, died October 5, 1919), mother. She was illiterate and a devout Buddhist. She was a descendant of Wen Tianxiang.
• Máo Ēnpǔ (毛恩普, born May 22, 1846, died November 23, 1904), paternal grandfather
• Luó Shì (罗氏), paternal grandmother
• Máo Zǔrén (毛祖人), paternal great-grandfather

Wives

Mao with Jiang Qing and daughter Li Na, 1940s

Mao Zedong had four wives who provided a total of 10 children. These were:

1. Luo Yixiu (罗一秀, October 20, 1889 – 1910) of Shaoshan: married 1907 to 1910
2. Yang Kaihui (杨开慧, 1901–1930) of Changsha: married 1921 to 1927, executed by the KMT in 1930; mother to Mao Anying, Mao Anqing, and Mao Anlong
3. He Zizhen (贺子珍, 1910–1984) of Jiangxi: married May 1928 to 1939; mother to Mao Anhong, Li Min, and four other children
4. Jiang Qing: (江青, 1914–1991), married 1939 to Mao's death; mother to Li Na

Siblings

He had several siblings:

• Mao Zemin (毛泽民, 1895–1943), younger brother, executed by a warlord
• Mao Zetan (毛泽覃, 1905–1935), younger brother, executed by the KMT
• Mao Zejian (毛泽建, 1905–1929), adopted sister, executed by the KMT

Mao Zedong's parents altogether had five sons and two daughters. Two of the sons and both daughters died young, leaving the three brothers Mao Zedong, Mao Zemin, and Mao Zetan. Like all three of Mao Zedong's wives, Mao Zemin and Mao Zetan were communists. Like Yang Kaihui, both Zemin and Zetan were killed in warfare during Mao Zedong's lifetime.

Note that the character zé (泽) appears in all of the siblings' given names. This is a common Chinese naming convention.

From the next generation, Zemin's son, Mao Yuanxin, was raised by Mao Zedong's family. He became Mao Zedong's liaison with the Politburo in 1975. Sources like Li Zhisui (The Private Life of Chairman Mao) say that he played a role in the final power-struggles.

Children

Mao Zedong had a total of ten children, including:

• Mao Anying (毛岸英, 1922–1950): son to Yang, married to Liú Sīqí (刘思齐), who was born Liú Sōnglín (刘松林), killed in action during the Korean War
• Mao Anqing (毛岸青, 1923–2007): son to Yang, married to Shao Hua (邵华), grandson Mao Xinyu (毛新宇), great-grandson Mao Dongdong
• Mao Anlong (1927–1931): son to Yang, died during the Chinese Civil War
• Mao Anhong (b. 1932): son to He, left to Mao's younger brother Zetan and then to one of Zetan's guards when he went off to war, was never heard of again
• Li Min (李敏, b. 1936): daughter to He, married to Kǒng Lìnghuá (孔令华), son Kǒng Jìníng (孔继宁), daughter Kǒng Dōngméi (孔冬梅)
• Li Na (李讷, Pinyin: Lĭ Nà, b. 1940): daughter to Jiang (whose birth given name was Li, a name also used by Mao while evading the KMT), married to Wáng Jǐngqīng (王景清), son Wáng Xiàozhī (王效芝)

Mao's first and second daughters were left to local villagers because it was too dangerous to raise them while fighting the Kuomintang and later the Japanese. Their youngest daughter (born in early 1938 in Moscow after Mao separated) and one other child (born 1933) died in infancy. Two English researchers who retraced the entire Long March route in 2002–2003 located a woman whom they believe might well be one of the missing children abandoned by Mao to peasants in 1935. Ed Jocelyn and Andrew McEwen hope a member of the Mao family will respond to requests for a DNA test.

Personal life

Mao's private life was very secretive at the time of his rule. However, after Mao's death, his personal physician Li Zhisui published a memoir which mentions some aspects of Mao's private life, such as chain-smoking cigarettes, rare bathing or dental habits, laziness, addiction to sleeping pills and large number of sexual partners.

Having grown up in Hunan, Mao spoke Mandarin with a heavy Xiang Chinese accent that is very pronounced on recordings of his speeches. Journalist Clare Hollingworth noted that Mao was proud of his "peasant ways and manners", having a strong Hunanese accent and providing "earthy" comments on sexual matters. Similarly, historian Lee Feigon noted that Mao's "earthiness" meant that he remained connected to "everyday Chinese life."

Biographer Peter Carter described Mao as having "an attractive personality" who could for much of the time be a "moderate and balanced man", but noted that he could also be ruthless, and showed no mercy to his opponents. This description was echoed by Sinologist Stuart Schram, who emphasized his ruthlessness, but whom also noted that Mao showed no sign of "tak[ing] pleasure" in torture or killing in the revolutionary cause. Historian Lee Feigon also described Mao as being "draconian and authoritarian" when threatened, but expressed the opinion that he was not the "kind of villain that his mentor Stalin was". Carter noted that throughout his life, Mao had the ability to gain people's trust, and that as such he gathered around him "an extraordinarily wide range of friends" in his early years.

Writings and calligraphy

Mao's calligraphy: A bronze plaque of a poem by Li Bai. (Chinese: 白帝城毛泽东手书李白诗铜匾

Mao was a prolific writer of political and philosophical literature. He is the attributed author of Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, known in the West as the "Little Red Book" and in Cultural Revolution China as the "Red Treasure Book" (红宝书): this is a collection of short extracts from his speeches and articles, edited by Lin Biao and ordered topically. Mao wrote several other philosophical treatises, both before and after he assumed power. These include:

• On Guerrilla Warfare (《游击战》); 1937
• On Practice (《实践论》); 1937
• On Contradiction (《矛盾论》); 1937
• On Protracted War (《论持久战》); 1938
• In Memory of Norman Bethune (《纪念白求恩》); 1939
• On New Democracy (《新民主主义论》); 1940
• Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art (《在延安文艺座谈会上的讲话》); 1942
• Serve the People (《为人民服务》); 1944
• The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains (《愚公移山》); 1945
• On the Correct Handling of the Contradictions Among the People (《正确处理人民内部矛盾问题》); 1957

Mao was also a skilled Chinese calligrapher with a highly personal style. In China, Mao was considered a master calligrapher during his lifetime. His calligraphy can be seen today throughout mainland China. His work gave rise to a new form of Chinese calligraphy called "Mao-style" or Maoti, which has gained increasing popularity since his death. There currently exist various competitions specializing in Mao-style calligraphy.

Literary works

Main article: Poetry of Mao Zedong

File:Qinyuanchun Changsha.JPG

Mao's calligraphy of his poem "Qingyuanchun Changsha"

As did most Chinese intellectuals of his generation, Mao received rigorous education in Chinese classical literature. His style was deeply influenced by the great Tang Dynasty poets Li Bai and Li He. He is considered to be a romantic poet, in contrast to the realist poets represented by Du Fu.

Many of Mao's poems are still popular in China and a few are taught as a mandatory part of the elementary school curriculum. Some of his most well-known poems are: Changsha (1925), The Double Ninth (1929.10), Loushan Pass (1935), The Long March (1935), Snow (1936), The PLA Captures Nanjing (1949), Reply to Li Shuyi (1957.05.11), and Ode to the Plum Blossom (1961.12).

See also

• Mao suit
• Chairman Mao badge
• Mao's Little Red Book
• Poetry of Mao Zedong
• Mausoleum of Mao Zedong
• Mao Tse-tung: Ruler of Red China

• The Private Life of Chairman Mao
• Mao: The Unknown Story
• Mao's Great Famine
• Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine
• Mao Xinyu

References

Bibliography

• Carter, Peter (1976). Mao. London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0192731408. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• Chang, Jung; Halliday, Jon (2005). Mao: The Unknown Story. London: Ted Smart. ISBN 978-0224071260.
• Dikötter, Frank (2010). Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62. London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. ISBN 978-0747595083.
• Feigon, Lee (2002). Mao: A Reinterpretation. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. ISBN 978-1566634588.
• Gao, Mobo (2008). The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution. London: Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0745327808.
• Hollingworth, Clare (1985). Mao and the Men Against Him. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0224017608. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• Li, Zhisui (1994). The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoirs of Mao's Personal Physician. London: Random House. ISBN 978-0701140186. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• MacFarquhar, Roderick; Schoenhals, Michael (2008). Mao's Last Revolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674027480.
• Pantsov, Alexander V.; Steven I Levine (2012). Mao: The Real Story. Simon and Schuster.; 755pp; uses new materials from Russian archives
• Schram, Stuart (1966). Mao Tse-Tung. London: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0140208405.
• Short, Philip (2001). Mao: A Life. Macmillan.

External links

General

• Asia Source biography
• ChineseMao.com: Extensive resources about Mao Zedong
• CNN profile
• Collected Works of Mao at the Maoist Internationalist Movement
• Mao quotations
• Mao Zedong Reference Archive at marxists.org
• Oxford Companion to World Politics: Mao Zedong
• Spartacus Educational biography
• Bio of Mao at the official Communist Party of China web site

Commentary

• Discusses the life, military influence and writings of Chairman Mao ZeDong.
• What Maoism Has Contributed
• China must confront dark past, says Mao confidant
• Mao was cruel – but also laid the ground for today's China
• On the Role of Mao Zedong
• Propaganda paintings showing Mao as the great leader of China
• Remembering Mao's Victims
• Mao Tse Tung: Leader, Killer, Icon
• Mao's Great Leap to Famine
• Finding the Facts About Mao's Victims
• Remembering China's Great Helmsman
• Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?