page_title: Mao Zedong
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Mao Zedong / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Statue outside Mao's Mausoleum, Beijing, China 2
context_page_description: Mao Zedong, also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who became the founding father of the People's Republic of China, which he ruled as the chairman of the Communist Party of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, his theories, military strategies, and political policies are collectively known as Maoism.
  Mao was the son of a prosperous peasant in Shaoshan, Hunan. He had a Chinese nationalist and an anti-imperialist outlook early in his life, and was particularly influenced by the events of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and May Fourth Movement of 1919. He later adopted Marxism–Leninism while working at Peking University, and became a founding member of the Communist Party of China, leading the Autumn Harvest Uprising in 1927. During the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and the CPC, Mao helped to found the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, led the Jiangxi Soviet's radical land policies, and ultimately became head of the CPC during the Long March.
context_section_description: Mao remains a controversial figure and there is little agreement over his legacy both in China and abroad. He is regarded as one of the most important and influential individuals in modern world history. He is also known as a political intellect, theorist, military strategist, poet, and visionary. Supporters generally credit and praise him for driving imperialism out of China, having unified China and for ending the previous decades of civil war. He is also credited for having improved the status of women in China and for improving literacy and education. In December 2013, a poll from the state-run Global Times indicated that roughly 85% of the 1045 respondents surveyed felt Mao's achievements outweighed his mistakes.
  
  His policies resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people in China during his 27-year reign, more than any other 20th-century leader; estimates of the number of people who died under his regime range from 40 million to as many as 80 million, done through starvation, persecution, prison labour and mass executions. However, supporters point out that, in spite of this, life expectancy, education and health care improved during his reign. His supporters claim that he rapidly industrialised China; however, others have claimed that his policies such as the "Great Leap Forward" and the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" were impediments to industrialisation and modernisation. His supporters claim that his policies laid the groundwork for China's later rise to become an economic superpower, while others claim that his policies delayed economic development and that China's economy underwent its rapid growth only after Mao's policies had been widely abandoned. China's population grew from around 550 million to over 900 million under his rule while the government did not strictly enforce its family planning policy, leading his successors such as Deng Xiaoping to take stricter policies to cope with the overpopulation crisis. Mao's revolutionary tactics continue to be used by insurgents, and his political ideology continues to be embraced by many Communist organizations around the world.
  In mainland China, Mao is still revered by many members and supporters of the Communist Party and respected by a great number of the general population as the "Founding Father of modern China", credited for giving "the Chinese people dignity and self-respect." Mobo Gao, in his 2008 book The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution, credits him for raising the average life expectancy from 35 in 1949 to 63 by 1975, bringing "unity and stability to a country that had been plagued by civil wars and foreign invasions", and laying the foundation for China to "become the equal of the great global powers". Gao also lauds him for carrying out massive land reform, promoting the status of women, improving popular literacy, and positively "transform(ing) Chinese society beyond recognition." Scholars outside of China also credit Mao for boosting literacy (only 20% of the population could read in 1949, compared to 65.5% thirty years later), doubling life expectancy, a near doubling of the population, and developing China's industry and infrastructure, paving the way for its position as a world power.
  However, Mao also has many Chinese critics. Opposition to him can lead to censorship or professional repercussions in mainland China, and is often done in private settings such as the Internet. Critical attitudes were apparent when a video of Bi Fujian insulting him at a private dinner in 2015 went viral, with Bi garnering the support of 80% of Weibo users in a poll amidst backlash from state affiliates. In the West, Mao is often reviled as a tyrannical ideologue and his economic theories are widely discredited—though to some political activists he remains a symbol against capitalism, imperialism and western influence. Even in China, key pillars of his economic theory have been publicly dismantled for the most part by market reformers like Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang, who succeeded him as leaders of the Communist Party.
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caption: Sculptures in front of the Mausoleum of Mao, Beijing
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