Mao Zedong
1st chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and founder of the People's Republic of China (1893–1976)
Mao Zedong (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976) was a Chinese communist revolutionary, political theorist and the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC). He led China from the PRC's establishment in October 1949 until his death in September 1976, primarily through his role as the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Mao Zedong Thought, which he advocated as a Chinese adaptation of Marxism–Leninism, influenced organizations worldwide.
Born to a peasant family in Shaoshan, Hunan, Mao studied in Changsha and was influenced by the 1911 Revolution and ideas of Chinese nationalism and anti-imperialism. He was introduced to Marxism while working as a librarian at Peking University, and later participated in the May Fourth Movement of 1919. In 1921, Mao became a founding member of the CCP. After the start of the Chinese Civil War, he helped build the Chinese Red Army, and developed a strategy of guerilla warfare. In 1935, Mao became leader of the CCP during the Long March, a military retreat to the Yan'an Soviet in Shaanxi. The CCP allied with the Kuomintang (KMT) in 1937, but the civil war resumed after Japan's surrender in 1945. He defeated the Nationalist government, which withdrew to the island of Taiwan in 1949.
Mao led land redistribution and industrialisation campaigns, suppressed political opponents, and intervened in the Korean War.
The public source identifies “Mao Zedong” as 1st chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and founder of the People's Republic of China (1893–1976). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Zedong, chairman and Chinese.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5816. VIAF identifies the subject as 51699962. The Library of Congress control number is n78087649. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1893, 1976, 1949 and 1911.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mao Zedong” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.