The Hall of Fame

Mao Zedong (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976; Mao Tse-Tung in Wade-Giles) was the chairman of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China from 1943 and the chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China from 1945 until his death. Under his leadership, the CCP became the ruling party of mainland China as the result of its victory in the Chinese Civil War. On October 1, 1949, Mao declared the formation of the People's Republic of China at Tiananmen Square.

While in power, he started a series of experiments aimed at speeding up China's economic development known as the Great Leap Forward. He forged but then later split the alliance with the Soviet Union and launched the Cultural Revolution.

Mao is widely credited for creating a mostly unified China free of foreign domination for the first time since the Opium Wars. However, critics point out that Mao's inappropriate economic policies in conjunction with the Three Years of Natural Disasters caused the famine of 1959–1961. Mao has also been criticized for his contribution to the split with the USSR, and initiating the internal turmoil during the Cultural Revolution.

Mao Zedong is still sometimes referred to as Chairman Mao (毛主席). At the height of his personality cult, Mao was commonly known in China as the "Four Greats": "Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great Supreme Commander, Great Helmsman".

Early life

The eldest son of four children of a moderately prosperous peasant farmer, Mao Zedong was born in the village of Shaoshan in Xiangtan county (湘潭縣), Hunan province. His ancestors had migrated from Jiangxi province during the Ming Dynasty and had pursued farming for generations.

During the 1911 Revolution he served in the Hunan provincial army. In the 1910s, Mao returned to school, where he became an advocate of physical fitness and collective action.

After graduation from Hunan Normal School in 1918, Mao travelled with his high-school teacher and future father-in-law, Professor Yang Changji (杨昌济), to Beijing during the May Fourth Movement, when Yang lectured at Peking University. From Yang's recommendations, he worked under Li Dazhao, the head of the university library and attended speeches by Chen Duxiu. While working for the Peking University library as an assistant librarian, Mao acquired a taste for books, something he was to retain in later years. Also in Beijing, he married his first wife, Yang Kaihui, a Peking University student and Yang Changji’s daughter. (When Mao was 14, his father had arranged a marriage for him with a fellow villager, Luo Shi [羅氏], but Mao never recognized this marriage.) (See section 6 Family)

Instead of going abroad which was the path of many of his radical compatriots, Mao spent the early 1920s traveling in China, and finally returned to Hunan, where he took the lead in promoting collective action and labor rights.

At age 27, Mao attended the First Congress of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai in July 1921. Two years later he was elected to the Central Committee of the party at the Third Congress.

During the Chinese Civil War’s first KMT-CCP united front, Mao served as the director of the Peasant Training Institute of the Kuomintang (also known as KMT or Nationalist Party). In early 1927, he was dispatched to Hunan province to report on the recent peasant uprisings in the wake of the Northern Expedition. The report that Mao produced from this investigation is considered the first important work of Maoist theory.

Political ideas

During this time, Mao developed many of his political theories. These ideas have had a monumental impact on generations of Chinese and have significantly affected the rest of the world.

Mao's thought transformed traditional Marxism into a political ideology that could work to win a revolution and consolidate power in China. Marxism-Leninism could only exist in concrete manifestations, meaning that it could only work if it was applied to certain situations. Mao hypothesized that peasants could form the basis of a communist revolution, but only if the party elites took the message of revolution to the grass roots and make it comprehensible to the peasant population. This meant a process of getting party cadres to understand local realities and trying to integrate the concerns of peasants with party policy, something called Mass Line.

Mao also built on the theories of Hegel and Marx to create a new theory of materialist dialectics. By applying the theory of the dialectic to real-world conflicts, then by asserting that only the empirical reality of the conflict mattered, Mao developed a type of dialectic theory that was studied for decades. It is difficult to determine the true validity of this theory, however, since so many analyses of it have been heavily influenced by political biases.

During this time, Mao also developed more practical ideas, such as a three-stage theory of guerrilla warfare and the concept of the people's democratic dictatorship.

War and Revolution

Mao escaped the white terror in the spring and summer of 1927 and led the ill-fated Autumn Harvest Uprising at Changsha, Hunan, that autumn. Mao barely survived this mishap (he escaped his guards on the way to his execution). He and his rag-tag band of loyal guerrillas found refuge in the Jinggang Mountains in south-eastern China. There, from 1931 to 1934, Mao helped establish the Chinese Soviet Republic and was elected chairman. It was during this period that Mao married He Zizhen, after Yang Kaihui had been killed by KMT forces.

Mao, with the help of Zhu De, built a modest but effective guerrilla army, undertook experiments in rural reform and government, and provided refuge for Communists fleeing the rightist purges in the cities. Under increasing pressure from the KMT encirclement campaigns, there was a struggle for power within the Communist leadership. Mao was removed from his important positions and replaced by individuals (including Zhou Enlai) who appeared loyal to the orthodox line advocated by Moscow and represented within the CPC by a group known as the 28 Bolsheviks.

Chiang Kai-shek, who had earlier assumed nominal control of China due in part to the Northern Expedition, was determined to eliminate the Communists. To evade the KMT forces, the Communists engaged in the "Long March", a retreat from Jiangxi in the southeast to Shaanxi in the northwest of China. It was during this 9600-km, year-long journey that Mao emerged as the top Communist leader, aided by the Zunyi Conference and the defection of Zhou Enlai to Mao's side. At this Conference, Mao entered the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China.

From his base in Yan'an, Mao led the Communist resistance against the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). Mao further consolidated power over the Communist Party in 1942 by launching the Cheng Feng, or "Rectification" campaign against rival CPC members such as Wang Ming, Wang Shiwei, and Ding Ling. Also while in Yan'an, Mao divorced He Zizhen and married the actress Lan Ping, who would become known as Jiang Qing.

During the Sino-Japanese War, Mao Zedong's strategies were opposed by both Chiang Kai-shek and the United States. The US regarded Chiang as an important ally, able to help shorten the war by engaging the Japanese occupiers in China. Chiang, in contrast, sought to build the ROC army for the certain conflict with Mao's communist forces after the end of World War II. This fact was not understood well in the US, and precious lend-lease armaments continued to be allocated to the Kuomintang. In turn, Mao spent some of the war fighting the Kuomintang for control of certain parts of China. Both the Communists and Nationalists have been criticised by academics for fighting amongst themselves rather than ally against the Imperial Japanese Army.

However, Americans sent a special diplomatic envoy, called the Dixie mission, to the Communists by 1944. According to Edwin Moise, in Modern China: A History 2nd Edition,

Most of the Americans were favourably impressed. The CCP seemed less corrupt, more unified, and more vigorous in its resistance to Japan than the Guomingdang. United States fliers shot down over North China...confirmed to their superiors that the CCP was both strong and popular over a broad area. In the end, the contacts with the USA developed with the CCP led to very little.

After the end of World War II, the US continued to support Chiang Kai-shek, now openly against the Communist Red Army, led by Mao Zedong, in the civil war for control of China as part of its view to contain and defeat "world communism". Likewise, the Soviet Union gave quasi-covert support to Mao (acting as a concerned neighbor more than a military ally, to avoid open conflict with the US) and gave large supplies of arms to the Chinese Communists, although newer Chinese records indicate the Soviet "supplies" were not as large as previously believed, and consistently fell short of the promised amount (of aid).

On January 21, 1949, Kuomintang forces suffered massive losses against Mao's Red Army. In the early morning of December 10, 1949, Red Army troops laid siege to Chengdu, the last KMT-occupied city in mainland China, and Chiang Kai-shek evacuated from the mainland to Taiwan that same day.

Leadership of China

After the Japanese were defeated in World War II, the Communists defeated the Kuomintang in an ensuing civil war and established the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949. It was the culmination of over two decades of popular struggle led by the Communist Party. From 1954 to 1959, Mao was the Chairman of the PRC. He took up residence in Zhongnanhai, a compound next to the Forbidden City in Beijing, and there he decreed the construction of an indoor swimming pool and other buildings. Mao often did his work either in bed or by the side of the pool during his chairmanship, according to Dr. Li Zhisui, who claimed to be his physician. (Li's book, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, has been subject to controversy.)

Following the consolidation of power, Mao launched a phase of rapid collectivization, lasting until around 1958. The CPC introduced price controls largely successful at breaking the inflationary spiral of the preceding ROC as well as a Chinese character simplification aimed at increasing literacy. Land was redistributed from landowners to poor peasants and large-scale industrialization projects were undertaken, contributing to the construction of a modern national infrastructure. During this period, China sustained yearly increases in GDP of about 4–9% as well as dramatic improvements in quality-of-life indicators such as life expectancy and literacy.

Programs pursued during this time include the Hundred Flowers Campaign, in which Mao indicated his willingness to consider different opinions about how China should be governed. Given the freedom to express themselves, liberal and intellectual Chinese began opposing the Communist Party and questioning its leadership. This was initially tolerated and even encouraged, since it was thought that constructive criticism would be beneficial to the Party. However, after a few months, Mao's government reversed its policy and rounded up those who criticized the Party in what is called the Anti-Rightist Movement. Authors such as Jung Chang allege that the Hundred Flowers Campaign was merely a ruse to root out "dangerous" thinking more easily.

In 1958, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward, a plan intended as an alternative model for economic growth which contradicted the Soviet model of heavy industry that was advocated by others in the party. Under this economic program, Chinese agriculture was to be collectivized and rural small-scale industry was to be promoted.

At first, the Great Leap began with tremendous success, with agricultural and steel production running very high. However, instead of maintaining the steady growth, Mao and other party leaders believed they could achieve unrealistically high quotas. A damaging number of agricultural peasants were moved to steel production. Numbers were inflated, although "they were not just lies intended for public consumption, they were actually believed." (Moise 140)

By 1959, the Great Leap Forward had become a disaster for Red China. Although the steel quotas were reached, critics point out much of the steel produced was useless, as it had been made from scrap metal. According to Zhang Rongmei, a Geometry teacher in rural Shanghai during the Great Leap Forward,

We took all the furniture, pots, and pans we had in out house, and all our neighbours did likewise. We put all everything in a big fire and melted down all the metal.

Khrushchev cancelled Soviet technical support because of worsening Sino-Soviet relations. Severe droughts also occurred, further reducing agricultural output. Unrealistic grain demands by the government, Soviet withdrawal of support, natural disasters, and an economy that had spent ten years recovering from decades of war and chaos caused famine across the nation.

There is a great deal of controversy over the number of deaths by starvation during the Great Leap Forward. A mainstream figure is that some thirty million people died during the famine that followed. In 1957, before the Great Leap, about 7–10 million people died. Due to the tremendous crop failure in 1959 caused by incompetent policies from the Great Leap Forward, around 9 to 12 million people died. According to historian Edwin Moise:

Probably there was no year when China was under Guomingdang control when the death rate was as low as 1.46 percent. The number of excess deaths...was about 2,500,000 (in 1959).

However, the policies of the Great Leap coincided with another round of natural disasters in 1960. According to Sun Yefang, the death rate was around 2.54 percent in 1960 and around 9 million "excess deaths" occurred that year. During the so-called Three Years of Natural Disasters, the excess number of deaths "reached 16 million and other sources give higher figures." (Moise 142) Finally, the Great Leap ended in 1960, as a tremendous economic failure.

The withdrawal of Soviet aid, border disputes, disputes over the control and direction of world communism, whether it should be revolutionary or status quo, and other disputes pertaining to foreign policy contributed to the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s. Most of the problems, regarding communist unity, resulted from the death of Stalin and his replacement by Khrushchev. Stalin had established himself as the fount of correct Marxist thought well before Mao controlled the CCP, and therefore Mao never challenged the suitability of any Stalinist doctrine (at least while Stalin was alive). Upon the death of Stalin, Mao believed (perhaps because of seniority) leadership of "correct" Marxist doctrine would fall to him. The resulting tension between Khrushchev (at the head of a politically/militarily superior government), and Mao (believing he had a superior understanding of Marxist ideology) eroded the previous patron-client relationship between the USSR and CCP.

Following these events, other members of the Communist Party, including Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, decided that Mao should be removed from actual power and only remain in a largely ceremonial and symbolic role. They attempted to marginalize Mao, and by 1959, Liu Shaoqi became State President, but Mao remained Chairman. Liu and others began to look at the situation much more realistically, somewhat abandoning the idealism Mao wished for.

Facing the prospect of losing his place on the political stage, Mao responded to Liu and Deng's movements by launching the Cultural Revolution in 1966. This allowed Mao to circumvent the Communist hierarchy by giving power directly to the Red Guards, groups of young people, often teenagers, who set up their own tribunals. The Revolution led to the destruction of much of China's cultural heritage and the imprisonment of a huge number of Chinese intellectuals, as well as creating general economic and social chaos in the country. It was during this period that Mao chose Lin Biao to become his successor. Later, it is unclear whether Lin was planning a military coup (or assassination), but before he could be questioned, Lin died trying to flee China (probably anticipating his arrest) in a suspicious plane crash over Mongolia. It was declared that Lin was planning to depose Mao, and he was posthumously expelled from the CCP. Mao lost trust in many of the top CCP figures.

In 1969, Mao declared the Cultural Revolution to be over, although the official history of the People's Republic of China marks the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 with Mao's death. In the last years of his life, Mao was faced with declining health due to either Parkinson's disease or, according to Li Zhisui, motor neuron disease, as well as lung ailments due to smoking and heart trouble. Mao remained passive as various factions within the Communist Party mobilized for the power struggle anticipated after his death. When Mao could not swim any longer, the indoor swimming pool he had at Zhongnanhai was converted into a giant reception hall, according to Li Zhisui.

As anticipated after Mao’s death on September 9, 1976, there was a power struggle for control of China. On one side were the leftists led by the Gang of Four, who wanted to continue the policy of revolutionary mass mobilization. On the other side were the rightists, which consisted of two groups. One was the restorationists led by Hua Guofeng who advocated a return to central planning along the Soviet model. The other was the reformers, led by Deng Xiaoping, who wanted to overhaul the Chinese economy based on pragmatic policies and to de-emphasize the role of ideology in determining economic and political policy.

Eventually, the moderates won control of the government. Deng Xiaoping defeated Hua Guofeng in a bloodless power struggle shortly afterwards.

Cult of Mao

One of the reasons Mao is most remembered is the Cult of Mao, the personality cult that was created around him. Some think that Personality cults go against the basic ideas of Marxism, but the propaganda that was inherent with most Communist regimes contradicted this, as can be seen by the Cult of Stalin. Mao presented himself as an enemy of landowners, businessmen and Western and American imperialism, as well as an ally of impoverished peasants, farmers and workers.

Mao said the following about cults at the 1958 Party congress in Chengdu:

"There are two kinds of personality cults. One is a healthy personality cult, that is, to worship men like Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. Because they hold the truth in their hands. The other is a false personality cult, i.e. not analysed and blind worship."

In 1962, Mao proposed the Socialist Education Movement (SEM), in an attempt to 'protect' the peasants against the temptations of feudalism and the sprouts of capitalism that he saw re-emerging in the countryside (thanks to Liu's economic reforms). Large quantities of politicised art were produced and circulated - with Mao at the centre. Numerous posters and musical compositions referred to Mao as "A red sun in the centre of our hearts" (我们心中的红太阳) and a "Saviour of the people" (人民的大救星).

The Cult of Mao proved vital in starting the Cultural Revolution. China's youth had mostly been brought up during the Communist era, and they had been told to love Mao. Thus they were his greatest supporters. Their feelings for him were so strong that many followed his urge to challenge all established authority.

In October 1966, Mao's Quotations of Chairman Mao Zedong (also known as the "Little Red Book") was published. Party members were encouraged to carry a copy with them and possession was almost mandatory in order for membership. Over the years, Mao image became displayed everywhere, in every home, office and shop. His quotations were included in boldface or red type in even the most mundane writings.

Legacy

Mao's legacy has produced a large amount of controversy. Some people emphasize the major failures such as the Sino-Soviet Split, the Great Leap Forward and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Most mainland Chinese believe that Mao Zedong was a great revolutionary leader, although he made serious mistakes in his later life. According to Deng Xiaoping, Mao was "seven parts right and three parts wrong", and his "contributions are primary and his mistakes secondary."

Supporters of Mao point out that before 1949, for instance, the illiteracy rate in Mainland China was 80 percent, and life expectancy was a meagre 35 years. At his death, they claim illiteracy had declined to less than seven percent, and average life expectancy had increased to more than 70 years (alternative statistics also quote improvements, though not nearly as dramatic). In addition to these increases, the total population of China increased 57% to 700 million, from the constant 400 million mark during the span between the Opium War and the Chinese Civil War. Supporters also state that under Mao's regime, China ended its "Century of Humiliation" from Western imperialism and regained its status as a major world power. They also state their belief that Mao also industrialized China to a considerable extent and ensured China's sovereignty during his rule. Some of Mao's supporters view the Kuomintang as having been corrupt and credit Mao with driving them off the Chinese mainland to Taiwan.

They also argue that the Maoist era improved women's rights by abolishing prostitution, a phenomenon that was to return after Deng Xiaoping and post-Maoist CCP leaders increased liberalization of the economy. Indeed, Mao once famously remarked that "Women hold up half the sky".

Sceptics observe that similar gains in life expectancy occurred in the East Asian Tigers, most notably Taiwan, which was ruled by Mao's opponents, the Kuomintang. Some of the gains may have simply been the result of a country no longer at war, so perhaps any regime could achieve such improvements. On the other hand, the regime that took over in Taiwan was composed of the same people ruling the Mainland for over 20 years when life expectancy was so low.

Mao believed that "socialism is the only way out for China," because the United States and other Western countries would not allow China to join the ranks of advanced capitalism. As if to support this theory, the United States placed a trade embargo on China that lasted until Richard Nixon decided Mao had made himself a force to be reckoned with in dealing with the Soviet Union. While the Tigers obtained favourable trade terms from the United States, most Third World capitalist countries did not, and they saw nothing like the social gains in China or the economic growth of the Tigers.

Some, including members of the Communist Party of China, hold Mao responsible for initiating the Sino-Soviet Split. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were also considered to be major disasters in his policy. Still other critics of Mao fault him for not encouraging birth control and for creating a demographic bump which later Chinese leaders responded to with the one child policy.

There is more consensus on Mao's role as a military strategist and tactician during the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War. Even among those who find Mao's ideology to be either unworkable or abhorrent, many acknowledge that Mao was a brilliant political and military strategist - Mao's military writings continue to have a large amount of influence both among those who seek to create an insurgency and those who seek to crush one.

The ideology of Maoism has influenced many communists around the world, including third world revolutionary movements such as Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, Peru's Shining Path, the revolutionary movement in Nepal, and also the Revolutionary Communist Party in the United States. China has moved sharply away from Maoism since Mao's death, and most people outside of China who describe themselves as Maoist regard the Deng Xiaoping reforms to be a betrayal of Mao's legacy.

In mainland China, many people still consider Mao a hero in the first half of his life, but hold that he was too idealistic after gaining power. His actions during the Cultural Revolution regarding the "Four Great Evils" polarizes many Chinese. Mao is also criticized for creating a cult of personality. However, in an era where economic growth has caused corruption to increase in mainland China, there are those who regard the era of Mao as a time of peace and equality. At the same time, contemporary views about him in the PRC are affected by bans on works that criticise Mao heavily.

In the mid-1990s, Mao Zedong's picture began to appear on all new renminbi currency from the People’s Republic of China. This is intended primarily as an anti-counterfeiting measure as Mao's face is widely recognized in contrast to the generic figures that appear in older currency.

Family

Wives:

1. Yang Kaihui (杨开慧, 1901-1930) of Changsha: married 1921 to 1927, executed by the Kuomintang in 1930

2. He Zizhen (贺子珍, 1910-1984) of Jiangxi: married May 1928 to 1939

3. Jiang Qing: (江青), married 1939 to Mao's death

Ancestors:

• Wen Qimei (文七妹, 1867-1919), mother

• Mao Yichang (毛贻昌, 1870-1920), father, courtesy name Mao Shunsheng (毛顺生)

• Mao Enpu (毛恩普), paternal grandfather

Siblings:

• Mao Zemin (毛泽民, 1895-1943), younger brother

• Mao Zetan (毛泽覃, 1905-1935), younger brother

• Mao Zehong, sister (executed by the Kuomintang in 1930)

Mao Zedong's parents altogether had five sons and two daughters. Two of the sons and both daughters died young, leaving the three brothers Mao Zedong, Mao Zemin, and Mao Zetan. Like all three of Mao Zedong's wives, Mao Zemin and Mao Zetan were communists. Like Yang Kaihui, both Zemin and Zetan were killed in warfare during Mao Zedong's lifetime.

Note that the character ze (泽) appears in all of the siblings' given names. This is a common Chinese naming convention.

Children:

• Mao Anying (毛岸英): son to Yang, married to Liu Siqi (刘思齐), who was born Liu Songlin (刘松林), killed in action during the Korean War

• Mao Anqing (毛岸青): son to Yang, married to Shao Hua (邵华), son Mao Xinyu (毛新宇)

• Li Min (李敏): daughter to He, married to Kong Linghua (孔令华), son Kong Ji'ning (孔继宁), daughter Kong Dongmei (孔冬梅)

• Li Na (李讷): daughter to Jiang (whose birth given name was Li), married to Wang Jingqing (王景清), son Wang Xiaozhi (王效芝)

Sources suggest that Mao did have other children during his revolutionary days; in most of these cases the children were left with peasant families because it was difficult to take care of the children while focusing on revolution. Two English researchers who retraced the entire Long March route in 2002-2003 located a woman who they believe might well be a missing child abandoned by Mao and He to peasants in 1935. Ed Jocelyn and Andrew McEwen hope a member of the Mao family will respond to requests for a DNA test.

Writings

Mao is the attributed author of Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, known in the West as the "Little Red Book": this is a collection of extracts from his speeches and articles. He wrote several other philosophical treatises, both before and after he assumed power. These include:

• On Practice; 1937

• On Contradiction; 1937

• On New Democracy; 1940

• On Literature and Art; 1942

• On the Correct Handling of the Contradictions Among the People; 1957

• On Guerrilla Warfare.

• "In Memory of Doctor Bethune"

• "The Foolish Man Who Removed A Mountain"

• "Serve the People"

Mao wrote poetry, mainly in the ci and shi forms. Its literary merit is difficult to evaluate in the light of the author's controversial political status, and it is more highly thought of within the PRC than abroad.