Mao Zedong

Born on December 1893 to a peasant family in central China, Mao Zedong grew up in an environment where education was valued as training for records and accounts, not for the purpose of knowledge. As a young man, Mao was unsure of his career and drifted around from police school to law school to business school. Among these many fields of study, Mao also trained as a teacher and travelled to Beijing where he worked in the Peking University library. This is where his communist career began because in the library he began to read marxist literature. Moved by communist ideals, Mao became a member of the Chinese Communist Party(CCP) in 1921.

During the interwar period, China was in a state of turmoil. In 1927, the Kuomintang nationalist party, led by Chiang Kai-shek, launched an anti-communist purge. During the war with Japan, these two parties were allied with each other but when the war ended, a civil war broke out between the two parties. The Communists ended up winning the civil war and in October 1949, the People’s Republic China(PRC) was set up with Mao as its leader. As a result of becoming Communist, Chinese industry was owned by the state and farmers were organized into collectives. In 1958, in an attempt to industrialize China, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward. This program included the mass mobilization of labor to improve agricultural and industrial production. However, the Great Leap Forward flopped and there was a massive decline in agricultural output, with poor harvests that led to famine and the deaths of millions. With tension growing in the nation, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, trying to re-assert his authority. The Cultural Revolution was designed to purge the country of “impure elements” and revive revolutionary spirit. It was also an excuse for Mao to get rid of rebellious leadership that had defied him in the previous years. As a result of the Cultural Revolution, people began to lose confidence in Mao so he sent in the army to restore order, which only exacerbated the situation.

Mao died on September 9, 1976. Mao’s career as China’s leader was marked by ups and downs. Many historians credit Mao with coordinating guerrilla warfare that helped win the civil war and overthrow the nationalists. Others also applaud him for re-distributing the land back to the peasants and restoring China’s independence. However, Mao’s resume was tainted by his programs the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Many believe they were ill-conceived and although Mao laid the foundation for the industry which contributed to the major economic development in the 20th century, he is criticized for his methods as being violent and self-defeating.