CHAIRMAN MAO  
At first Mao followed the Soviet model for constructing a socialist society through redistribution of land (which obliterated the landlord class), heavy industrialization, and centralized bureaucracy. During the years in Shaanxi, however, Mao had evolved a Chinese Communist alternative that reflected China's different demography, his own experience with the peasants. Economically he stressed self-reliance through labour-intensive rather than technologically advanced cooperative agriculture and through local community effort. Politically he created the concept of "mass-line" leadership, which integrated intellectuals with peasant guerrilla leaders.

In 1956, reacting to Soviet condemnation of Stalin, Mao began to air his own policies. The advice to "let a hundred flowers bloom" was intended to conciliate intellectuals by allowing them to criticize the bureaucracy. His speech "On the Ten Great Relationships" rejected Soviet emphasis on heavy industry, arguing that increasing peasant purchasing power was the key to rapid—and socialist—economic development. His 1957 speech "On Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People" repudiated the Soviet denial of contradictions in socialist society, insisting that conflict was both inevitable and healthy. In 1958 he applied his policies in the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to substitute for the bureaucratic state a cellular system of autonomous local communes (referring to the Paris Commune of 1871) and projects, united by common ideology.

The Great Leap failed. Mao retired (1959) as head of state, and disillusioned Communist leaders returned to the East European socialist practice of giving autonomy to large undertakings, suppressing small ones, and tolerating leadership by an educated elite. Convinced that maximum popular participation was the fastest route to full socialism, Mao fought back. In the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1969) he mobilized youth into the Red Guard to attack the party establishment. After much rioting and the near destruction of the party, he allowed the army to restore order and the party to be rebuilt.

Widely known through posters and his "little red book", The Thoughts of Chairman Mao, Mao was revered in China and studied in the Third World. Made supreme commander of China in 1970, he sought a balance between his own radical followers and the moderate, pragmatic establishment, but their relationship remained uneasy. Mao died in Beijing on September 9, 1976.