Who Was Mao Tse-tung?

Famous Communist Leader Mao Zedong [a] (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976),was a Chinese politician, political theorist, military strategist, poet, and revolutionary who was the founder of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which he led as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until his death in 1976. See more information about Mao Tse-tung.

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Move Toward Communist Ideology

In 1918,he heard of the successful Russian Revolution, which established the communist Soviet Union. In 1921, he became one of the inaugural members of the Chinese Communist Party.

Japanese-Chinese Conflict and Famous Communist Leader Mao’s Rise To Power

In July 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army invaded China, forcing Chiang Kai-shek to flee the capital in Nanking. Chiang’s forces soon lost control of the coastal regions and most of the major cities. Unable to fight a war on two fronts, Chiang reached out to the Communists for a truce and support. During this time, Mao established himself as a military leader and, with aid from Allied forces, helped fight the Japanese.

With the Japanese defeat in 1945, Mao Tse-tung was able to set his sights on controlling all of China. Efforts were made — by the United States in particular — to establish a coalition government, but China slid into a bloody civil war. On October 1, 1949, in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, Mao announced the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. Chiang Kai-shek and his followers fled to the island of Taiwan, where they formed the Republic of China.

Fallout from the ‘Great Leap Forward’

In January 1958, Mao Tse-tung launched the “Great Leap Forward,” attempting to increase agricultural and industrial production. The program established large agricultural communes with as many as 75,000 people working the fields. Each family received a share of the profits and a small plot of land. Mao had set idealistic, some would say improbable, expectations for both agriculture and industrial production, believing the country could make a century’s worth of advancement in a few decades.

At first, reports were promising, with accounts of overwhelming advancement. However, three years of floods and bad harvests told a different story.In the worst manmade famine in human history, an estimated 40 million people died of hunger between 1959 and 1961. It became clear that Mao knew how to organize a revolution, but was totally inept at running a country. The scale of the disaster was hidden from the nation and the world.

As a result of the Great Leap Forward’s failure, in 1962 Mao Tse-tung was quietly pushed to the sidelines and his rivals took control of the country. For the first time in 25 years, Mao was not a central figure in leadership. While he waited for his time to return, an ardent supporter, Lin Biao, compiled some of Mao’s writings into a handbook entitled Quotations from Chairman Mao. Known as the “Little Red Book,” copies were made available to all Chinese.

Cultural Revolution

In 1966, Mao Tse-tung made his political return and launched the Cultural Revolution. Appearing at a gathering at the Yangtze River in May, the 73-year-old Mao swam for several minutes in the river, looking fit and energetic. The message to his rivals was, “Look, I’m back!” Later, he and his closest aides choreographed a series of public rallies involving thousands of young supporters. He calculated correctly that the young wouldn’t remember much about the failure of the Great Leap Forward and the subsequent famine.

Books

Famous Communist Leader Mao Tse-tung authored many books, among them: On Guerilla Warfare (1937), On New Democracy (1940), and Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (1946-1976).

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Legacy and Death of Famous Communist Leader

Mao Tse-tung died from complications of Parkinson’s disease on September 9, 1976, at the age of 82, in Beijing, China. He left a controversial legacy in both China and the West as a genocidal monster and political genius. Officially, in China, he is held in high regard as a great political strategist and military mastermind, the savior of the nation. However, Mao’s efforts to close China to trade and market commerce and eradicate traditional Chinese culture have largely been rejected by his successors.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Mao Tse-tung
• Birth Year: 1893
• Birth date: December 26, 1893
• Birth City: Shaoshan
• Birth Country: China
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Mao Tse-tung (also spelled Zedong) was the principal Chinese Marxist theorist, soldier and statesman who led his nation’s Cultural Revolution.
• Industries
  • War and Militaries
  • World Politics
• Astrological Sign: Capricorn
• Schools
  • Peking University
  • Hunan First Normal School
• Nationalities
  • Chinese
• Death Year: 1976
• Death date: September 9, 1976
• Death City: Beijing
• Death Country: China

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QUOTES

• Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.
• To read too many books is harmful.
• Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.
• The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.
• All reactionaries are paper tigers.