30 years after his death, Mao Zedong remains a controversial figure. His supporters regard Mao as a great revolutionary leader whose thought was the highest expression of Marxism. Supporters within China consider Mao as a successful military and political leader who led the rise of 20th Century China.

He instigated several major socio-political programmes (some through collectivisation), including the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution, seeking to achieve, by means of his political philosophy, the ideal of a strong, prosperous and socially egalitarian China.

These programmes, however, were widely regarded as failures. Mao has been blamed by critics for the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese, as well as severe damage to the culture, society, economy and foreign relations. Mao has also been seen as a hostile figure outside China for instigating several international conflicts. While officially held in high regard in China, he is rarely mentioned by the Chinese government, whose policies have diverged greatly from those of Mao, and his influence on Chinese politics has greatly diminished since his death.

Names
Given name Style name
Trad. 毛澤東 潤之1
Simp. 毛泽东 润之
Pinyin Máo Zédōng Rùnzhī
WG Mao Tse-tung Jun-chih
IPA
Surname: Mao
1Originally 詠芝 (咏芝)

The eldest child of a relatively prosperous peasant family, Mao was born on December 26, 1893 in a village called Shaoshan in Xiangtan County (湘潭縣), Hunan province. His ancestors migrated from Jiangxi province during the Ming Dynasty, married indigenous women, and had settled there as farmers. Due to his family's relative wealth, his father was able to send him to school and later to Changsha for more advanced schooling.

During the 1911 Revolution, Mao served in a local regiment in Hunan. However, he disliked military service and later returned to school in Changsha.

After graduating from the First Provincial Normal School of Hunan in 1918, Mao traveled with Professor Yang Changji, his high school teacher and future father-in-law, to Beijing during the May Fourth Movement in 1919.

Professor Yang held a faculty position at Peking University. Because of Yang's recommendation, Mao worked as an assistant librarian at the University with Li Dazhao as curator. Mao registered as a part-time student at Beijing University and audited many lectures and seminars by famous intellectuals, such as Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi, Qian Xuantong, etc. During his stay in Beijing, he read as much as possible, and through his readings, he was introduced to Communist theories. He married Yang Kaihui, Professor Yang's daughter and also his fellow student, despite an existing marriage arranged by his father at home. Mao never acknowledged this marriage.

Mao turned down an opportunity to study in France because of poverty. Later, he claimed that it was because he firmly believed that China's problems could be studied and resolved only within China. Unlike his contemporaries, Mao concentrated on studying the peasant majority of China's population, and here, he began his life as a professional revolutionary.

On July 23, 1921, Mao, aged 27, attended the first session of the Congress of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai. Two years later, he was elected as one of the five commissars of the Central Committee of the Party during the third Congress session.

For a while, Mao remained in Shanghai, an important city that the CPC emphasized for the Revolution. However, the Party encountered major difficulties organizing labor union movements and building a relationship with its nationalist ally, the Kuomintang. The Party had become poor, and Mao was disillusioned with the revolution and moved back to Shaoshan. During his stay at home, Mao's interest in the revolution was rekindled after hearing of the 1925 uprisings in Shanghai and Guangzhou. His political ambitions returned, and he then went to Guangdong, the base of the Kuomintang, and took part in the preparations for the second session of the National Congress of Kuomintang.

In early 1927, Mao returned to Hunan where, in an urgent meeting held by the Communist Party, he made a report based on his investigations of the peasant uprisings in the wake of the Northern Expedition. This is considered the initial and decisive step towards the successful application of Mao's revolutionary theories.

Throughout Mao's life as a major ruler, he conducted several harsh punishments for thieves, including tarring and feathering.

Mao was introduced to Marxism in Beijing, before he married Yang Kaihui.

"There were three books that left great impressions on my mind", Mao recollected, "They helped build up my solid faith in Marxism". Among the three important books was The Communist Manifesto.

Mao became a Marxist gradually. During the year 1920 in Hunan, Mao contributed a number of essays to newspapers advocating the autonomy of Hunan Province. He firmly believed that provincial autonomy was a prerequisite to local prosperity and that local prosperity would lead to a stronger and more prosperous China.

In 1920, Mao also developed his theory of violent revolution. His theory was inspired by the Russian revolution and was likely influenced by the Chinese literary works: Outlaws of the Marsh and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Mao sought to subvert the alliance of imperialism and feudalism in China. He thought the Nationalists to be both economically and politically vulnerable and thus that the revolution could not be steered by Nationalists. He concluded that violent revolution must be conducted by the proletariat under the supervision of a Communist party.

Throughout the 1920s, Mao led several labor struggles based upon his studies of the propagation and organization of the contemporary labor movements. However, these struggles were successfully subdued by the government, and Mao fled from Changsha after he was labeled a radical activist. He pondered these failures and finally realized that 1) industrial workers were unable to lead the revolution because they made up only a small portion of China's population and 2) unarmed labor struggles could not resolve the problems of imperial and feudal suppression.

Mao began to depend on Chinese peasants who later became staunch supporters of his theory of violent revolution. This dependence on the rural rather than the urban proletariat to instigate violent revolution distinguished Mao from his predecessors and contemporaries. Mao himself was from a peasant family, and thus he cultivated his reputation among the farmers and peasants and introduced them to Marxism.

Unlike early Marxists, Mao did not wish to spread communism throughout the world and maintained an isolationist foreign policy, especially after the Sino-Soviet split.