Mao Zedong :: Chinese China History

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong is one of the most controversial leaders of the twentieth century. He has been known both as a savior and a tyrant to the Chinese people. From his tactical success of the Long March to his embarrassing failure of the Great Leap Forward, Mao has greatly influenced the result of what China is today. Most of Mao's major successes have been in the CCP's rise to power, while Mao's failures have come at a time when the CCP was in power. Mao Zedong was born on December 26, 1893 is Shaoshan village in Hunan. He experienced a middle peasant upbringing with a very conservative father. Ironically Mao went to an old-fashioned school where he learned the traditional Chinese curriculum. At this time in his childhood, the whole country could foresee the fall of the previous dynasty. Mao studied to be a teacher at The First Provincial Normal School , in Ch'ansha, which influenced his future thinking and beliefs. Mao believed that the Chinese way of thinking needed reform, therefore focused on younger people and peasants to build his political career. Mao ruled one quarter of the worlds population for one quarter of a century, and the way in which he was brought up and studied influenced his future decisions greatly. Mao was known to be rebellious when he was younger, but his first real experience came in 1912 when he decided to go to Wuhan and serve in the revolutionary army. For five years Mao studied and received an education in academics, but also politics. When Mao graduated in 1918 he was a political writer with a notable following. Mao had studied Marxism and other socialist ideas and by 1919 considered himself to be a Marxist. For a couple of years Mao wrote on his beliefs and even began organizing groups to share their ideas. Mao had organized a group of Communists in Changsha and in 1921 he went to Shanghai to participate in the First National Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. By the 1930s Mao was at the center of the Communist party after its defeat in 1927 by Chiang and the KMT. Mao organized and developed plans of a peasant-based guerilla strategy. Based in the province of Jiangxi, otherwise known as the Jiangxi soviet, Mao ruled nine million people and the CCP was begin to be a reckoning force. The KMT seeing the CCP as a threat attacked the Jiangxi soviet.