Brief biography of mao zedong

From the late s, Mao's foreign policy was dominated by a political split with the Soviet Union , and during the s he began establishing relations with the United States ; China was also involved in the Vietnam War and Cambodian Civil War. In , Mao died after suffering a series of heart attacks.

Brief biography of mao zedong

He was succeeded as leader by Hua Guofeng and in by Deng Xiaoping. The CCP's official evaluation of Mao's legacy both praises him and acknowledges he made errors in his later years. Mao is considered one of the most significant figures of the 20th century. His policies were responsible for a vast number of deaths, with estimates ranging from 40 to 80 million victims of starvation, persecution, prison labour , and mass executions, and his regime has been described as totalitarian.

He has also been credited with transforming China from a semi-colony to a leading world power by advancing literacy , women's rights , basic healthcare , primary education, and life expectancy. Under Mao, China's population grew from about million to more than million. Within China, he is revered as a national hero who liberated the country from foreign occupation and exploitation.

He became an ideological figurehead and a prominent influence within the international communist movement, inspiring various Maoist organisations. Due to its recognizability, the spelling was used widely, even by the PRC's foreign ministry after Hanyu Pinyin became the PRC's official romanisation system for Mandarin Chinese in ; the well-known booklet of Mao's political statements was officially entitled Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung in English translations.

While the pinyin-derived spelling Mao Zedong is increasingly common, the Wade—Giles-derived spelling Mao Tse-tung continues to be used in modern publications to some extent. Learning the value systems of Confucianism , he later admitted that he did not enjoy the classical Chinese texts preaching Confucian morals, instead favouring classic novels like Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin.

Mao refused to recognise her as his wife, becoming a fierce critic of arranged marriage and temporarily moving away. Luo was locally disgraced and died in at 20 years old. Working on his father's farm, Mao read voraciously [ 8 ] and developed a "political consciousness" from Zheng Guanying 's booklet which lamented the deterioration of Chinese power and argued for the adoption of representative democracy.

He disapproved of their actions as morally wrong, but claimed sympathy for their situation. In , Mao began middle school in Changsha. The republicans' figurehead was Sun Yat-sen , an American-educated Christian who led the Tongmenghui society. Inspired by Sun's republicanism, the army rose up across southern China, sparking the Xinhai Revolution.

Changsha's governor fled, leaving the city in republican control. The northern provinces remained loyal to the emperor, and hoping to avoid a civil war, Sun—proclaimed "provisional president" by his supporters—compromised with the monarchist general Yuan Shikai. The monarchy was abolished, creating the Republic of China , but the monarchist Yuan became president.

With the revolution over, Mao resigned from the army in , after six months as a soldier. Over the next few years, Mao Zedong enrolled in and dropped out of a police academy, a soap-production school, a law school, an economics school, and the government-run Changsha Middle School. Mao wanted to become a teacher and enrolled at the Fourth Normal School of Changsha, which soon merged with the First Normal School of Hunan , widely seen as the best in Hunan.

Although he was a supporter of Chinese nationalism , Chen argued that China must look to the west to cleanse itself of superstition and autocracy. A popular student, in Mao was elected secretary of the Students' Society. He organised the Association for Student Self-Government and led protests against school rules. Desiring personal and societal transformation, the Society gained 70—80 members, many of whom would later join the Communist Party.

Lenin was an advocate of the socio-political theory of Marxism , first developed by the German sociologists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , and Li's articles added Marxism to the doctrines in the Chinese revolutionary movement. Becoming "more and more radical", Mao was initially influenced by Peter Kropotkin 's anarchism , which was the most prominent radical doctrine of the day.

Chinese anarchists , such as Cai Yuanpei , Chancellor of Peking University, called for complete social revolution in social relations, family structure, and women's equality , rather than the simple change in the form of government called for by earlier revolutionaries. He joined Li's Study Group and "developed rapidly toward Marxism" during the winter of At the university, Mao was snubbed by other students due to his rural Hunanese accent and lowly position.

She died in October and her husband died in January On 4 May , students in Beijing gathered at Tiananmen to protest the Chinese government's weak resistance to Japanese expansion in China. Patriots were outraged at the influence given to Japan in the Twenty-One Demands in , the complicity of Duan Qirui 's Beiyang government , and the betrayal of China in the Treaty of Versailles , wherein Japan was allowed to receive territories in Shandong which had been surrendered by Germany.

These demonstrations ignited the nationwide May Fourth Movement and fuelled the New Culture Movement which blamed China's diplomatic defeats on social and cultural backwardness. In Changsha, Mao had begun teaching history at the Xiuye Primary School [ 50 ] and organising protests against the pro-Duan Governor of Hunan Province, Zhang Jingyao , popularly known as "Zhang the Venomous" due to his corrupt and violent rule.

Using vernacular language that would be understandable to the majority of China's populace, he advocated the need for a "Great Union of the Popular Masses", and strengthened trade unions able to wage non-violent revolution. Zhang banned the Student Association, but Mao continued publishing after assuming editorship of the liberal magazine New Hunan Xin Hunan and authored articles in popular local newspaper Ta Kung Pao.

Several of these advocated feminist views, calling for the liberation of women in Chinese society; Mao was influenced by his forced arranged-marriage. Mao visited Tianjin, Jinan , and Qufu , [ 58 ] before moving to Shanghai, where he worked as a laundryman and met Chen Duxiu , noting that Chen's adoption of Marxism "deeply impressed me at what was probably a critical period in my life".

Tan was plotting to overthrow Zhang, and Mao aided him by organising the Changsha students. In June , Tan led his troops into Changsha, and Zhang fled. In the subsequent reorganisation of the provincial administration, Mao was appointed headmaster of the junior section of the First Normal School. Now receiving a large income, he married Yang Kaihui, daughter of Yang Changji, in the winter of Mao set up a Changsha branch, also establishing a branch of the Socialist Youth Corps and a Cultural Book Society which opened a bookstore to propagate revolutionary literature throughout Hunan.

When the movement was successful in establishing provincial autonomy under a new warlord, Mao forgot his involvement. After the authorities sent a police spy to the congress, the delegates moved to a boat on South Lake near Jiaxing , in Zhejiang, to escape detection. Although Soviet and Comintern delegates attended, the first congress ignored Lenin's advice 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.

Mao was party secretary for Hunan stationed in Changsha, and to build the party there he followed a variety of tactics. The successful and famous Anyuan coal mines strikes [ zh ] contrary to later Party historians depended on both "proletarian" and "bourgeois" strategies. Liu Shaoqi and Li Lisan and Mao not only mobilised the miners, but formed schools and cooperatives and engaged local intellectuals, gentry, military officers, merchants, Red Gang dragon heads and even church clergy.

Mao claimed that he missed the July Second Congress of the Communist Party in Shanghai because he lost the address. Adopting Lenin's advice, the delegates agreed to an alliance with the "bourgeois democrats" of the KMT for the good of the "national revolution". Communist Party members joined the KMT, hoping to push its politics leftward.

Supporting this position, Mao was elected to the Party Committee, taking up residence in Shanghai. In late , Mao returned to Shaoshan, perhaps to recuperate from an illness. He found that the peasantry were increasingly restless and some had seized land from wealthy landowners to found communes. This convinced him of the revolutionary potential of the peasantry, an idea advocated by the KMT leftists but not the Communists.

Such uprisings angered senior KMT figures, who were themselves landowners, emphasising the growing class and ideological divide within the revolutionary movement. There, Mao played an active role in the discussions regarding the peasant issue, 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, arguing that in a revolutionary situation, "peaceful methods cannot suffice".

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 accepted that there was great variation in revolutionary enthusiasm across the country, and that a flexible policy of land redistribution was necessary.

Ultimately, his suggestions were only partially implemented. Fresh from the success of the Northern Expedition against the warlords, Chiang turned on the Communists, who then numbered in the tens of thousands across China. Chiang ignored the orders of the Wuhan-based leftist KMT government and marched on Shanghai, a city controlled by Communist militias.

As the Communists awaited Chiang's arrival, he loosed the White Terror , massacring 5, with the aid of the Green Gang. A battalion led by General Zhu De was ordered to take the city of Nanchang on 1 August , in what became known as the Nanchang Uprising. They were initially successful, but were forced into retreat after five days, marching south to Shantou , and from there they were driven into the wilderness of Fujian.

On the eve of the attack, Mao composed a poem—the earliest of his to survive—titled "Changsha". Mao's army made it to Changsha, but could not take it; by 15 September, he accepted defeat and with survivors marched east to the Jinggang Mountains of Jiangxi. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

The CCP Central Committee, hiding in Shanghai, expelled Mao from their ranks and from the Hunan Provincial Committee, as punishment for his "military opportunism", for his focus on rural activity, and for being too lenient with "bad gentry". The more orthodox Communists especially regarded the peasants as backward and ridiculed Mao's idea of mobilizing them.

Mao's response was to ignore them. He ensured that no massacres took place in the region, and pursued a more lenient approach than that advocated by the Central Committee. Mao proclaimed that "Even the lame, the deaf and the blind could all come in useful for the revolutionary struggle", he boosted the army's numbers, [ 96 ] incorporating two groups of bandits into his army, building a force of around 1, troops.

In doing so, he moulded his men into a disciplined, efficient fighting force. When the enemy rests, we harass him. When the enemy avoids a battle, we attack. When the enemy retreats, we advance. In spring , the Central Committee ordered Mao's troops to southern Hunan, hoping to spark peasant uprisings. Mao was skeptical, but complied. They reached Hunan, where they were attacked by the KMT and fled after heavy losses.

Meanwhile, KMT troops had invaded Jinggangshan, leaving them without a base. They were initially successful, but the KMT counter-attacked, and pushed the CCP back; over the next few weeks, they fought an entrenched guerrilla war in the mountains. Contrastingly, Zhu complied, and led his armies away. Mao's troops fended the KMT off for 25 days while he left the camp at night to find reinforcements.

He reunited with the decimated Zhu's army, and together they returned to Jinggangshan and retook the base. In the mountainous area they were unable to grow enough crops to feed everyone, leading to food shortages throughout the winter. In , Mao met and married He Zizhen , an year-old revolutionary who would bear him six children.

In January , Mao and Zhu evacuated the base with 2, men and a further provided by Peng, and took their armies south, to the area around Tonggu and Xinfeng in Jiangxi. Mao replied that while he concurred with Li's theoretical position, he would not disband his army nor abandon his base. In this, they disagreed with the official line of the Soviet government and Comintern.

Officials in Moscow desired greater control over the CCP and removed Li from power by calling him to Russia for an inquest into his errors. Mao disagreed with the new leadership, believing they grasped little of the Chinese situation, and he soon emerged as their key rival. In December, they tried to overthrow Mao, resulting in the Futian incident , during which Mao's loyalists tortured many and executed between and dissenters.

Meanwhile, Mao recovered from tuberculosis. The KMT armies adopted a policy of encirclement and annihilation of the Red armies. Outnumbered, Mao responded with guerrilla tactics influenced by the works of ancient military strategists like Sun Tzu , but Zhou and the new leadership followed a policy of open confrontation and conventional warfare.

In doing so, the Red Army successfully defeated the first and second encirclements. He too faced setbacks and retreated to deal with the further Japanese incursions into China. In November he announced the start of a "land verification project" which was expanded in June He also orchestrated education programs and implemented measures to increase female political participation.

Trapped inside, morale among the Red Army dropped as food and medicine became scarce. The leadership decided to evacuate. In order to make the escape, many of the wounded and the ill, as well as women and children, were left behind, defended by a group of guerrilla fighters whom the KMT massacred. Temporarily resting in the city, they held a conference ; here, Mao was 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.

Insisting that they operate as a guerrilla force, he laid 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 in turn would renounce the KMT.

From Zunyi, Mao led his troops to Loushan Pass , where they faced armed opposition but successfully crossed the river. Chiang flew into the area to lead his armies against Mao, but the Communists outmanoeuvred him and crossed the Jinsha River. Zhang and Mao disagreed over what to do; the latter wished to proceed to Shaanxi, while Zhang wanted to retreat west to Tibet or Sikkim , far from the KMT threat.

It was agreed that they would go their separate ways, with Zhu De joining Zhang. In November , he was named chairman of the Military Commission. From this point onward, Mao was the Communist Party's undisputed leader, even though he would not become party chairman until Mao's troops arrived at the Yan'an Soviet during October and settled in Bao'an , until spring While there, they developed links with local communities, redistributed and farmed the land, offered medical treatment, and began literacy programs.

She travelled to Moscow for medical treatment; Mao proceeded to divorce her and marry an actress, Jiang Qing. The Japanese had taken both Shanghai and Nanjing —resulting in the Nanjing Massacre , an atrocity Mao never spoke of all his life—and was pushing the Kuomintang government inland to Chongqing. It was a military success that resulted in the death of 20, Japanese, the disruption of railways and the loss of a coal mine.

In , the U. The American soldiers who were sent to the mission were favourably impressed. The party seemed less corrupt, more unified, and more vigorous in its resistance to Japan than the Kuomintang. The soldiers confirmed to their superiors that the party was both strong and popular over a broad area. At least , civilians are believed to have perished during the siege , which lasted from June until October.

Hiroshima took nine seconds; Changchun took five months. Mao initiated the talks which focused on the political and economic revolution in China, foreign policy, railways, naval bases, and Soviet economic and technical aid. The resulting treaty reflected Stalin's dominance and his willingness to help Mao. Following the Marxist—Leninist theory of vanguardism , [ ] Mao believed that only the correct leadership of the Communist Party could advance China into socialism.

Mao pushed the Party to organise campaigns to reform society and extend control. These campaigns were given urgency in October , when the People's Volunteer Army was sent into the Korean War to fight as well as reinforce the armed forces of North Korea, the Korean People's Army , which had been in full retreat. 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 's improvements of relations.

At least , Chinese troops died during the war. Chinese troops in Korea were under the overall command of then newly installed Premier Zhou Enlai , with General Peng Dehuai as field commander and political commissar. During the land reform campaigns , large numbers of landlords and rich peasants were beaten to death at mass meetings as land was taken from them and given to poorer peasants, which reduced economic inequality.

State Department estimated as many as a million were killed in the land reform, and , killed in the counter-revolutionary campaign. Mao himself claimed that a total of , people were killed in attacks on "counter-revolutionaries" during the years — The government is credited with eradicating both consumption and production of opium during the s.

Remaining opium production shifted south of the Chinese border into the Golden Triangle region. Starting in , Mao initiated movements to rid urban areas of corruption; the Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns. Whereas the three-anti campaign was a focused purge of government, industrial and party officials, the five-anti campaign set its sights slightly more broadly, targeting capitalist elements in general.

Mao insisted that minor offenders be criticised and reformed or sent to labour 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.

In his biography of Mao, Philip Short notes that Mao gave explicit instructions in the Yan'an Rectification Movement 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". Following the consolidation of power, Mao launched the first five-year plan — , which emphasised rapid industrial development.

Within industry, iron and steel, electric power, coal, heavy engineering, building materials, and basic chemicals were prioritised with the aim of constructing large and highly capital-intensive plants. Many of these plants were built with Soviet assistance and heavy industry grew rapidly. Despite being initially sympathetic towards the reformist government of Imre Nagy , Mao feared the "reactionary restoration" in Hungary as the Hungarian Revolution of continued and became more hardline.

Mao opposed the withdrawal of Soviet troops by asking Liu Shaoqi to inform the Soviet representatives to use military intervention against "Western imperialist-backed" protestors and Nagy's government. However, it was unclear to what degree Mao's stance played a role in Nikita Khrushchev 's decision to invade Hungary. It was also unclear if China was forced to conform to the Soviet position due to economic concerns and China's poor power projections compared to the USSR.

Despite his disagreements with Moscow's hegemony in the Eastern Bloc , Mao viewed the integrity of the international communist movement as more important than the national autonomy of the countries in the Soviet sphere of influence. Mao decided to soften his stance on Chinese intelligentsia and allow them to express their social dissatisfaction and criticisms of the errors of the government.

Mao wanted to use this movement to prevent a similar uprising in China. However, as people in China began to criticize the CCP's policies and Mao's leadership following the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Mao cracked down on the movement he initiated and compared it to the "counter-revolutionary" Hungarian Revolution. During the Hundred Flowers Campaign, 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 who had criticised the party, totalling perhaps ,, [ ] as well as those who were merely alleged to have been critical, in what is called the Anti-Rightist Movement.

The movement led to the persecution of at least , people, mostly intellectuals and dissidents. United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower 's threats during the First Taiwan Strait Crisis to use nuclear weapons against military targets in Fujian province prompted Mao to begin China's nuclear program. Project [ ] is a military project to find antimalarial medications.

Zhou Enlai convinced Mao Zedong to start the mass project "to keep [the] allies' troops combat-ready", as the meeting minutes put it. The one for investigating traditional Chinese medicine discovered and led to the development of a class of new antimalarial drugs called artemisinins. Some private food production was banned, and livestock and farm implements were brought under collective ownership.

To win favour with their superiors and avoid being purged, each layer in the party exaggerated the amount of grain produced under them. Based upon the falsely reported success, party cadres were ordered to requisition a high amount of that fictitious harvest. The result, compounded in some areas by drought and in others by floods, was that farmers were left with little food and many millions starved to death in the Great Chinese Famine.

The people of urban areas were given food stamps each month, but the people of rural areas were expected to grow their own crops and give some of the crops back to the government. The death count in rural parts of China surpassed the deaths in the urban centers. In late autumn , Mao condemned the practices used during Great Leap Forward such as forcing peasants to do labour without enough food or rest which resulted in epidemics and starvation.

Trying to transform China's economy , Deng Xiaoping made major changes to Mao's economic policies. Mao had been in poor health for several years before his death in His health had declined visibly for at least six months before he died. Bhutto was on a one-day visit to Beijing at the time. It affected a much larger area of his heart.

Mao survived in critical condition until 7 September. That day, he got worse very quickly. His organs failed , and he entered a coma shortly before noon. He was put on life support machines, but they were removed around pm. Mao was pronounced dead at am on 9 September , at the age of Mao's body lay in state at the Great Hall of the People, an important government building.

During his memorial service , people honored him by keeping silent for three minutes. Mao wanted to be cremated. In fact, he was one of the first high-ranking officials to sign the "Proposal that all Central Leaders be Cremated after Death" in November Many Chinese people still believe that Mao was a great leader, though they also know he did bad things.

According to Deng Xiaoping , Mao was "seven parts right and three parts wrong However, Mao has many critics including many historians. They say that his bad ideas and policies killed millions of people. They blame him for making China lose its most important ally , the Soviet Union, in the Sino-Soviet split. Critics say that China's population grew too quickly because Mao did not support family planning and people had more children than they could care for.

Reacting to this population growth, Chinese leaders after Mao began the one child policy. Over the long term, this made the Chinese population much smaller. Mao made several changes to the Chinese language. For example, he switched from the Wade-Giles system of Romanisation to Pinyin. For this reason, Nanking is now called Nanjing on modern maps.

Taiwan still uses Wade-Giles, so its capital is called Taipei instead of the pinyin Taibei. Mao also simplified Chinese characters. He thought this would make them easier to read and write, so that more people would be literate. Many of Mao's successors except Xi Jinping had less power than he did. Mao created an ideology called Maoism.

This ideology spread across China, and influenced many people around the world. Many communist parties around the world believe in Maoism. Contents move to sidebar hide. Page Talk. Read Change Change source View history. Tools Tools. In other projects. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled.

While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets CSS if you are able to do so. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving. Mao died on 9 September World War One Centenary.

Settings Sign out. Mao told his followers that bourgeois elements in China were aiming to restore capitalism, and declared these elements must be removed from society. His youthful followers formed the Red Guards and led a mass purge of the "undesirables. To prevent a repeat of the rejection he received during the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Mao ordered the closure of China's schools, and young intellectuals living in the cities were sent into the countryside to be "re-educated" through hard manual labor.

The Revolution destroyed much of China's traditional cultural heritage as well as creating general economic and social chaos in the country. It was during this time that Mao's cult of personality grew to immense proportions. In , to further solidify his place in Chinese history, Mao Tse-tung met with United States President Richard Nixon , a gesture that eased tensions between the two countries and elevated China's prominence as a world player.

During the meetings, it became apparent that Mao's health was deteriorating, and not much was accomplished because Mao was not always clear in his statements or intentions. Mao Tse-tung died from complications of Parkinson's disease on September 9, , 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. While his emphasis on China's self-reliance and the rapid industrialization that he promoted is credited with laying the foundation for China's late 20th century development, his harsh methods and insensitivity to anyone who didn't give him full faith and allegiance have been widely rebuked as self-defeating.

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The First Family on Inauguration Day. Donald Trump. JD Vance. Jimmy Carter. Justin Trudeau. Legacy and Death In , to further solidify his place in Chinese history, Mao Tse-tung met with United States President Richard Nixon , a gesture that eased tensions between the two countries and elevated China's prominence as a world player. 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.