Born into a Hunanese peasant family, Mao Zedong went on to become the leader of the Chinese Communist Party.
A portrait of Chairman Mao is still mounted on the central archway of Tian'anmen Gate in Beijing. It was here on October 1, 1949 that Mao proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China. Few leaders in recent Chinese history have warranted as much controversy. Although he was lauded for his efforts to resist Japanese invaders before and during World War II, he is still largely blamed for the disastrous outcomes of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
Mao's early life and education
On December 26, 1893 Mao Zedong was born in the village of Shaoshan in China's Hunan province. During the revolution of 1911 which saw the end of China's last dynasty, the Qing, Mao was a soldier in the Hunan Provincial Army. He worked as a library assistant afterwards and began to read Marxist literature, and in 1921 he was one of the founding members of the Chinese Communist Party. Unlike other students his age who would later become prominent in Chinese politics like Deng Xiaoping, Mao didn't have the necessary funds to study abroad and therefore couldn't advance his education. Some historians believe this is one of the reasons why he attacked the educated Chinese during the Cultural Revolution many years later, as a way of lashing out at the intellectual class.
Japanese aggression and the Kuomintang
Japan had taken over the part of China which was then called Manchuria in 1931, and then with much more ferocity, invaded again in 1937. Mao recruited peasants to join the Red Army and successfully held the Japanese at bay with a temporary alliance with the Kuomintang (Nationalist) Party headed by Chiang Kai-shek. After Japan surrendered civil war broke out between those two groups and Chiang fled to Taiwan. Mao was victorious and was exclusively in control of the Chinese mainland. He was recognized as the Chairman of the CCP Central Committee and the Politburo, and the last months of 1949 saw increased industrialization and the overall economic picture began to improve.
Disaster on a grand scale
In 1958 the Great Leap Forward began. Mao wanted to boost China's industrial and agricultural output tenfold, and therefore combined massive numbers of labourers who were put to work in vast communes. It wasn't long before this project took a turn for the worse. Poor harvests, an exhausted workforce and the absence of raw materials led to a catastrophic famine. 20 million people died between 1959 and 1961.
The Cultural Revolution
Mao started a decade long campaign to weed out political opponents beginning in 1966, and stirred up a revolutionary frenzy by using Red Guards to publicly attack teachers, scientists and other scholars. Institutions of higher learning were closed, and many professionals were jailed or exiled.
Relations with the Soviet Union and the United States
Russian-Chinese co-operation deteriorated rapidly in the late 60s, due to Mao's belief that Nikita Khruschev abandoned Marxist ideologies. On the other hand, a better diplomatic relationship with the U.S. flourished in the early 70s. Mao met Richard Nixon, the first U.S. President to make a state visit to China in February 1972.
Mao Zedong died on September 9, 1976.
