Mao Tse-Tung Biography Quotes 29 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Mao Zedong, also known in older romanization as Mao Tse-tung, was born on December 26, 1893, in Shaoshan, Hunan Province, China. He grew up in a peasant family; his father, Mao Yichang, became relatively prosperous through thrift and hard work, while his mother, Wen Qimei, was known for her Buddhist devotion. Mao received a traditional village education before attending the Hunan First Normal School, where exposure to classical texts and new currents of thought shaped his worldview. The collapse of the Qing dynasty and the 1911 Revolution stirred his early political consciousness. After brief military service during the upheaval, he pursued studies and self-education, developing a lasting interest in social reform and national revival.

In 1918 Mao went to Beijing and worked as an assistant in the Peking University library, an experience that brought him into contact with leading intellectuals such as Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu, pioneers of Marxist ideas in China. Although Mao was not a formal student there, the campus milieu during the May Fourth era expanded his intellectual horizons. Returning to Hunan, he organized student groups and workers and wrote essays advocating radical change. He married Yang Kaihui, the daughter of one of his mentors, in 1920.

Founding of the Chinese Communist Movement
In 1921 Mao attended the first congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Shanghai as a delegate from Hunan. Over the next years he focused on building the party in the countryside, arguing that peasants were central to China's revolution. During the First United Front (1924 to 1927), when the CCP cooperated with the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT) led by Sun Yat-sen and later Chiang Kai-shek, Mao worked on labor and peasant movements in Hunan and Guangdong. After Chiang's violent suppression of communists in 1927, Mao led the Autumn Harvest Uprising, which failed militarily but set him on a new path of rural guerrilla warfare.

Mao retreated to the Jinggangshan mountains and joined forces with Zhu De to create a revolutionary base. In the early 1930s he helped establish the Jiangxi Soviet, experimenting with land reform and the party's organizational model. Disputes with other CCP leaders, including Wang Ming, often centered on military strategy and party control. Despite internal contention and relentless KMT encirclement campaigns, Mao continued to refine a doctrine of protracted war and mass mobilization.

The Long March and Rise to Leadership
By 1934, KMT forces had worn down the Jiangxi Soviet, forcing a strategic retreat that became the Long March. The Red Army's grueling trek across thousands of kilometers tested the movement's endurance. At the Zunyi Conference in early 1935, Mao's assessment of past failures and his guerrilla strategy gained support from key figures like Zhou Enlai and Zhu De. His position as the party's paramount strategist was consolidated, though leadership remained collective and contested.

The Long March ended with the Red Army reaching northern Shaanxi, establishing a new base around Yan'an. The Xi'an Incident in 1936, in which Zhang Xueliang detained Chiang Kai-shek, led to a Second United Front against Japan. Mao and the CCP seized the opportunity to broaden their political base, presenting themselves as champions of resistance and reform.

War with Japan and the Yan'an Years
From 1937 to 1945, the CCP fought the Japanese invasion while expanding its influence in rural areas. Yan'an became the party's headquarters, serving as a laboratory for governance, education, and propaganda. Mao developed ideas later codified as Mao Zedong Thought, emphasizing the mass line, the primacy of politics, and flexible guerrilla tactics. The Rectification Campaign (Zhengfeng) of the early 1940s aimed to strengthen ideological unity; figures like Kang Sheng played prominent roles in enforcing discipline and rooting out perceived deviations.

Mao's personal life was intertwined with politics. His earlier wife, Yang Kaihui, had been executed by KMT authorities in 1930. He later married He Zizhen and, in 1938, Jiang Qing, an actress who would become a significant political actor decades later. Military leaders such as Peng Dehuai, Lin Biao, and Nie Rongzhen helped build the CCP's armed strength, while Zhou Enlai served as a key diplomat, maintaining contacts with the KMT and foreign observers.

Civil War and the Founding of the People's Republic
After Japan's defeat, negotiations with the KMT collapsed, and civil war resumed. The CCP's strategy combined land reform, political mobilization, and maneuver warfare. Commanders like Lin Biao in the northeast and Liu Bocheng and Chen Yi in central China secured decisive victories. By 1949 the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan. On October 1, 1949, Mao proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing. Zhou Enlai became premier and foreign minister, while senior leaders such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping took prominent roles in party and state administration.

The new government prioritized land reform, campaigns against corruption and banditry, and the consolidation of state power. Ties with the Soviet Union were deepened, particularly after Mao's visit to Moscow to negotiate assistance, though the relationship would later sour.

Korean War, Socialist Transformation, and Early Campaigns
The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 drew the PRC into international conflict. Chinese forces, designated the People's Volunteer Army and commanded by Peng Dehuai, intervened in late 1950. The war hardened Cold War alignments, strained the economy, and elevated the regime's standing among revolutionary movements. At home, campaigns targeted counterrevolutionaries and economic abuses, while the first Five-Year Plan, designed with Soviet help, emphasized heavy industry.

In the mid-1950s, the PRC undertook socialist transformation of agriculture and commerce, culminating in collectivization. Mao encouraged intellectuals to criticize shortcomings during the Hundred Flowers movement in 1956, but the subsequent Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957 punished many who spoke out. Leaders including Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping played central roles in implementing policies and managing the bureaucracy amid shifting political winds.

The Great Leap Forward
In 1958 Mao launched the Great Leap Forward, an ambitious effort to accelerate industrial and agricultural production through people's communes and mass mobilization. Backyard steel furnaces and communal labor were intended to bypass conventional development paths. However, unrealistic targets, inflated reporting, and policy missteps, compounded by adverse weather and distribution failures, led to a catastrophic famine between 1959 and 1961. At the Lushan Conference in 1959, Peng Dehuai criticized the campaign's excesses and was dismissed, reflecting Mao's sensitivity to dissent at a moment of crisis.

In the aftermath, Mao retreated somewhat from daily economic management while Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping steered corrective measures to restore production. The Sino-Soviet split intensified ideological and geopolitical isolation, as Mao denounced Nikita Khrushchev's policies and sought a more independent path.

The Cultural Revolution
Concerned about what he viewed as bureaucratic drift and revisionism, Mao initiated the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966. He called on youth, organized as Red Guards, to challenge party authorities and overturn old customs and hierarchies. The upheaval led to mass rallies, purges, and violent factionalism. Cultural and educational institutions were disrupted, and numerous officials, scholars, and artists suffered persecution. Liu Shaoqi was denounced and later died in custody. Deng Xiaoping was twice purged before partial rehabilitation.

Mao elevated Lin Biao as a close ally and successor in 1969, but their relationship deteriorated. In 1971 Lin died in a plane crash following what authorities described as an abortive coup, a shock that deepened uncertainty within the leadership. Jiang Qing, along with Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen, emerged as an influential radical group later dubbed the Gang of Four, vying with more pragmatic officials backed by Zhou Enlai. The People's Liberation Army played a decisive role in restoring order at various stages, while ideological campaigns continued to permeate everyday life.

Foreign Policy and Later Years
Even amid domestic turmoil, Mao oversaw a strategic shift in foreign policy. Border clashes with the Soviet Union in 1969 and a mutual interest in counterbalancing Moscow opened the way to rapprochement with the United States. With Zhou Enlai's deft diplomacy and signals like ping-pong diplomacy, Mao met U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1972, a landmark that reshaped global alignments. China gained broader international recognition, including the PRC's assumption of China's seat at the United Nations in 1971.

Mao's health declined in the 1970s. Zhou Enlai died in January 1976, and public mourning for him became a touchpoint for political sentiment, as seen in the April events around Tiananmen Square. Mao endorsed Hua Guofeng as a successor to stabilize the transition. Mao died on September 9, 1976, in Beijing. Soon after, Hua Guofeng, with support from military and party allies, moved against Jiang Qing and her associates, arresting the Gang of Four and signaling an end to the Cultural Revolution era.

Thought, Style, and Legacy
Mao's political thought emphasized the primacy of ideology, the mobilization of the masses, and the fusion of theory with practice. He articulated a strategy of protracted people's war and developed the mass line as a method of leadership. His writings and speeches, circulated widely through materials such as the Quotations from Chairman Mao, helped build a potent cult of personality, reinforced by imagery and ritual that elevated him as a symbol of revolutionary will. He was also a prolific poet, drawing on classical forms to comment on change and struggle.

Mao's legacy remains deeply contested. Supporters credit him with unifying a fragmented country, asserting national sovereignty, and laying foundations for industrialization and social transformation. Critics emphasize the human costs of political campaigns, including the famine during the Great Leap Forward and the suffering of the Cultural Revolution. Estimates of deaths and disruptions vary, and historians continue to debate responsibility and intent. Figures such as Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Lin Biao, Liu Shaoqi, Peng Dehuai, and Jiang Qing were essential to his story, both as collaborators and as rivals within shifting political tides. Mao's influence extended beyond China, inspiring movements across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, even as subsequent Chinese leaders reinterpreted his legacy while pursuing different development paths.

Our collection contains 29 quotes who is written by Mao, under the main topics: Justice - Friendship - Leadership - Overcoming Obstacles - Freedom.