Mao Zedong

Rise to Power

Mao Zedong was born in 1893 in Shaoshan, Hunan province, the son of a prosperous peasant farmer. He was among the founding members of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, and over the following two decades navigated a brutal intra-party struggle, the Long March (1934–35), and the Second Sino-Japanese War to emerge as the Party's paramount leader. His strategy of building a rural revolutionary base — mobilising the peasantry rather than the urban proletariat — deviated sharply from Soviet orthodoxy and ultimately proved decisive. On 1 October 1949, at Tiananmen Square, Mao proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China.

The Early PRC and Radical Campaigns

The first decade of Mao's rule brought genuine achievements: land reform redistributed land to peasants, literacy rates rose sharply, and life expectancy improved. But it also brought mass campaigns of political terror. The Anti-Rightist Movement of 1957 silenced hundreds of thousands of intellectuals after the Hundred Flowers Campaign briefly encouraged open criticism. The Great Leap Forward (1958–62), Mao's attempt to accelerate industrialisation by mobilising mass labour and collectivising agriculture, caused a catastrophic famine that killed an estimated 15–45 million people — the deadliest man-made famine in history. When colleagues including Liu Shaoqi and Peng Dehuai raised concerns, Mao purged them.

The Cultural Revolution

In 1966, fearing that China was drifting toward revisionism and that his rivals were entrenching themselves in the Party apparatus, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution. He mobilised millions of young Red Guards to attack the "Four Olds" — old ideas, culture, customs, and habits — and to destroy the Party and state bureaucracy. Schools and universities closed. Temples, libraries, and cultural artefacts were destroyed. An estimated one to two million people were killed and millions more persecuted, imprisoned, or sent to re-education camps. The revolution effectively ended only with Mao's death in September 1976.

Legacy

Mao's legacy remains deeply contested. The official CCP verdict, adopted in 1981, holds that he was "70% correct and 30% wrong" — crediting him with founding the PRC and unifying China while acknowledging the disasters of the Great Leap and Cultural Revolution. To his supporters he remains the liberator of China from foreign imperialism and feudal exploitation. To his critics he was a megalomaniac whose ideological experiments killed tens of millions. His portrait still hangs over Tiananmen Gate, and his embalmed body lies in a mausoleum in Tiananmen Square.