At the age of six he began to work on his parents' farm. His father, Mao Jen-sheng, was a peasant farmer, who beat his sons regularly. Mao's mother, Wen Chi-mei, was a devout Buddhist. After training as a teacher, he travelled to Beijing where he worked in the University Library. It was during this time that he began to read Marxist literature. During this period he discovered Marx, but also began to hate books and all things highly cultivated. Under the influence of Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu, China's first major Marxist figures, Mao turned to Marxism.
Mao Zedong loved to swim. In his youth, he advocated swimming as a way of strengthening the bodies of Chinese citizens, and one of his earliest poems celebrated the joys of beating a wake through the waves. As a young man, he and his close friends would often swim in local streams before they debated together the myriad challenges that faced their nation.
During Bertrand Russell's visit to Hunan, he argued for the legitimacy of seizing power by force against Russell's reformist views. In the 1920s he concentrated on political work in his native Province and Jianxi Province.
In 1921, he became a founder member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and set up a branch in Hunan. Two years later he was elected to the Central Committee of the party at the Third Congress.
Mao first encountered Marxism while he worked as a library assistant at Peking University. In 1921, he co-founded the Chinese Communist Party. Mao gave a geographic slant to Marxism as he felt that within an Asiatic society, communists had to concentrate on the countryside rather than the industrial towns. In reality, this was a logical belief as China had very little industry but many millions involved with agriculture. Mao believed that a revolutionary elite would only be found in the peasantry and not among those who worked in towns.
Inspired by the Russian Revolution the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was established in Shanghai by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao in June 1921. Early members included Mao, Zhou Enlai,Zhu De and Lin Biao. Following instructions from the Comintern members also joined theKuomintang.
Over the next few years Mao, Zhu De and Zhou Enlai adapted the ideas of Lenin who had successfully achieved a revolution in Russia.
In 1923, the Kuomintang (KMT) nationalist party had allied with the CCP to defeat the warlords who controlled much of northern China.
Under Comitern policy of cooperating with the Nationalists, Mao held important posts with the Guomingdang.
In 1925 Mao concluded that in China it was the peasantry, not the urban proletariat, that had to be mobilized. He became chairman of a Chinese Soviet Republic formed in rural Jiangxi province; its Red Army withstood repeated attacks from Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist army but at last undertook the Long March to a more secure position in northwestern China. There Mao became the undisputed head of the CCP. Guerrilla warfare tactics, appeals to the local population's nationalist sentiments, and Mao's agrarian policies gained the party military advantages against their Nationalist and Japanese enemies and broad support among the peasantry. Mao's agrarian Marxism differed from the Soviet model, but, when the communists succeeded in taking power in China in 1949, the Soviet Union agreed to provide the new state with technical assistance.
Then in 1927, the KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek launched an anti-communist purge.
After the break with the Nationalist Party, Mao started the guerrilla tactics, stating later that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Mao and other communists retreated to south east China. In 1934, after the KMT surrounded them, Mao led his followers on the 'Long March', a 6,000 mile journey to northwest China to establish a new base.
Mao's conception of democracy was based on the leading role of the Communist party. Its the tightly disciplined organization would lead the masses. Though Confucianism emphasized submission to authorities and bureaucratic centralization, He was hostile to the philosophy, which he saw as the central ideology of China's past. Later in his career "The Great Helmsman" compared himself with Chin Shih-huang, the first Emperor, who unified China in 221 B.C. For the most part, Mao's own philosophical work in the 1930s was summaries of Soviet texts. Two essays, 'On practice' and 'On contradiction' were printed in revised form in 1950 and 1952. These works, which could have been written in 1937, were studied and emulated throughout China.
Like Lenin, Mao made a distinction between antagonist and non-antagonist contradictions, but Mao's thought was partly derived from the Chinese system of yin and yang. He stated that contradictions would continue to arise in society even after socialist revolution. With this claim he supported his doctrine of permanent revolution, which was earlier launched by Trotsky. His success in guerrilla warfare led him to declare in 1947, that "the atom bomb is a paper tiger".
From 1931 to 1934, Mao helped establishment the Chinese Soviet Republic in SE China, and was elected as the chairman. With Zhou Enlai, Mao established a revolutionary base on the border of Hunan. In 1931, Mao set up a Chinese Soviet republic in Kiangsi. This lasted until 1934 when Mao and his followers were forced to leave Kiangsi and head for Shensi in the legendary Long March which lasted to 1935. Here they were relatively safe from the Kuomintang lead by Chiang Kai-shek but far removed from the real seat of power in China – Peking (Beijing).
Starting in October 1934, "The Long March" began – a retreat from the SE to NW China.
In 1935 Mao's political power increased when he was elected Chairman of the Politburo. Mao's rural based guerrilla warfare led to the fall of the government. To fund the Red Army, Mao grew opium.
In 1937, Japan opened a full war of aggression against China, which gave the Chinese Communist Party cause to unite with the nationalist forces of the Kuomintang.
During World War II Mao did not fight the Japanese, but planned to divide China with Japan.
"The people are like water and the army is like fish," Mao wrote inAspects of China's Anti-Japanese Struggle (1948).
From 1937 to 1945, the enmity between the KMT and the Communists was put to one side as both concentrated their resources on the Japanese who had launched a full-scale invasion of China in 1937. The Communists and KMT were again temporarily allied during eight years of war with Japan (1937-1945). It was during this time that Mao developed his knowledge about guerrilla warfare that he was to use with great effect in the civil war against the KMT once the war with Japan had ended in 1945.
Shortly after defeating the Japanese, and after the end of World War Two, civil war broke out between them. The Communists were victorious, and on 1 October 1949 Mao proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island of Taiwan.
The Communists were headed by Mao, who gained the upper hand over his Russian-backed adversaries.
He governed a country that was many years behind the world’s post-war powers. China’s problems were huge and Mao decided to introduce radical solutions for China’s domestic weaknesses rather than rely on conservative ones. Mao and other Communist leaders set out to reshape Chinese society. Industry came under state ownership and China's farmers began to be organised into collectives. All opposition was ruthlessly suppressed. The Chinese initially received significant help from the Soviet Union, but relations soon began to cool.
From 1950 on Mao introduced land reforms and the first Five Year Plan started in 1953. Peasant co-operatives were set up. In 1958, the Great Leap Forward was introduced as were the first land communes. Though he used the term "Five Year Plan", Mao did not accept the theory that all ideas had to start with Russia and China would have to follow. In fact, Mao remained very independent
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