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Mao Zedong: Chinese People
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Mao Zedong didn't set out to be the world's most lethal dictator. It was never his goal to kill more than 80 million of his own people. But then, sometimes things just happen. And anyway, somebody's gotta be the world's deadliest political leader.
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Time Magazine selected the 100 most important people of the century to profile; Mao Zedong was one of those chosen. This is Time's three page biographical article about Mao's life and times.
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In late 1918, Mao Zedong left Changsha for Beijing. Beijing University had then become the center of radical Chinese intellectual and political life. Under the influence of radical intellectuals and their activist student followers, Mao became increasingly politicized. Even though he was unable to enroll as a regular student, he worked as an assistant librarian at the university and was first introduced to Marxist theory in the winter of 1918–19 as a member of a loosely organized Marxist study group. But Mao did not become an immediate convert to Marxism. He later described his ideas at the time as a "curious mixture" of Western liberalism, democratic reformism, and utopian socialism or anarchism.
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Mao Zedong died on 9 September 1976. On his own terms, he was a failure. Eager to restore China's lost grandeur, recover its still-alienated territories, and once again dominate the vast marches of Asia, the founder of the People's Republic of China cannot be said to have succeeded on any front. His failures were spectacular, to be sure, but they were failures nonetheless. The socialization of industry, the collectivization of agriculture, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, to name just a few of his incessant political campaigns, failed to lift China into the first rank of nations. More to the point, they failed to elevate him to the status of international Hegemon, although they did keep him in power in China.
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By all reasonable standards of historical judgment, Mao Zedong must be counted among the half-dozen most important political actors in modern world history. Mao was the acknowledged leader of the greatest and most popular of modern revolutions. And almost unique among revolutionary leaders, he remained the dominant figure in the postrevolutionary regime for more than a quarter of a century, presiding over the beginnings of the modern industrial transformation of the world's most populous land. Certainly no one influenced more profoundly, for better or for worse, the lives of more people than did Mao Zedong by virtue of his person, his power, his policies, and his thought.
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Mao Zedong died at the age of 82, on September 9, 1976 at 10 minutes past midnight in Beijing. He died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. Mao had been in poor health for several years and had declined visibly for some months prior to his death. His body lay in state at the Great Hall of the People. A memorial service was held in Tiananmen Square on September 18, 1976. There was a three minute silence observed during this service.
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