Mao Zedong, also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which he led as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until his death in 1976. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, his theories, military strategies, and political policies are collectively known as Maoism.
Zhou Enlai was a Chinese statesman and military officer who served as the first premier of the People's Republic of China from 1 October 1949 until his death on 8 January 1976. Zhou served under Chairman Mao Zedong and helped the Communist Party rise to power, later helping consolidate its control, form its foreign policy, and develop the Chinese economy.
Jiang Qing, also known as Madame Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary, actress, and major political figure during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). She was the fourth wife of Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Communist Party and Paramount leader of China. She used the stage name Lan Ping (藍蘋) during her acting career, and was known by many other names. She married Mao in Yan'an in November 1938 and served as the inaugural "First Lady" of the People's Republic of China. Jiang was best known for playing a major role in the Cultural Revolution and for forming the radical political alliance known as the "Gang of Four". Jiang served as Mao's personal secretary in the 1940s and was head of the Film Section of the Communist Party's Propaganda Department in the 1950s. She served as an important emissary for Mao in the early stages of the Cultural Revolution. In 1966, she was appointed deputy director of the Central Cultural Revolution Group. She collaborated with Lin Biao to advance Mao's unique brand of Communist ideology as well as Mao's cult of personality. At the height of the Cultural Revolution, Jiang held significant influence in the affairs of state, particularly in the realm of culture and the arts, and was idolized in propaganda posters as the "Great Flagbearer of the Proletarian Revolution". In 1969, Jiang gained a seat on the Politburo. Before Mao's death, the Gang of Four controlled many of China's political institutions, including the media and propaganda. However, Jiang, deriving most of her political legitimacy from Mao, often found herself at odds with other top leaders. Mao's death in 1976 dealt a significant blow to Jiang's political fortunes. She was arrested in October 1976 by Hua Guofeng and his allies, and was subsequently condemned by party authorities. Since then, Jiang has been officially branded as having been part of the "Lin Biao and Jiang Qing Counter-Revolutionary Cliques" (林彪江青反革命集团), to which most of the blame for the damage and devastation caused by the Cultural Revolution was assigned. Though she was initially sentenced to death, her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1983. After being released for medical treatment, Jiang died by suicide in May 1991.
The time period in China from the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 until Mao's death in 1976 is commonly known as Maoist China and Red China. The history of the People's Republic of China is often divided distinctly by historians into the Mao era and the post-Mao era. The country's Mao era lasted from the founding of the People's Republic on 1 October 1949 to Deng Xiaoping's consolidation of power and policy reversal at the Third Plenum of the 11th Party Congress on 22 December 1978. The Mao era focuses on Mao Zedong's social movements from the early 1950s on, including land reform, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
Wang Hongwen was a Chinese labour activist and politician who spent most of his career in Shanghai. He was an important political figure during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). He was the youngest member of the political clique called the "Gang of Four." During the Cultural Revolution, Wang rose from a member of the working class to become one of the foremost members of national leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.
Rosamond Soong Ch'ing-ling was a Chinese political figure. As the third wife of Sun Yat-sen, then Premier of the Kuomintang and President of the Republic of China, she was often referred to as Madame Sun Yat-sen. She was a member of the Soong family and, together with her siblings, played a prominent role in China's politics prior to and after 1949.
Peng Dehuai was a prominent Chinese Communist military leader, who served as China's Defense Minister from 1954 to 1959. Peng was born into a poor peasant family, and received several years of primary education before his family's poverty forced him to suspend his education at the age of ten, and to work for several years as a manual laborer. When he was sixteen, Peng became a professional soldier. Over the next ten years Peng served in the armies of several Hunan-based warlord armies, raising himself from the rank of private second class to major. In 1926, Peng's forces joined the Kuomintang, and Peng was first introduced to communism. Peng participated in the Northern Expedition, and supported Wang Jingwei's attempt to form a left-leaning Kuomintang government based in Wuhan. After Wang was defeated, Peng briefly rejoined Chiang Kai-shek's forces before joining the Chinese Communist Party, allying himself with Mao Zedong and Zhu De.
Li Xiannian was a Chinese Communist military and political leader, President of the People's Republic of China from 1983 to 1988 under Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping and then Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 1988 until his death. He was a full member of the Politburo from 1956 to 1987, and of its Standing Committee from 1977 to 1987.
Patrick Jay Hurley was an American politician and diplomat. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1929 to 1933, but is best remembered for being Ambassador to China in 1945, during which he was instrumental in getting Joseph Stilwell recalled from China and replaced with the more diplomatic General Albert Coady Wedemeyer. A man of humble origins, Hurley's lack of what was considered to be a proper ambassadorial demeanor and mode of social interaction made professional diplomats scornful of him. He came to share pre-eminent army strategist Wedemeyer's view that the Chinese Communists could be defeated and America ought to commit to doing so even if it meant backing the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek to the hilt. Frustrated, Hurley resigned as Ambassador to China in 1945, publicised his concerns about high-ranking members of the State Department, and alleged they believed that the Chinese Communists were not totalitarians and that America's priority was to avoid allying with a losing side in the civil war.
Sidney Shapiro was an American-born Chinese lawyer, translator, actor and writer who lived in China from 1947 to 2014. He lived in Beijing for more than 50 years and eventually became a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. He was one of very few naturalized citizens of the PRC.
Israel Epstein was a Polish-born Chinese journalist and author. He was one of the few foreign-born Chinese citizens of non-Chinese origin to become a member of the Chinese Communist Party.
Mao: The Unknown Story is a 2005 biography of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong (1893–1976) written by the husband-and-wife team of writers Jung Chang and historian Jon Halliday who detail Mao's early life; his introduction into the Chinese Communist Party and his political career. The book summarizes Mao's transition from a rebel against the autocratic Kuomintang government to the totalitarian dictator over the People's Republic of China. Chang and Halliday heavily cover Mao's role in the planning and execution of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. In this capacity Mao is responsible for an unprecedented death toll during peacetime ranging from 40 to 70 million people.
The Ministry of Public Security Qincheng Prison is a maximum-security prison located in the Changping District, Beijing in the People's Republic of China, near Xiaotangshan. The prison was built in 1958 with aid from the Soviet Union and is the only prison belonging to China's Ministry of Public Security. The Ministry of Justice operates other non-military prisons.
Ji Chaozhu was a Chinese diplomat who held a number of important positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China (PRC), most notably as English interpreter for Chairman Mao Zedong, Premier Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping; later as Ambassador to the Court of St. James's ; and lastly as an Under-secretary General of the United Nations, a post from which he retired in 1996. He played a central role in the talks leading up to and during President Richard M. Nixon's historic 1972 visit to China.
Egg on Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship is the third book by Chinese Canadian author Denise Chong. Her first publication in over a decade, it was released by Random House Canada on September 29, 2009.
Mao Zuquan was a Chinese politician of the Republic of China (1912–49), before the Republic of China government relocated to the island of Taiwan in 1949.
Crimes against humanity under communist regimes occurred throughout the 20th century, including forced deportations, massacres, torture, forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, terror, ethnic cleansing, enslavement and the deliberate starvation of people i.e. during the Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward. Additional events included the use of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide. Such events have been described as crimes against humanity.
Richard Frey, also known by his Chinese name Fu Lai, was a Chinese military physician and politician originally from Austria. He fled due to the Second World War from Austria to China and spent his entire life in his adopted country. Because of his outstanding contributions to national independence, national liberation and to build China's land, he has gained a high reputation in China.
The Far East Reporter was a magazine or newsletter published in New York City on an irregular schedule from 1953 to 1989 by Maud Russell. It took the form of pamphlets that mainly talked sympathetically about China under Mao Zedong.
Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, commonly abbreviated outside China as Xi Jinping Thought is a set of policies and ideas derived from the writings and speeches of Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping. It was first officially mentioned at the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2017, in which it was incorporated into the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party. At the First Session of the Thirteenth National People's Congress on 11 March 2018, the preamble of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China was amended to mention Xi Jinping Thought.
