Mao Zedong, also well known as Chairman Mao, is a great man in human history. Mao Zedong was born on December 26 1893 in a village called Shaoshan in Xiangtan County, Hunan Province and died on September 9 1976 at the age of 83.
He was the head of the Chinese Communist Party for forty-one years after the historic Zunyi meeting (1935) during the Long March. He built up the Red Army (later referred to as the People's Liberation Army), took part in the anti-Japanese War and the civil war in China and established the People's Republic of China. He was one of the most influential people in the modern China of history. His dramatic personal life, his military talent, his artistic poems, his political skill and his famous third world classification theory have influenced generations of people.
Of Hunanese peasant stock, Mao was trained in Chinese classics and later received a modern education. As a young man he observed oppressive social conditions, and became one of the original members of the Chinese Communist party. He organized (1920s) Kuomintang-sponsored peasant and industrial unions and directed (1926) the Kuomintang's Peasant Movement Training Institute in Guangzhou. After the Kuomintang-Communist split (1927), Mao led the "Autumn Harvest Uprising" in Hunan, leading to his ousting from the central committee of the party.
From 1928 until 1931 Mao, with Zhu De and others, established rural soviets in the hinterlands, and built up the Red Army. In 1931 he was elected chairman of the newly established Soviet Republic of China, based in Jiangxi province. After withstanding five encirclement campaigns launched by Chiang Kai-shek, Mao led (1934-35) the Red Army on the Long March (6,000 mi/9,656 km) from Jiangxi north to Yan'an in Shanxi Province, emerging as the most important Communist leader. During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) the Communists and the Kuomintang continued their civil war while both were battling the Japanese invaders.
The civil war continued after war with Japan had ended, and in 1949, after the Communists had taken almost all of mainland China, Mao became chairman of the central government council of the newly established People's Republic of China; he was reelected to the post, the most powerful in China, in 1954. In an attempt to break with the Russian model of Communism and to imbue the Chinese people with renewed revolutionary vigor, Mao launched (1958) the Great Leap Forward. The programme was a failure, and Mao withdrew temporarily from public life.
In 1959 Liu Shaoqi, an opponent of the Great Leap Forward, replaced Mao as chairman of the central government council, but Mao retained his chairmanship of the Communist party politburo.
A campaign to reestablish Mao's ideological line culminated in the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Liu and others were removed from power in 1968. In 1969 Mao reasserted his party leadership by serving as chairman of the Ninth Communist Party Congress, and in 1970 he was named supreme commander of the nation and army.
In the field of philosophy, Mao's ideas are considered culturally significant rather than original; still, his ideas have had a monumental impact on generations of Chinese, and have significantly affected the rest of the world. One significant idea was his view of peasants as the source of revolution. He also built on the theories of Hegel, Marx, and Taoism to create a new theory of materialist dialectics. Mao developed more practical ideas, such as a three-stage theory of guerilla warfare and the concept of the people's democratic dictatorship. He wrote several other philosophical treatises, both before and after he assumed power. These include:
On Practice, 1937
On Contradiction, 1937
On New Democracy, 1940
On Literature and Art, 1942
On the Correct Handling of the Contradictions among the People, 1957 
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