155 Facts About Mao

Mao Zedong, known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China, which he led as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until his death in 1976.

Mao was the son of a prosperous peasant in Shaoshan, Hunan.

Mao supported Chinese nationalism and had an anti-imperialist outlook early in his life, and was particularly influenced by the events of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and May Fourth Movement of 1919.

Mao later adopted Marxism–Leninism while working at Peking University as a librarian and became a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party, leading the Autumn Harvest Uprising in 1927.

On 1 October 1949, Mao proclaimed the foundation of the PRC, a Marxist–Leninist single-party state controlled by the CCP.

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From 1953 to 1958, Mao played an important role in enforcing planned economy in China, constructing the first Constitution of the PRC, launching the industrialisation program, and initiating military projects such as the "Two Bombs, One Satellite" project and Project 523.

In 1955, Mao launched the Sufan movement, and in 1957 he launched the Anti-Rightist Campaign, in which at least 550,000 people, mostly intellectuals and dissidents, were persecuted.

In 1963, Mao launched the Socialist Education Movement, and in 1966 he initiated the Cultural Revolution, a program to remove "counter-revolutionary" elements in Chinese society which lasted 10 years and was marked by violent class struggle, widespread destruction of cultural artifacts, and an unprecedented elevation of Mao's cult of personality.

Controversial figure within and outside China, Mao is still regarded as one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century.

Beyond politics, Mao is known as a theorist, military strategist, and poet.

Mao has been praised for transforming China from a semi-colony to a leading world power, with greatly advanced literacy, women's rights, basic healthcare, primary education and life expectancy.

Mao Zedong was born on 26 December 1893, in Shaoshan village, Hunan.

Mao's father, Mao Yichang, was a formerly impoverished peasant who had become one of the wealthiest farmers in Shaoshan.

Mao's mother, Wen Qimei, was a devout Buddhist who tried to temper her husband's strict attitude.

Mao too became a Buddhist, but abandoned this faith in his mid-teenage years.

At age 13, Mao finished primary education, and his father united him in an arranged marriage to the 17-year-old Luo Yixiu, thereby uniting their land-owning families.

Mao refused to recognise her as his wife, becoming a fierce critic of arranged marriage and temporarily moving away.

Interested in history, Mao was inspired by the military prowess and nationalistic fervour of George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte.

Mao disapproved of their actions as morally wrong, but claimed sympathy for their situation.

At age 16, Mao moved to a higher primary school in nearby Dongshan, where he was bullied for his peasant background.

In Changsha, Mao was influenced by Sun's newspaper, The People's Independence, and called for Sun to become president in a school essay.

The revolution over, Mao resigned from the army in 1912, after six months as a soldier.

Around this time, Mao discovered socialism from a newspaper article; proceeding to read pamphlets by Jiang Kanghu, the student founder of the Chinese Socialist Party, Mao remained interested yet unconvinced by the idea.

Mao was inspired by Friedrich Paulsen, a neo-Kantian philosopher and educator whose emphasis on the achievement of a carefully defined goal as the highest value led Mao to believe that strong individuals were not bound by moral codes but should strive for a great goal.

Mao's father saw no use in his son's intellectual pursuits, cut off his allowance and forced him to move into a hostel for the destitute.

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Mao desired to become a teacher and enrolled at the Fourth Normal School of Changsha, which soon merged with the First Normal School of Hunan, widely seen as the best in Hunan.

Mao organised the Association for Student Self-Government and led protests against school rules.

Mao published his first article in New Youth in April 1917, instructing readers to increase their physical strength to serve the revolution.

Mao joined the Society for the Study of Wang Fuzhi, a revolutionary group founded by Changsha literati who wished to emulate the philosopher Wang Fuzhi.

Mao undertook feats of physical endurance with Xiao Zisheng and Cai Hesen, and with other young revolutionaries they formed the Renovation of the People Study Society in April 1918 to debate Chen Duxiu's ideas.

Mao moved to Beijing, where his mentor Yang Changji had taken a job at Peking University.

Mao joined Li's Study Group and "developed rapidly toward Marxism" during the winter of 1919.

At the university, Mao was snubbed by other students due to his rural Hunanese accent and lowly position.

Mao joined the university's Philosophy and Journalism Societies and attended lectures and seminars by the likes of Chen Duxiu, Hu Shih, and Qian Xuantong.

Mao did not return to Shaoshan, where his mother was terminally ill.

Mao died in October 1919 and her husband died in January 1920.

In Changsha, Mao had begun teaching history at the Xiuye Primary School and organising protests against the pro-Duan Governor of Hunan Province, Zhang Jingyao, popularly known as "Zhang the Venomous" due to his corrupt and violent rule.

In late May, Mao co-founded the Hunanese Student Association with He Shuheng and Deng Zhongxia, organising a student strike for June and in July 1919 began production of a weekly radical magazine, Xiang River Review.

Mao's ideas were not Marxist, but heavily influenced by Kropotkin's concept of mutual aid.

Zhang banned the Student Association, but Mao continued publishing after assuming editorship of the liberal magazine New Hunan and offered articles in popular local newspaper Justice.

Mao found that his articles had achieved a level of fame among the revolutionary movement, and set about soliciting support in overthrowing Zhang.

Mao visited Tianjin, Jinan, and Qufu, before moving to Shanghai, where he worked as a laundryman and met Chen Duxiu, noting that Chen's adoption of Marxism "deeply impressed me at what was probably a critical period in my life".

In Shanghai, Mao met an old teacher of his, Yi Peiji, a revolutionary and member of the Kuomintang, or Chinese Nationalist Party, which was gaining increasing support and influence.

Mao set up a Changsha branch, establishing a branch of the Socialist Youth Corps and a Cultural Book Society which opened a bookstore to propagate revolutionary literature throughout Hunan.

Mao was involved in the movement for Hunan autonomy, in the hope that a Hunanese constitution would increase civil liberties and make his revolutionary activity easier.

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Mao was now party secretary for Hunan stationed in Changsha, and to build the party there he followed a variety of tactics.

Mao joined the YMCA Mass Education Movement to fight illiteracy, though he edited the textbooks to include radical sentiments.

Mao continued organising workers to strike against the administration of Hunan Governor Zhao Hengti.

Mao claimed that he missed the July 1922 Second Congress of the Communist Party in Shanghai because he lost the address.

Mao enthusiastically agreed with this decision, arguing for an alliance across China's socio-economic classes, and eventually rose to become propaganda chief of the KMT.

Mao was a vocal anti-imperialist and in his writings he lambasted the governments of Japan, the UK and US, describing the latter as "the most murderous of hangmen".

At the First KMT Congress, held 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.

In late 1924, Mao returned to Shaoshan, perhaps to recuperate from an illness.

Mao found that the peasantry were increasingly restless and some had seized land from wealthy landowners to found communes.

Mao returned to Guangzhou to run the 6th term of the KMT's Peasant Movement Training Institute from May to September 1926.

The Peasant Movement Training Institute under Mao trained cadre and prepared them for militant activity, taking them through military training exercises and getting them to study basic left-wing texts.

Mao nevertheless supported Chiang's National Revolutionary Army, who embarked on the Northern Expedition attack in 1926 on warlords.

In March 1927, Mao appeared at the Third Plenum of the KMT Central Executive Committee in Wuhan, which sought to strip General Chiang of his power by appointing Wang Jingwei leader.

Mao led another group to put together a "Draft Resolution on the Land Question", which called for the confiscation of land belonging to "local bullies and bad gentry, corrupt officials, militarists and all counter-revolutionary elements in the villages".

Mao accepted that there was great variation in revolutionary enthusiasm across the country, and that a flexible policy of land redistribution was necessary.

CCP continued supporting the Wuhan KMT government, a position Mao initially supported, but by the time of the CCP's Fifth Congress he had changed his mind, deciding to stake all hope on the peasant militia.

Mao was appointed commander-in-chief of the Red Army and led four regiments against Changsha in the Autumn Harvest Uprising, in the hope of sparking peasant uprisings across Hunan.

Mao established a base in Jinggangshan City, an area of 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" and sometimes executed.

Mao ensured that no massacres took place in the region, and pursued a more lenient approach than that advocated by the Central Committee.

Mao proclaimed that "Even the lame, the deaf and the blind could all come in useful for the revolutionary struggle", he boosted the army's numbers, incorporating two groups of bandits into his army, building a force of around 1,800 troops.

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Mao laid down rules for his soldiers: prompt obedience to orders, all confiscations were to be turned over to the government, and nothing was to be confiscated from poorer peasants.

Mao's troops fended the KMT off for 25 days while he left the camp at night to find reinforcements.

Mao reunited with the decimated Zhu's army, and together they returned to Jinggangshan and retook the base.

In 1928, Mao met and married He Zizhen, an 18-year-old revolutionary who would bear him six children.

Mao replied that while he concurred with Li's theoretical position, he would not disband his army nor abandon his base.

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 December, they tried to overthrow Mao, resulting in the Futian incident, during which Mao's loyalists tortured many and executed between 2000 and 3000 dissenters.

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.

Mao too faced setbacks and retreated to deal with the further Japanese incursions into China.

Mao orchestrated education programs and implemented measures to increase female political participation.

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 Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin.

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.

Zhang and Mao disagreed over what to do; the latter wished to proceed to Shaanxi, while Zhang wanted to retreat east to Tibet or Sikkim, far from the KMT threat.

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.

From this point onward, Mao was the Communist Party's undisputed leader, even though he would not become party chairman until 1943.

Mao's troops arrived at the Yan'an Soviet during October 1935 and settled in Pao An, until spring 1936.

Mao now commanded 15,000 soldiers, boosted by the arrival of He Long's men from Hunan and the armies of Zhu De and Zhang Guotao returned from Tibet.

Mao travelled to Moscow for medical treatment; Mao proceeded to divorce her and marry an actress, Jiang Qing.

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Mao Zizhen was reportedly "dispatched to a mental asylum in Moscow to make room" for Qing.

Mao moved into a cave-house and spent much of his time reading, tending his garden and theorising.

Mao 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.

Japanese had taken both Shanghai and Nanking —resulting in the Nanking Massacre, an atrocity Mao never spoke of all his life—and was pushing the Kuomintang government inland to Chungking.

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 New Democracy, which laid forward ideas for China's future.

Likewise, the Soviet Union gave support to Mao by occupying north-eastern China, and secretly giving it to the Chinese communists in March 1946.

Mao proclaimed the establishment of The People's Republic of China from the Gate of Heavenly Peace on 1 October 1949, and later that week declared "The Chinese people have stood up".

Mao initiated the talks which focused on the political and economic revolution in China, foreign policy, railways, naval bases, and Soviet economic and technical aid.

Mao pushed the Party to organise campaigns to reform society and extend control.

Mao played a personal role in organising the mass repressions and established a system of execution quotas, which were often exceeded.

Mao defended these killings as necessary for the securing of power.

Mao government is credited with eradicating both consumption and production of opium during the 1950s using unrestrained repression and social reform.

Mao insisted that minor offenders be criticised and reformed or sent to labour camps, "while the worst among them should be shot".

Programs pursued during this time include the Hundred Flowers Campaign, in which Mao indicated his supposed willingness to consider different opinions about how China should be governed.

Li Zhisui, Mao's physician, suggested that Mao initially seen the policy as a way of weakening opposition to him within the party and that he was surprised by the extent of criticism and the fact that it came to be directed at his own leadership.

In January 1958, Mao launched the second Five-Year Plan, known as the Great Leap Forward, a plan intended to turn China from an agrarian nation to an industrialised one and as an alternative model for economic growth to the Soviet model focusing on heavy industry that was advocated by others in the party.

In late autumn 1958, Mao condemned the practices that were being used during Great Leap Forward such as forcing peasants to do exhausting labour without enough food or rest which resulted in epidemics and starvation.

Jasper Becker notes that Mao was dismissive of reports he received of food shortages in the countryside and refused to change course, believing that peasants were lying and that rightists and kulaks were hoarding grain.

Mao refused to open state granaries, and instead launched a series of "anti-grain concealment" drives that resulted in numerous purges and suicides.

Li writes that upon learning of the extent of the starvation, Mao vowed to stop eating meat, an action followed by his staff.

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Mao stepped down as President of China on 27 April 1959; however, he retained other top positions such as Chairman of the Communist Party and of the Central Military Commission.

Mao was eventually forced to abandon the policy in 1962, and he lost political power to Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.

Mao saw that the revolution and Great Leap Forward had replaced the old ruling elite with a new one.

Mao was concerned that those in power were becoming estranged from the people they were to serve.

Mao believed that a revolution of culture would unseat and unsettle the "ruling class" and keep China in a state of "perpetual revolution" that, theoretically, would serve the interests of the majority, rather than a tiny and privileged elite.

State Chairman Liu Shaoqi and General Secretary Deng Xiaoping favoured the idea that Mao be removed from actual power as China's head of state and government but maintain his ceremonial and symbolic role as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, with the party upholding all of his positive contributions to the revolution.

Many claim that Mao responded to Liu and Deng's movements by launching the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966.

In 1969, Mao declared the Cultural Revolution to be over, although various historians in and outside of China mark the end of the Cultural Revolution—as a whole or in part—in 1976, following Mao's death and the arrest of the Gang of Four.

Mao's first visit abroad was to celebrate the 70th birthday of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, which was attended by East German Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers Walter Ulbricht and Mongolian communist General Secretary Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal.

When Mao stepped down as head of state on 27 April 1959, further diplomatic state visits and travels abroad were undertaken by President Liu Shaoqi, Premier Zhou Enlai and Deputy Premier Deng Xiaoping rather than Mao personally.

Mao's health declined in his last years, probably aggravated by his chain-smoking.

Mao died nearly four days later, at 00:10 on 9 September 1976, at the age of 82.

Simple facts of Mao's career seem incredible: in a vast land of 400 million people, at age 28, with a dozen others, to found a party and in the next fifty years to win power, organize, and remold the people and reshape the land—history records no greater achievement.

Mao remains a controversial figure and there is little agreement over his legacy both in China and abroad.

Mao is regarded as one of the most important and influential individuals in the twentieth century.

Mao is known as a political intellect, theorist, military strategist, poet, and visionary.

Mao was credited and praised for driving imperialism out of China, having unified China and for ending the previous decades of civil war.

Mao is credited with having improved the status of women in China and for improving literacy and education.

Mao's policies resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people in China during his 27-year reign, more than any other 20th-century leader; estimates of the number of people who died under his regime range from 40 million to as many as 80 million, done through starvation, persecution, prison labour in laogai, and mass executions.

In mainland China, Mao is revered by many members and supporters of the Chinese Communist Party and respected by a great number of the general population.

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Mao is known for the deaths during the Great Leap Forward and for persecutions during the Cultural Revolution.

Mao is seen as someone who successfully liberated the country from Japanese occupation and from Western imperialist exploitation dating back to the Opium Wars.

Mao freed China from the straitjacket of its Confucian past, but the bright Red future he promised turned out to be a sterile purgatory.

Jackson forcibly moved Native Americans through the Trail of Tears, resulting in thousands of deaths, while Mao was at the helm during the violent years of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.

We shouldn't forget that it was Chairman Mao who combined the teachings of Marx and Lenin with the realities of Chinese history—that it was he who applied those principles, creatively, not only to politics but to philosophy, art, literature, and military strategy.

Mao had successfully applied Mobile Warfare in the Korean War, and was able to encircle, push back and then halt the UN forces in Korea, despite the clear superiority of UN firepower.

In 1957, Mao gave the impression that he might even welcome a nuclear war.

Mao gave contradicting statements on the subject of personality cults.

In 1955, as a response to the Khrushchev Report that criticised Joseph Stalin, Mao stated that personality cults are "poisonous ideological survivals of the old society", and reaffirmed China's commitment to collective leadership.

At the 1958 party congress in Chengdu, Mao expressed support for the personality cults of people whom he labelled as genuinely worthy figures, not those that expressed "blind worship".

In 1962, Mao proposed the Socialist Education Movement in an attempt to educate the peasants to resist the "temptations" of feudalism and the sprouts of capitalism that he saw re-emerging in the countryside from Liu's economic reforms.

Mao's quotations were typographically emphasised by putting them in boldface or red type in even the most obscure writings.

Mao has a presence in China and around the world in popular culture, where his face adorns everything from T-shirts to coffee cups.

Mao had four wives who gave birth to a total of 10 children, among them:.

Mao's grandson Mao Xinyu is a general in the Chinese army.

Some scholars and some other people who personally knew and worked with Mao have disputed the accuracy of these characterisations.

Mao learned to speak some English, particularly through Zhang Hanzhi, his English teacher, interpreter and diplomat who later married Qiao Guanhua, Foreign Minister of China and the head of China's UN delegation.

Mao's spoken English was limited to a few single words, phrases, and some short sentences.

Mao first chose to systematically learn English in the 1950s, which was very unusual as the main foreign language first taught in Chinese schools at that time was Russian.

Mao was a prolific writer of political and philosophical literature.

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The main repository of his pre-1949 writings is the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, published in four volumes by the People's Publishing House since 1951.

Mao is the attributed author of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, known in the West as the "Little Red Book" and in Cultural Revolution China as the "Red Treasure Book".

Mao wrote prolifically on political strategy, commentary, and philosophy both before and after he assumed power.

Mao was a skilled Chinese calligrapher with a highly personal style.

In China, Mao was considered a master calligrapher during his lifetime.

Mao told Edgar Snow in 1936 that he had started the study of the Confucian Analects and the Four Books at a village school when he was eight, but that the books he most enjoyed reading were Water Margin, Journey to the West, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dream of the Red Chamber.

Mao published poems in classical forms starting in his youth and his abilities as a poet contributed to his image in China after he came to power in 1949.

Mao's style was influenced by the great Tang dynasty poets Li Bai and Li He.

Mao has been portrayed in film and television numerous times.

Mao is a principal character in American composer John Adams' opera Nixon in China.