Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong ( Mao Tse-tung) (b. 26 Dec. 1893, d. 9 Sept. 1976) Born in Shaoshan (Hunan) into a wealthy peasant family, in 1910 he ran away from home in order to continue his school education. He became a student activist in Changsha (Hunan), and founded the New People's Study Society. After graduation, he left for Beijing (1918) and took employment at the Beijing University Library, where he became close to its director, Li Dazhao. One of the founding members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Shanghai (July 1921), he returned to the capital of his home province, Changsha, to organize the party there. In 1923, he was elected to the party's Central Committee. His further rise to the party hierarchy was blocked by his fundamental disagreement with Marxism-Leninism and Stalinism, in that he was convinced that in China the revolution would emanate from its overwhelming mass of peasants, rather than the proletariat in the cities (Maoism). He was involved in the unsuccessful Autumn Harvest Uprising, and led its survivors to the Jianxi province, where they were reinforced by his loyal supporter, Zhu De. With other Communist forces he formed the Jianxi Soviet, but his unorthodox views condemned him very much to the sidelines within the leadership.

Mao became the effective leader of the Communist Party only after the destruction of the Soviet, and the near-collapse of the Long March, on 8 January 1935. He led the remaining forces, against all the odds, to Yan'an. There, over the next decade, he established another Soviet, strengthened his leadership over the party, and committed it to his ideal of a peasant revolution, which he developed further in a number of writings. In 1939, he married his third wife, Jiang Qing. During the Sino-Japanese War, he patiently built up his influence throughout northern China, which proved essential in the following Chinese Civil War (1945–9). In that war, the discipline he had drilled into his troops, the popularity of his land reforms in areas under his control, and the corruption and disunity within the ranks of the opposing National Revolutionary Army led to his victory, enabling him to proclaim the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949.

He carried out economic reforms such as the collectivization of agriculture and the nationalization of industry with considerable skill. At the same time, his leadership was extremely erratic, keeping the majority of the population in uncertainty and insecurity. His abortive Hundred Flowers campaign (1956–7) was followed by a wave of repression, while his ill-judged Great Leap Forward was an unmitigated economic disaster. In its wake, he was forced to withdraw from his official positions within the party (1958), though this worsened his ideological stubbornness against the pragmatic realities of day-to-day government.

Mao unleashed the ill-defined Cultural Revolution, to reassert his control over the party and his status as demigod within the country at large, despite the human and economic cost which this involved. By the time of his death, the regime had become corrupt and subject to bitter infighting between the Gang of Four and the rest of the party leadership. Undoubtedly he was a figure of unique historical significance in world history, and of unrivalled importance for twentieth-century China. The rapid demise of the Gang of Four after his death, and the assumption of power of Deng Xiaoping, led to a more sombre assessment of his personality, both of his outstanding qualities at the head of a revolutionary movement, and his disastrous and costly policies once in power.