Short biography mao zedong

Leader of the People's Republic of China from to

For the TV series, see Mao Zedong (TV series).

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Mao Zedong (26 December – 9 September ), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and politic

The Early Years

Mao Zedong () was both a product and a part of the revolutionary change in 20th-century China. He was born December 26, , in the small village of Shaoshan in Hunan province. Although he described his father as a "rich peasant," the family clearly had to work hard for a living.

From an early age, Mao was a voracious reader. He particularly liked popular historical novels concerning rebellions and unconventional military heroes. At age thirteen, after five years of education in the local primary school, he was forced by his father to leave school and return to the farm. Mao continued to study on his own and at age sixteen left home to complete his elementary school training in the Hunanese capital of Changsha.

It was here that Mao began to experience the powerful revolutionary waves engulfing Chinese society. He read the works of nationalist reformers such as Kang Yuwei (Kang You-wei). He developed an admiration for the strong emperors in earlier periods of Chinese history and for certain Western statesmen including George Washington. Mao watched as China's last dynasty crumbled.

Mao's career in the army was brief and uneventful. From until he was in the First Hunan Normal School. His reminiscences indicate that he took himself and his convictions seriously.

In Mao graduated from Normal School and traveled to Beijing. There he became caught up in the intellectual and political activity of the May Fourth Movement.** He received a minor post at the Beijing University Library where he was exposed to Dean Chen Duxiu (Ch'en Tu-hsiu) and Librarian Li Dazhao (Li Ta-chao), who later became founders of the Chinese Communist Party.

Moving between Changsha and Shanghai in , Mao picked up odd jobs but devoted his energies to reading, writing, and talking about revolution. By he described himself as "a Marxist in theory and to some extent in action," and in July he was one of the smal

Mao Zedong,  ©Mao was a Chinese communist leader and founder of the People's Republic of China. He was responsible for the disastrous policies of the 'Great Leap Forward' and the 'Cultural Revolution'.

Mao was born on 26 December into a peasant family in Shaoshan, in Hunan province, central China. After training as a teacher, he travelled to Beijing where he worked in the University Library. It was during this time that he began to read Marxist literature. In , he became a founder member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and set up a branch in Hunan. In , the Kuomintang (KMT) nationalist party had allied with the CCP to defeat the warlords who controlled much of northern China. Then in , the KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek launched an anti-communist purge.

Mao and other communists retreated to south east China. In , after the KMT surrounded them, Mao led his followers on the 'Long March', a 6, mile journey to northwest China to establish a new base.

The Communists and KMT were again temporarily allied during eight years of war with Japan (), but shortly after the end of World War Two, civil war broke out between them. The Communists were victorious, and on 1 October Mao proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island of Taiwan.

Mao and other Communist leaders set out to reshape Chinese society. Industry came under state ownership and China's farmers began to be organised into collectives. All opposition was ruthlessly suppressed. The Chinese initially received significant help from the Soviet Union, but relations soon began to cool.

In , in an attempt to introduce a more 'Chinese' form of communism, Mao launched the 'Great Leap Forward'. This aimed at mass mobilisation of labour to improve agricultural and industrial production. The result, instead, was a massive decline in agricultural output, which, together with poor harvests, led to famine and the deaths of millions. The policy wa

The early life of Chinese revolutionary and politician Mao Zedong covered the first 27 years of his life, from to Born in Shaoshanchong, Shaoshan in Hunan province, Mao grew up as the son of Mao Yichang, a wealthy farmer and landowner. Sent to the local Shaoshan Primary School, Mao was brought up in an environment of Confucianism, but reacted against this from an early age, developing political ideas from modern literature. Aged 13 his father organised a marriage for him with Luo Yigu, the daughter of another land-owning family, but Mao denounced the marriage and moved away from home.

In Mao began further education in the Hunanese capital of Changsha, where he came under the influence of republicanism, and became an admirer of republican revolutionary Sun Yat-Sen. When the Xinhai Revolution broke out between republicans and monarchists, Mao signed up as a soldier, although conflict subsided and he left the army after six months. Seeing himself as an intellectual, he became heavily influenced by classical liberalism, and began studying at the First Normal School of Changsha, as well as penning his first publications. With Xiao Zisheng he co-founded the Renovation of the People Study Society in April to discuss and perpetuate revolutionary ideas among students, before graduating in

Childhood

Mao biographer Lee Feigon asserted that Mao experienced "a relatively typical childhood". He commented that it was for this reason that previous biographers had found it difficult to "find something fundamentally wrong with Mao from an early age" with which they had hoped to explain his later development into "a revolutionary tyrant".

Birth:

Mao was bo