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Mao
Zedong
(1893-1976),
Chinese Communist leader who was chairman of the Communist party of China
and the principal founder of the People's Republic of China.
EARLY
YEARS
Mao,
also known as Mao Tse-tung, was born on December 26, 1893, in the village
of Shaoshan, Hunan Province. The scholarly son of a poor peasant who had
prospered by hard work, Mao graduated from the Changsha teacher training
school in 1918. He served briefly in the Nationalist army in the 1911-1912
revolution against the Manchu government and was a library assistant at
Beijing University when the anti-Japanese May Fourth Movement began. He
was in touch with the new Western thought, which had influenced both these
developments and in which Marxism played an increasingly large part.
Mao returned to
Changsha in 1920 as head of a primary school. When his attempts to
organize mass education were suppressed, he turned to politics, helping to
found the Chinese Communist party in Shanghai in 1921. In 1923, when the
Communist party allied with the Nationalist party (Kuomintang) against
feuding local warlords, Mao became a full-time party worker.
After
witnessing a rising of impoverished peasants in his home province, in
early 1927 Mao wrote Report of ... the Peasant Movement in Hunan, arguing
that peasant discontent was the major force in China and deserved
Communist support. His advice was rejected because the Moscow-based
Comintern wanted to maintain the Communist alliance with the Nationalists
under Chiang Kai-shek. Nevertheless, Chiang, who wanted to avoid Soviet
influence, broke with the Communists in April. Kuomintang forces
suppressed an "Autumn Harvest" uprising of peasants, a remnant
of which Mao led to safety in mountainous Jiangxi (Kiangsi). Chiang
promptly dismantled the Kuomintang grass-roots organizations, suspecting
Communist infiltration, while Mao, in Jiangxi, continued to extend
Communist influence over the peasants. The result was that, in a country
where village power was critical, the Communists gained the advantage. |