-
 Chinese
revolutionary leader
- Mao Tse-tung was
an inaugural member of the Chinese Communist party and the founder of
the People's Republic of China.
Swept to power in 1949, he brought a fifth of the world's population
under his strict Communist regime.
Mao's success lay in his genius for guerrilla warfare and his recognition
that a Communist revolution in China would stem from the peasants, not
the urban working class. He set up a Communist people's republic in
Jiangxi, but was driven out by the Nationalist government in 1934 and
led his followers on the 6,000-mile "Long March" to northwest
China. There, the Japanese invasion of 1937 prompted him to train an
army that, after World War II, drove out the Nationalists and established
the People's Republic of China.
In 1958 Mao initiated the "Great Leap Forward" - the creation
of giant communes of rural workers. When the scheme failed he lost some
of his political power, yet in 1966 launched the Cultural Revolution
to regain control and revive revolutionary zeal. From 1970 until his
death in 1976 he held the title "supreme commander
of China."
|