Mao Zedong（1893—1976）

Great Marxist; a great proletarian revolutionary, strategist and theorist; he was one of the main founders of the CPC, the People's Liberation Army and the People's Republic of China; he was also a great military strategist who made outstanding contributions to the military theory of Marxism. He was the great leader of the Chinese people from all nationalities; the great pioneer of the Sinicization of Marxism; one of the great patriots and national heroes of China since modern times; the core of the first generation of the collective leadership of the CPC; he was in the generation of great men who led the Chinese people to completely change their destiny and national outlook of China. He was born in the village of Shaoshan in the Xiangtan County, of Hunan Province. His given name was Mao Zedong, surname Mao, also used the name Runzhi (originally Yongzhi, later modified as Runzhi), Mao Zedong also used the alias name of Ziren for a period. Between 1914-1918, he studied in the Hunan First Normal School. On the eve of his graduation, he co-founded the New People’s Study Society (Xinmin Society), a revolutionary group, together with Cai Hesen and others. In November 1920, the initial organization of the CPC was launched in Changsha, Hunan Province. In July 1921, he attended the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai and participated in the founding of the Communist Party of China and later he became the Secretary of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the CPC. In June 1923, he attended the Third CPC National Congress at which he was elected to the Executive Organ of the Central Committee, after the meeting he was selected to the Central Bureau and began to serve as the secretary of the Central Bureau. Following the establishment of the KMT-Communist cooperation in 1924, he was elected as the alternate member of the Central Executive Committee of the KMT at both its First and Second National Congresses. Between the winter of 1925 to the spring of 1927, he successively published his works such as “The Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society” and “The Report on an Investigation of Peasant Movement in Hunan”, which underlined the important role of the peasant issue in the Chinese revolution and the paramount significance of the leadership of the proletariat over the peasant struggles. At the emergency meeting of the CPC Central Committee on August 7th, in 1927, following the total breakdown of the KMT-Communist cooperation, Mao Zedong proposed the famous idea that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun," and was elected as an alternate member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee at the meeting. After this meeting, he went to the Hunan-Jiangxi Border Region to lead the Autumn Harvest Uprising, and then he led the guerilla troops to the Jinggang Maintains to launch the agrarian revolution and set up the first rural revolutionary base area of the CPC. In his works such as "Why Is It That Red Political Power Can Exist in China?" , “The Struggle in Jinggang Mountains”, and "A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire," he preliminarily put forward the strategic thought of encircling the cities by accumulating forces in the countryside and finally seizing the political power by armed struggle. Beginning from the end of 1930, Mao Zedong and Zhu De led the First Front Army of the Red Army in defeating three "encirclement and suppression" campaigns of KMT which aimed to destroy the central revolutionary base areas of the CPC. Mao Zedong was later excluded from the collective central leadership of the Party and the Red Army because of the interference of the “Left” deviationist line which negatively affected the struggle to defend the central revolutionary base areas, consequently the Red Army failed in its fifth counter-campaign against the "encirclement and suppression" attack of the KMT army and the Red Army was forced to start the Long March in October 1934. In January 1935, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held an enlarged meeting (also known as the Zunyi Conference) on the route of the Long March in the Guizhou province, which established Mao Zedong's key leading position in the Red Army and the CPC Central Committee. In October 1935, the Central Committee of the CPC and the First Front Army of the Red Army arrived in Northern Shaanxi, thus the Long March ended. In December 1935, Mao Zedong delivered the report "On Tactics against Japanese Imperialism" which expounded the policy of national united front against Japanese aggression. In December 1936, working together with Zhou Enlai and others, Mao Zedong enabled the peaceful settlement of the Xi'an Incident, which became a critical shift in the national situation of China from the civil war to the second period of KMT-Communist cooperation to resist against the Japanese aggression. After the full-fledged development of the War of Resistance Against the Japanese Aggression in an all-round way, the CPC Central Committee headed by Mao Zedong advocated the policies of independence and initiative within the united front, mobilizing the masses, consequently CPC led guerrilla battles behind the enemy lines, and led the establishment of many large-scale anti-Japanese base areas. At the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held in Luochuan in August 1937, and he was elected as the Chairman of the Revolutionary Central Military Commission of the Party. In October 1938, at the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the CPC, the important proposition and task of "Sinicization of Marxism" were put forward. In February 1942, he led the whole Party for the Rectification Movement which targeted subjectivism and sectarianism. This helped the whole Party to better understand the basic principle of integrating the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution and laid a solid ideological foundation for victory in the Anti-Japanese War and the victory in the people’s revolution. In March 1943, at the meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, he was elected as the Chairman of the Political Bureau and as the Chairman of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee. At the First Plenary Session of the Seventh CPC Central Committee held in June 1945, he was elected Chairman of the CPC Central Committee, its Political Bureau and its Secretariat. In the later years, at the first plenums of the successive Central Committees, Mao Zedong was successively elected as the Chairman of the Central Committee. He presided over the Seventh CPC National Congress (between April 23 to June 12, 1945) and delivered the report "On Coalition Government." At the congress the Party formulated the tactic of “boldly mobilizing the masses, expanding the people's forces and leading them in defeating the Japanese aggressors, liberating the whole nation and establishing a new democratic China”. At this congress, Mao Zedong Thought was established as the guiding ideology of the CPC. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, he went to Chongqing city to negotiate with Chiang Kai-shek, which demonstrated the desire of the Communist Party of China to strive for domestic peace. After Chiang Kai-shek launched the full-scale civil war in the summer of 1946, Mao Zedong worked with Zhu De and Zhou Enlai in directing the People's Liberation Army to employ active defense strategy and the tactic of concentrate a superior armed force to destroy the enemy forces one by one. In the summer of 1947, he led the Chinese People's Liberation Army to shift from the strategic defense to strategic offensive; under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the PLA overthrew the KMT government after the victory of three campaigns of Liaoning-Shenyang, Huaihai and Beiping-Tianjin and the victorious war of crossing the Yangtze River. In March 1949, before the final victory of the revolution, Mao Zedong chaired the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh CPC Central Committee and delivered an important report. The Session decided to shift the focus of the Party's work from rural to urban areas, defined the basic policies which the Party should adopt after the nation-wide victory and called on the whole Party to remain modest, prudent and reject the arrogance and rashness in its style of work and to preserve the style of plain living and hard work.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong was elected as the Chairman of the Central People's Government. In June 1950, he presided over the Third Plenary Session of the Seventh CPC Central Committee and put forward the general task of working for a fundamental turn for the better in the nation's financial and economic situation. Between 1950 and 1952, the CPC led the peasants to carry out the agrarian reform, the movement to suppress the counterrevolutionaries and initiated other democratic reforms. It also launched the movements against the “Three Antis” Movement of corruption, waste and bureaucracy and against the “Five Antis” Movement of bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, cheating on government contracts and stealing of economic information. At the suggestion of Mao Zedong in July 1953, the CPC Central Committee announced the Party's general line for the transitional period from New Democracy to Socialism and started systematic work of socialist industrialization and also the socialist transformation of private ownership of the means of production. In September 1954, the First Session of the First National People's Congress adopted the Constitution (Common Program) of the People's Republic of China drafted under his chairmanship, at which Mao Zedong was elected the first Chairman of the People's Republic of China. In April 1956, Mao Zedong made a speech “On the Ten Major Relationships”, and made a preliminary exploration on the path of building socialism suitable for China's national conditions. In September of the same year, the CPC convened the Eighth National Congress, pointing out that the main task of the Chinese people should be shifted to concentrate on the development of social productive forces. In 1956, the socialist transformation of private ownership of the means of production was in the main completed which marked the establishment of the socialist system in China at the basic level. In February 1957, Mao Zedong delivered a speech "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People", thus formulated the theory of correctly distinguishing and handling the two types of contradictions in socialist society, which are different in nature—those between ourselves and the enemy and those contradictions among the people. In 1957, both a Rectification Movement and the Anti-Rightist struggle was launched, the latter being overtly expanded. In 1958, he successively launched the “Great Leap Forward" and the “People’s Communes” Movements to establish people's communes in rural areas. In July 1959, Mao Zedong presided over the Lushan Conference, which was held under the chairmanship of the CPC; in the latter part of the conference, leading comrade Peng Dehuai was wrongly criticized, and after this conference, the whole Party wrongly launched the “anti-rightist” struggle. In the process of correcting the mistakes of the leadership in the “Great Leap Forward“ movement and trying to overcome the difficulties of the three-years period, Mao Zedong has continued to make arduous explorations into the laws of socialist construction, and put forward some important ideas and judgements such as "developing the socialist commodity production energetically in a planned way.” At the Tenth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party held in September 1962, the class struggle that existed to a certain degree within the socialist society was magnified and absolutized, and the Session adopted the judgement that the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie still remained the main contradiction of Chinese society. In May 1966, the “Cultural Revolution” campaign was launched due to the wrong estimation of the situation in respect to the domestic class struggle, which caused serious losses to the cause of the Party and the people. On September 9, 1976, Mao Zedong died in Beijing.

Although Mao Zedong made serious mistakes in the late years of his life, his contributions to the Chinese revolution far outweigh his mistakes. His merits are primary and his errors secondary. These mistakes were those which were made by a great revolutionary and a great Marxist. At the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in June 1981, the Communist Party of China made a comprehensive evaluation of all his revolutionary activities and contributions in the form an important resolution issued by the Central Committee, which fully affirmed Mao Zedong's historical status and the great significance of Mao Zedong Thought as the guiding ideology of the Communist Party of China. His main works are included in the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, and the Collected Works of Mao Zedong, and others.