Mao Zedong (1893–1976)

Chinese leader who climbed to the head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and controlled the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 1949 until his death in 1976.

[Page 444]The implacable U.S. hostility toward communism, as well as U.S. support for the nationalist Chinese state of Taiwan (the Republic of China, the ROC), made Mao a bitter foe of the United States. After Mao took power in 1949, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with China. The two nations did not recognize one another diplomatically until U.S. president Richard Nixon reestablished relations in 1971.

Early Life and Political Activity

Mao Zedong was born on December 26, 1893, in the village of Shaoshan in China's Hunan Province. His father was born a peasant, but he used his meager savings to establish a loan business and to purchase a small farm. His father expected Mao to tend the farm and did not allow his son to receive an education. But at the age of 15, Mao fled the farm, attended primary school for one year, and then transferred to a middle school. During this period, Mao developed his permanent enmity for intellectuals and embraced the peasant class as the foundation of Chinese society.

In 1911, Mao joined the revolution that overthrew the Manchu dynasty, China's last ruling dynasty. However, when renegade generals seized control of the revolutionary movement, Mao abandoned it and enrolled in a teacher training school. As a teacher, Mao demonstrated his burgeoning affinity for communism by organizing a local branch of the Socialist Youth League and joining other Marxist societies. After participating in the initial congress of the CCP in July 1921, he was soon named secretary of Hunan Province. By 1923, Mao was elected to the Communist Party's central committee.

At this time, the communists shared power with the nationalist Kuomintang Party (KMT). But in 1927, the KMT betrayed the alliance and massacred thousands of communist officials. Mao fled his home in Shanghai and hid in the mountains of his native Hunan. While Mao retreated to Hunan, other communist leaders advocated an open confrontation with the KMT. Their strategy was severely misguided, however, and the KMT crushed the communist forces.

Mao next gathered a group of the surviving communists in the mountains of Jiangxi Province. In 1934, however, the KMT encircled the region, planning to eradicate the remaining communist forces. During a heated debate with his fellow leaders, Mao recommended that the 96,000 besieged communists gathered in the mountains make a daring escape and flee into the harsh, unsettled hinterlands of northwest China.

This escape, known as the Long March, lasted longer than a year, spanned 6,000 miles, and cost 88,000 lives. It also cemented Mao's control of the CCP. Before the march, two factions existed within the party. The first faction consisted of communists who had spent time in Europe or the Soviet Union and had embraced the basic tenets of Marxism. They believed that the Soviet style of communism should serve as a model for China. Mao, who led the second faction, disagreed. He did not believe that China should join in a Soviet-led, international revolution of the working class. Instead, Mao viewed the peasant class as the foundation of Chinese society and advocated a Chinese brand of communism that elevated this class.

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