Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong (help·info) (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976; Mao Tse-tung in Wade-Giles) was the chairman of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China from 1943 and the chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China from 1945 until his death in 1976. Under his leadership, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) became the ruling party of Mainland China after victory over Chinese Nationalists, the Kuomintang, in the Chinese Civil War. On October 1, 1949, Mao declared the formation of the People's Republic of China at Tiananmen Square. From the 1950s until his death, Mao initiated various economic and political campaigns, such as the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people. His knowledge of these deaths is disputed.

Introduction

Mao created a mostly unified China free of foreign domination for the first time since the Opium Wars. With Zhu De, Mao co-founded the People's Liberation Army as the Red Army on August 1, 1927 after Chiang Kai-Shek began leading a series of purges against the communists. After gaining power, Mao initiated a transformation of the economic and social system through a process of collectivisation culminating in The Great Leap Forward of 1958-62, which has subsequently been recognised as an economic disaster for China. The changes in social and agricultural policies which he ordered during this period, known in China as Three Years of Natural Disasters, caused the massive famine of 1959–1961. Mao created a totalitarian one-party-state, contributed to the Sino-Soviet Split, and initiated the Cultural Revolution, which purged, tortured, and publicly humiliated millions. These millions included many of those fellow Communists who had forced Mao to end the policies that contributed to the famine of 1959–1961. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao encouraged the wholesale destruction of a large part of China's cultural heritage.

Mao Zedong is sometimes referred to as Chairman Mao in the West and in China simply as the Chairman. At the height of his personality cult, Mao was commonly known in China as the "Four Greats": "Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great Supreme Commander, Great Helmsman". Mao was an avid reader, particularly of Chinese history and it has been argued that his skill at outmaneuvering his political opponents as well as his belief in the overriding importance of unifying and revolutionizing China, regardless of the sacrifices imposed on his people, owed much to his understanding of Chinese imperial history. His political writings were influential in the development of Marxist thought and he also wrote poetry which retains some popularity in China.