Mao Zedong (1893 to 1976)

The Communist Who Ruled Like a Chinese Emperor

Born in 1893 in a China where great poverty reigned and broad masses were impoverished. The late imperial period was extremely corrupt and incompetent. Mao's parents were simple peasants, but had half a livelihood and so the young Mao could learn to read and write. In this situation, many were attracted to communism. With the October Revolution in Russia, many Chinese saw the time had come to turn against the regime.

The first communists were discontented idealists, but from the 1920s they were systematically harassed by the then ruling Kuomintang People's Party and its chairman Chiang Kai-shek. Countless communists fell victim to persecution and were executed. Mao managed to escape the brutal waves of persecution. On the "Long March", which was in reality a flight from the south to the north of China, he took over the leadership of the communists. Of the more than 100 thousand communists, only about 10 thousand survived the hardships of the 12 thousand kilometer march. By the end of this period, Mao had won all the wing battles within the CCP and was the undisputed leader.

The civil war-like clashes between the communists and Chiang Kai-shek's troops continued until 1949. Mao prevailed and expelled the remnants of the opponents to the island of Taiwan.

On October 1, 1949, the "Great Chairman" Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China in Beijing on Tiananmen Square. The crowds enthusiastically celebrated the new rulers. Mao promised a more just society and radical redistribution. A monstrous personality cult similar to Stalin's arose.

For more than a quarter of a century, Mao determined the destiny of his country and ruled similarly to previous Chinese emperors.

Mao wrote his own works (or had them written) which became compulsory reading, but he was not an intellectual, not a thinker. The theoretical writings of Marxism-Leninism never really interested him. Mao did not speak High Chinese, but only the dialect of his home province Hunan. Mao enjoyed enormous privileges and violated all moral concepts, all constraints and deprivations that he imposed on his long-suffering people. Millions of Chinese died in the great famine of the early 1960s.

Mao enjoyed a life of luxury and debauchery. He led a dissolute sex life and had numerous young girls supplied to him. He had special accounts with enormous sums where only he had access.

With extreme brutality, Mao suppressed any opposition in the country and covered China with a web of terror and mismanagement. His only drive was to maintain power and so he sealed himself off from everyone and trusted only himself. He lost touch with reality and with his own people.

Mao Zedong died on September 9, 1976 in Beijing, where his remains were laid out in a mausoleum in Tiananmen Square the following year. His death triggered the rehabilitation of political opponents and a revision of Maoist positions.