Biography: Jiang Jieshi

Biography: Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong(Mao Tse-tung)1893–1976

Mao Zedong was born into a prosperous peasant family in the HunanProvince. He worked on his parents’ farm and later trained as a teacher. He was employed after 1918 in the Beijing University Library, supervised by Li Dazhao. Mao became involved in student demonstrations and studied Marxism. By 1920 he defined himself as a Marxist and spent time teaching Marxism to students and workers in Shanghai and Hunan. Mao attended the first national party congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Shanghai in 1921. Mao worked to build Marxism in Hunan during 1925 and 1926. He attended meetings with the left wing of the Guomindang (GMD) in Wuhan and organised the Autumn Harvest Uprising in 1927. By this time he believed that peasants rather than the proletariat had the potential to be mobilised for revolution.

Mao and Zhu De built a Communist soviet in the mountains at Jinggangshan and Ruijin in the last years of the 1920s. Mao battled with the increasingly dictatorial Jiang Jieshi who refused to allow parties other than the GMD to exist. The Bandit (or Communist) Extermination campaigns forced the Communists to conduct the monumental Long March from 1934 to 1935. During this time Mao was elected as leader of the CCP. From 1935 to 1949 Mao and the Red Army battled both the Nationalists and the Japanese for survival. However, by the 1940s the CCP had built a strong support base in rural China and an effective army. They defeated the Nationalists after a three-year civil war from 1946 to 1949. Mao announced the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949.

Mao was chairman of the CCP for most of the period up to his death in September 1976. During his time in power Mao directed far-reaching reforms to consolidate the revolution. Of all the mass movements devised by Mao the Great Leap Forwardfrom 1958 to 1961 and the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 had the most disastrous consequences.

This American cartoon was published in 1961 during the final stages of the Great Leap Forward. Can you identify the two main characters as well as the symbols and message of the cartoon?

Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, drawing by Edmund S Valtman [LC-USZ62-130421]

Mao’s ideas on the Mass Line, nationalism, socialist transformation and a continuing revolution created major changes in China and caused international repercussions.