MAO ZEDONG (Mao Tse-tung)

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

Mao Zedong, known as Chairman Mao, (December 26, 1893 - September 9, 1976) was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political l philosopher, leader of the Chinese Revolution. He was the architect and founding father of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 1949 until his death in 1976. His military strategies and brand of policies are collectively knows as Maoism. Mao rose to power by commanding the Long March, repelling a Japanese invasion during the Second Sino-Japanese War; and, in the Chinese Civil War, leading the Communist Party of China's (CPC) army to victory over the Kuomintang (KMT) army, headed by the Generalissimo Chian Kai-shek, backed by the United States and England to maintain the semi-colonial status of China. In 1927, Yang Kaihui, a communist, who Mao had married in 1921, was captured and executed by the KMT army , breaking Mao's heart.
After solidifying the reunification of China through his Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, Mao enacted sweeping land reform, by using violence and terror to overthrow feudal landlords before seizing their large estates and dividing the land into people's communes. While Mao was the "Great Helmsman", a range of positive changes came to China, including promoting the status of women, improving popular literacy, multiplying the school population and literacy, increasing health care access, dramatically raising life expectancy. After defeating the Japanese and the KMT, Mao announced on October 1, 1949 in Beijin the formation of the People's Republic of China and declared to millions "the Chinese people have stood up!" It took him 20 years of fighting to do it.
Mao still is held in high regard as a great political strategist, military mastermind, and savior of the nation. Famous quotes by Mao are: "Without the people's army, the people have nothing"; "When the enemy advances, we retreat; when the enemy halts, we harass; when the enemy tires, we attack; when the enemy retreats, we pursue". However, Mao remains a controversial figure to this day with a legacy that is subject to continuing revision and fierce debate. Mao's campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, are often considered catastrophic failures.

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