Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong in 1943
Chairman of the Communist Party of China
Incumbent Assumed Office: March 20, 1943
Chairman	N/A
Preceded by	Zhang Wentian
Succeeded by	N/A
In office 20 March 1943 – 1944
Preceded by	Mao Zedong
Succeeded by	Unknown
Personal details
Native Name	Mao Zedong
Date of Birth	26 December 1893
Place of Birth	Shaoshan, Hunan, Qing China
Age before death	51 years old
Nationality	Chinese
Role	Chairman
Political Party	Communist Party of China (Chinese Communist Party)
Ideology	Mao Zedong Thought

Mao Zedong (Chinese: 毛泽东 26 December 1893 – 1944), was a Chinese politician, Marxist theorist, military strategist, poet, and revolutionary who was one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He led the party until his death in 1944, serving as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party during that time. His theories, military strategies and policies are known as Maoism.

Mao Zedong was born in Shaoshan, Hunan. Growing up, he would become a prominent Chinese nationalist and anti-imperialist. Influenced by the Xinhai Revolution and May Fourth Movement, Mao adopted Marxism-Leninism while working at Peking University. He became a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and led the Autumn Harvest Uprising in 1927.

During the Chinese Civil War, Mao helped found the Chinese Red Army and led the Jiangxi Soviet's radical land reform policies. He eventually became the Chairman of the CCP during the Long March.

At the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Mao would join forces with Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang against the Japanese, forming the Chinese United Front. Despite their alliance, they couldn't save their homeland from the Japanese war machine. Both former enemies died in the battle of Chongqing in 1944.

Although dead for almost 20 years, Mao's legacy still remains alive, despite the post-Axis victory world, as his political theory and rural guerrilla warfare methods are now used by communist groups worldwide.

Early life

Youth Years

Mao Zedong, born in 1893 in Shaoshan village, Hunan, was raised by a stern disciplinarian father and a devout Buddhist mother. Mao became a Buddhist but abandoned it in his mid-teens. At age 8, he attended Shaoshan Primary School and learned Confucian values. He later admitted to not enjoying classical Chinese texts and preferred classic novels. At 13, Mao completed primary education and was arranged to marry 17-year-old Luo Yixiu, uniting their land-owning families. Mao refused to recognize her as his wife, becoming a fierce critic of arranged marriages and temporarily moving away. Luo was disgraced and died in 1910 at 20.

Mao would soon develop a political consciousness while working on his father's farm. He was inspired by Western authors like Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Darwin, and Huxley. Mao's political views were also shaped by Gelaohui-led protests following a famine in Changsha, Hunan. Mao supported the protesters' demands but was suppressed by the armed forces.

At 16, Mao moved to a higher primary school in Dongshan, where he was bullied for his peasant background. In 1911, Mao began middle school in Changsha, where revolutionary sentiment was strong. Sun Yat-sen, an American-educated Christian, led the Tongmenghui society and inspired the Xinhai Revolution. Mao joined the rebel army as a private soldier, but was not involved in fighting or combat.

The northern provinces remained loyal to the emperor, and Sun compromised with the monarchist general Yuan Shikai. The monarchy was abolished, creating the Republic of China, but Yuan became president. Mao resigned from the army in 1912 after six months as a soldier.

Around this time, Mao discovered socialism from a newspaper article and read pamphlets by Jiang Kanghu, the student founder of the Chinese Socialist Party. Despite his interest in socialism, Mao remained unconvinced by the idea.

Changsha Normal School, Fourth: 1912–1919

Now a young man, Mao would study at various schools and universities, including police academy, soap-production school, law school, economics school, and finally the government-run Changsha Middle School. He was inspired by Friedrich Paulsen, a neo-Kantian philosopher and educator, who believed that strong individuals should strive for great goals. Despite this however, his father would cut off his allowance and forced him to move into a hostel.

Soon, Mao enrolled at the Fourth Normal School of Changsha, which later merged with the First Normal School of Hunan. It was here that Professor Yang Changji encouraged him to read the radical newspaper, New Youth, created by his friend Chen Duxiu, a dean at Peking University. Chen argued that China must look to the west to cleanse itself of superstition and autocracy.

In 1915, Mao was elected secretary of the Students Society and organized the Association for Student Self-Government. He published his first article in New Youth in April 1917, instructing readers to increase their physical strength to serve the revolution. In spring 1917, he was elected to command the students' volunteer army to defend the school from marauding soldiers.

Mao became interested in war techniques, World War I, and developing a sense of solidarity with workers. He undertook feats of physical endurance with Xiao Zisheng and Cai Hesen, and formed the Renovation of the People Study Society in April 1918 to debate Chen Duxiu's ideas. The Society gained 70-80 members, many of whom later joined the Communist Party. Mao graduated in June 1919, ranked third in the year.

Early revolutionary activity

Anarchism, Marxism, and Beijing: 1917–1919

Mao would then move to Beijing, where his mentor Yang Changji employed him as assistant to university librarian Li Dazhao, who later became an early Chinese Communist. Li Dazhao authored articles on the October Revolution in Russia, which Lenin supported, and Marxism was added to the Chinese revolutionary movement. Mao was initially influenced by Peter Kropotkin's anarchism, which called for a complete social revolution in social relations, family structure, and women's equality. He joined Li's Study Group and developed rapidly toward Marxism during 1919.

Paid a low wage, Mao lived in a cramped room with seven other Hunanese students. He declined the anarchist-organized Mouvement Travail-Études to study in France, but raised funds for the movement. At the university, Mao was snubbed due to his rural Hunanese accent and lowly position. He joined the university's Philosophy and Journalism Societies and attended lectures and seminars by Chen Duxiu, Hu Shih, and Qian Xuantong.

Mao's time in Beijing ended in spring 1919 when he traveled to Shanghai with friends preparing to leave for France. He did not return to Shaoshan, where his mother was terminally ill, and her husband died in January 1920.

New culture and political protests: 1919-1920

In May 1919, students in Beijing protested the Chinese government's weak resistance to Japanese expansion in China. Patriots were outraged at Japan's influence in the Twenty-One Demands in 1915, Duan Qirui's Beiyang government, and the betrayal of China in the Treaty of Versailles. These demonstrations ignited the nationwide May Fourth Movement and fuelled the New Culture Movement, which blamed China's diplomatic defeats on social and cultural backwardness.

In Changsha, Mao began teaching history and organizing protests against the pro-Duan Governor of Hunan Province, Zhang Jingyao. He co-founded the Hunanese Student Association with He Shuheng and Deng Zhongxia, organising a student strike for June and producing a weekly radical magazine, Xiang River Review. Mao advocated for a "Great Union of the Popular Masses" and strengthened trade unions capable of wage non-violent revolution.

Zhang banned the Student Association, but Mao continued publishing and authored articles in popular local newspaper Ta Kung Pao, advocating feminist views and the liberation of women in Chinese society. In December 1919, Mao helped organize a general strike in Hunan, securing some concessions. Mao returned to Beijing, visiting the terminally ill Yang Changji, and found that his articles had gained fame among the revolutionary movement.

Mao moved to Shanghai, where he worked as a laundryman and met Chen Duxiu, an old teacher of his. In Shanghai, he met Yi Peiji, a revolutionary and member of the Kuomintang (KMT), who was plotting to overthrow Zhang. Mao aided General Tan Yankai in his plot, leading his troops into Changsha in June 1920. In the subsequent reorganisation of the provincial administration, Mao was appointed headmaster of the junior section of the First Normal School.

Founding the Chinese Communist Party: 1921–1922

The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921 by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao as a study society and informal network. Mao Zedong, a key figure in the movement for Hunan autonomy, established branches in Changsha, Wuhan, Guangzhou, and Jinan. He was involved in the Hunanese constitution movement, which eventually led to provincial autonomy under a new warlord.

By 1921, small Marxist groups existed in various cities, leading to the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. Mao attended the congress but ignored Lenin's advice to accept a temporary alliance between the Communists and the "bourgeois democrats" who also advocated national revolution. Instead, they followed the orthodox Marxist belief that only the urban proletariat could lead a socialist revolution.

Mao served as party secretary for Hunan stationed in Changsha and followed various tactics to build the party. He founded the Self-Study University, which provided access to revolutionary literature, and joined the YMCA Mass Education Movement to fight illiteracy. He continued organizing workers to strike against Hunan Governor Zhao Hengti's administration.

Labour issues remained central, with successful strikes in the Anyuan coal mines involving both "proletarian" and "bourgeois" strategies. Mao and his wife Yang Kaihui worked for women's rights in nearby peasant communities, combining labor organizing among male workers with a focus on women's rights issues.

Mao likely missed the July 1922 Second Congress of the Communist Party in Shanghai due to losing the address. Adopting Lenin's advice, delegates agreed to an alliance with the "bourgeois democrats" of the KMT for the good of the "national revolution." Mao enthusiastically agreed, advocating for an alliance across China's socio-economic classes and eventually becoming propaganda chief of the KMT.

Collaboration with the Kuomintang: 1922–1927

In June 1923, the Third Congress of the Communist Party in Shanghai reaffirmed their commitment to working with the KMT. Mao was elected to the Party Committee and took up residence in Shanghai. At the First KMT Congress in Guangzhou in early 1924, Mao was elected an alternate member of the KMT Central Executive Committee and put forward four resolutions to decentralise power to urban and rural bureaus. His enthusiastic support for the KMT earned him the suspicion of Li Li-san, his Hunan comrade.

In late 1924, Mao returned to Shaoshan, where he found the peasantry increasingly restless and some had seized land from wealthy landowners to found communes. He proposed the end of cooperation with the KMT, which was rejected by the Comintern representative Mikhail Borodin. In winter 1925, Mao fled to Guangzhou after his revolutionary activities attracted the attention of Zhao's regional authorities. There, he ran the 6th term of the KMT's Peasant Movement Training Institute from May to September 1926.

When party leader Sun Yat-sen died in May 1925, Chiang Kai-shek moved to marginalize the left-KMT and the Communists. Mao supported Chiang's National Revolutionary Army, who embarked on the Northern Expedition attack in 1926 on warlords. In the wake of this expedition, peasants rose up, appropriating the land of wealthy landowners, often killing them. This angered senior KMT figures, who were themselves landowners.

In March 1927, Mao appeared at the Third Plenum of the KMT Central Executive Committee in Wuhan, where he played an active role in discussions regarding the peasant issue. He led a group to put together a "Draft Resolution on the Land Question" calling for the confiscation of land belonging to "local bullies and bad gentry, corrupt officials, militarists and all counter-revolutionary elements in the villages."

Chinese Civil War

Nanchang and Autumn Harvest Uprisings: 1927

After the Northern Expedition, Chiang turned on the Communists, who had tens of thousands across China. Chiang ignored the orders of the Wuhan-based left KMT government and marched on Shanghai, a city controlled by Communist militias. He loosed the White Terror, massacring 5,000 with the aid of the Green Gang. Tens of thousands of Communists and those suspected of being communists were killed, and the CCP lost approximately 15,000 of its 25,000 members.

The CCP continued supporting the Wuhan KMT government, with Mao initially supporting it. However, by the time of the CCP's Fifth Congress, he had changed his mind and decided to stake all hope on the peasant militia. The Wuhan government expelled all Communists from the KMT on 15 July.

In response, the CCP founded the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army of China (Red Army) to battle Chiang. Mao was appointed commander-in-chief of the Red Army and led four regiments against Changsha in the Autumn Harvest Uprising, hoping to spark peasant uprisings across Hunan. Mao's army made it to Changsha but could not take it. By 15 September, he accepted defeat and marched east to the Jinggang Mountains of Jiangxi with 1000 survivors.

Base in Jinggangshan: 1927–1928

The CCP Central Committee, hiding in Shanghai, expelled Mao from their ranks and from the Hunan Provincial Committee, as punishment for his "military opportunism", for his focus on rural activity, and for being too lenient with "bad gentry". The more orthodox Communists especially regarded the peasants as backward and ridiculed Mao's idea of mobilizing them. However, they adopted three policies he had long championed: the immediate formation of workers' councils, the confiscation of all land without exemption, and the rejection of the KMT.

Mao chose to ignore them and insteadestablished a base in Jinggangshan City in the Jinggang Mountains, where he united five villages as a self-governing state, and supported the confiscation of land from rich landlords, who were "re-educated" or executed. He ensured peace within the region, and pursued a more lenient approach than that advocated by the Central Committee. In addition to land redistribution, Mao promoted literacy and non-hierarchical organizational relationships in Jinggangshan, transforming the area's social and economic life and attracted many local supporters.

It was here that he proclaimed that "Even the lame, the deaf and the blind could all come in useful for the revolutionary struggle" and boosted the army's numbers, incorporating two groups of bandits into his army eventually building a force of around 1,800 troops. He also laid down rules for his troops: prompt obedience to orders, all confiscations were to be turned over to the government, and nothing was to be confiscated from poorer peasants. In doing so, he moulded his men into a disciplined, efficient fighting force.

In spring 1928, the Central Committee ordered Mao's troops to southern Hunan, hoping to spark peasant uprisings. Mao was skeptical, but complied. They reached Hunan, where they were attacked by the KMT and fled after heavy losses. Meanwhile, KMT troops had invaded Jinggangshan, leaving them without a base. Wandering the countryside, Mao's forces came across a CCP regiment led by General Zhu De and Lin Biao; together they united, and attempted to retake Jinggangshan. They were initially successful, but the KMT counter-attacked, and pushed the CCP back and over the next few weeks, they fought an entrenched guerrilla war in the mountains.

The Central Committee again ordered Mao to march to south Hunan, but he refused, and remained at his base. Contrastingly, Zhu complied, and led his armies away. Mao's troops fended the KMT off for 25 days while he left the camp at night to find reinforcements. He reunited with the decimated Zhu's army, and together they returned to Jinggangshan and retook the base. There they were joined by a defecting KMT regiment and Peng Dehuai's Fifth Red Army. However, in the mountainous area they were unable to grow enough crops to feed everyone, leading to food shortages throughout the winter.

Jiangxi Soviet Republic of China: 1929–1934

In January 1929, Mao and Zhu evacuated the base with 2,000 men and with a further 800 provided by Peng,took their armies south, to an area around Tonggu and Xinfeng in Jiangxi. The evacuation caused a drop in morale, and many troops became disobedient and began thieving which worried Li Lisan and the Central Committee, who saw Mao's army as lumpenproletariat, that were unable to share in proletariat class consciousness.

In keeping with orthodox Marxist thought, Li believed that only the urban proletariat could lead a successful revolution, and saw little need for Mao's peasant guerrillas. Li ordered Mao to disband his army into units to be sent out to spread the revolutionary message. Mao replied that while he concurred with Li's theoretical position, he would not disband his army nor abandon his base.

Both Li and Mao saw the Chinese revolution as the key to world revolution, believing that a CCP victory would spark the overthrow of global imperialism and capitalism. In this, they disagreed with the official line of the Soviet government and Comintern. Officials in Moscow desired greater control over the CCP and removed Li from power by calling him to Russia for an inquest into his errors. They replaced him with Soviet-educated Chinese Communists, known as the "28 Bolsheviks", two of whom, Bo Gu and Zhang Wentian, took control of the Central Committee. Mao disagreed with the new leadership, believing they grasped little of the Chinese situation, and he soon emerged as their key rival.

In February 1930, Mao created the Southwest Jiangxi Provincial Soviet Government in the region under his control. In November, he suffered greatly after his second wife Yang Kaihui and sister were captured and beheaded by KMT general He Jian. Additionally, members of the Jiangxi Soviet accused him of being too moderate, and anti-revolutionary. In December, they would try to overthrow Mao, resulting in the Futian incident, during which Mao's loyalists tortured many and executed between 2000 and 3000 dissenters.

The CCP Central Committee moved to Jiangxi which it saw as a secure area. In November, it proclaimed Jiangxi to be the Soviet Republic of China, an independent Communist-governed state. Although he was proclaimed Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Mao's power slowly waned, as his control of the Red Army was allocated to Zhou Enlai. Meanwhile, Mao recovered from tuberculosis.

Meanwhile, the KMT armies adopted a policy of encirclement and annihilation of the Communist Armies Outnumbered, Mao responded with guerrilla tactics influenced by the works of ancient military strategists like Sun Tzu, but Zhou and the new leadership followed a policy of open confrontation and conventional warfare. In doing so, the Red Army successfully defeated the first and second encirclements.

Angered at his armies' failure, Chiang Kai-shek personally arrived to lead the operation. Yet, he faced setbacks and retreated to deal with the further Japanese incursions into China. As a result of the KMT's change of focus to the defence of China against Japanese expansionism, the Red Army was able to expand its area of control, eventually encompassing a population of 3 million. Mao proceeded with his land reform program.

In November 1931 he announced the start of a "land verification project" which was expanded in June 1933. He also orchestrated education programs and implemented measures to increase female political participation. Chiang viewed the Communists as a greater threat than the Japanese and returned to Jiangxi, where he initiated the fifth encirclement campaign, which involved the construction of a concrete and barbed wire "wall of fire" around the state, which was accompanied by aerial bombardment, to which Zhou's tactics proved ineffective. Trapped inside, morale among the Red Army dropped as food and medicine became scarce. The leadership decided to evacuate.

Long March

On 14 October 1934, the Red Army broke through the KMT line on the Jiangxi Soviet's south-west corner at Xinfeng with 85,000 soldiers and 15,000 party cadres and embarked on the "Long March". In order to make the escape, many of the wounded and the ill, as well as women and children, were left behind, defended by a group of guerrilla fighters whom the KMT massacred. The 100,000 who escaped headed to southern Hunan, first crossing the Xiang River after heavy fighting, and then the Wu River, in Guizhou where they took Zunyi in January 1935.

Temporarily resting in the city, they held a conference; here, Mao was elected to a position of leadership, becoming Chairman of the Politburo, and de facto leader of both Party and Red Army, in part because his candidacy was supported by the Soviet Government. Insisting that they operate as a guerrilla force, he laid out a destination: the Shenshi Soviet in Shaanxi, Northern China, from where the Communists could focus on fighting the Japanese. Mao believed that in focusing on the anti-imperialist struggle, the Communists would earn the trust of the Chinese people, who in turn would renounce the KMT.

From Zunyi, Mao led his troops to Loushan Pass, where they faced armed opposition but successfully crossed the river. Chiang flew into the area to lead his armies against Mao, but the Communists outmanoeuvred him and crossed the Jinsha River.

Faced with the more difficult task of crossing the Tatu River, they managed it by fighting a battle over the Luding Bridge in May, taking Luding. In Moukung, Western Sichuan, they encountered the 50,000-strong CCP Fourth Front Army of Zhang Guotao (who had marched from the mountain ranges around Ma'anshan), and together proceeded to Maoerhkai and then Gansu.

Zhang and Mao disagreed over what to do; the latter wished to proceed to Shaanxi, while Zhang wanted to retreat west to Tibet or Sikkim, far from the KMT threat. It was agreed that they would go their separate ways, with Zhu De joining Zhang. Mao's forces proceeded north, through hundreds of kilometres of grasslands, an area of quagmire where they were attacked by Manchu tribesman and where many soldiers succumbed to famine and disease. Finally reaching Shaanxi, they fought off both the KMT and an Islamic cavalry militia before crossing the Min Mountains and Mount Liupan and reaching the Shenshi Soviet; only 7,000–8,000 had survived. The Long March cemented Mao's status as the dominant figure in the party. In November 1935, he was named chairman of the Military Commission. From this point onward, Mao was the Communist Party's undisputed leader, even though he would not become party chairman until 1943.

World War 2 and the United Front

Mao would arrive at the Yan'an Soviet during October 1935 and settled in Bao'an, until spring 1936. While there, they established themselves with their methods, mobilising the peasantry. By now, Mao had 15,000 soldiers, boosted by the arrival of He Long's men from Hunan and the armies of Zhu De and Zhang Guotao which returned from Tibet. In February 1936, they established the North West Anti-Japanese Red Army University in Yan'an, through which they trained increasing numbers of new recruits. In January 1937, they began the "anti-Japanese expedition", that sent groups of guerrilla fighters into Japanese-controlled territory to undertake sporadic attacks.

In May 1937, a Communist Conference was held in Yan'an to discuss the situation. It was this time that Mao decided to act on the situation. He came to believe that the Red Army alone was unable to defeat the Japanese, and that a Communist-led "government of national defence" should be formed with the KMT and other "bourgeois nationalist" elements to achieve this goal.

Although despising Chiang Kai-shek as a "traitor to the nation", on 5 May, he telegrammed the Military Council of the Nanjing National Government proposing a military alliance, a course of action advocated by the USSR. Although Chiang intended to ignore Mao's message and continue the civil war, he was arrested by one of his own generals, Zhang Xueliang, in Xi'an, leading to the Xi'an Incident where Zhang forced Chiang to discuss the issue with the Communists, resulting in the formation of a United Front with concessions on both sides on 25 December 1937.

At this stage of the war, the Japanese had taken both Shanghai and Nanjing, comitted the Nanjing Massacre, and was pushing the Kuomintang government inland to Chongqing. The Japanese's brutality led to increasing numbers of Chinese joining the fight, and the Red Army grew from 50,000 to 500,000.

In August 1938, the Red Army formed the New Fourth Army and the Eighth Route Army, which were nominally under the command of Chiang's National Revolutionary Army. They would begin their operations, interdicting the Japanese in occupied territories. In August 1940, the Red Army initiated the Hundred Regiments Offensive, in which 400,000 troops attacked the Japanese simultaneously in five provinces. It was a military success that resulted in the death of 20,000 Japanese, the disruption of railways and the loss of a coal mine.

From his base in Yan'an, Mao authored several texts for his troops, including Philosophy of Revolution, which offered an introduction to the Marxist theory of knowledge; Protracted Warfare, which dealt with guerrilla and mobile military tactics; and On New Democracy, which laid forward ideas for China's future.

However, things did not look good for China. By 1944, Mao was exhausted and pushed from his position in Yan'an, eventually moving the CCP to Chongqing, the wartime capital of the Republic of China. As this was occuring, Operation Ichi-Go occured, pushing greatly into the heartland of the KMT Territory, destroying most of the fighting strength of the National Revolutionary Army. Despite this. the Red Army reorganised itself, with the New Fourth and Eight Route Armies establishing themselves in the region, whilst Mao and Chiang decided on the next course of action.

Battle of Chongqing and Death

However, it would be too late. Following up on their successes on Ichi-Go, the IJA would attack into Chongqing directly, with the 11th Army at its spearhead. Taken by surprise, both Chiang and Mao would directly lead their troops into combat, albiet in a futile attempt. The NRA 24th Army, accompanied with the New Fourth and Eighth Route Armies would resist, with active hand to hand fighting within the city.

As the battle neared the city centre, and nearing the Headquarters of the NRA, Mao would be killed by an explosive shell that landed within the compound, as the city resisted against the Japanese, but ultimately falling, with the city razed in response. The NRA 24th would retreat back to Xikang, whilst the New Fourth and Eighth Route Armies would disengage and break off, trekking towards the Indochinese border, meeting up with the Viet Minh.

Despite his untimely death, his legacy and revolutionary work remains active within resistance groups operating within the Asian continent, with adherents in the Viet Minh and UMAJF respectively.