II.

Early Years

Mao, also known as Mao Tse-tung, was born on December 26, 1893, in the village of Shaoshan, Hunan Province. The scholarly son of a poor peasant who had prospered by hard work, Mao graduated from the Changsha teacher training school in 1918. He served briefly in the Nationalist army in the 1911-1912 republican revolution against the Manchu government of the Qing dynasty and was a library assistant at Beijing University when the anti-Japanese May Fourth Movement began. He was in touch with the new Western thought, which had influenced both these developments and in which Marxism played an increasingly large part.

Mao returned to Changsha in 1920 as head of a primary school. When his attempts to organize mass education were suppressed, he turned to politics, helping to found the Chinese Communist party in Shanghai in 1921. In 1923, when the Communist party allied with the Nationalist party (Kuomintang) against feuding local warlords, Mao became a full-time party worker.

After witnessing a rising of impoverished peasants in his home province, in early 1927 Mao wrote Report of ... the Peasant Movement in Hunan, arguing that peasant discontent was the major force in China and deserved Communist support. His advice was rejected because the Moscow-based Comintern wanted to maintain the Communist alliance with the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek. Nevertheless, Chiang, who wanted to avoid Soviet influence, broke with the Communists in April. Kuomintang forces suppressed an “Autumn Harvest” uprising of peasants, a remnant of which Mao led to safety in mountainous Jiangxi (Kiangsi). Chiang promptly dismantled the Kuomintang grass-roots organizations, suspecting Communist infiltration, while Mao, in Jiangxi, continued to extend Communist influence over the peasants. The result was that, in a country where village power was critical, the Communists gained the advantage.