Labels:text | human face | person | letter OCR: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ Mao Tse-tung Mao Tse-tung One of the founders of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) in 1921, Mao Tse-tung realized that revolution in China depended on mobilizing the peasants rather than the urban working class. Swept to power in 1949, he dominated Chinese politics for the next 20 years. Mao's reputation was based on his genius for guerrilla warfare. Driven out of Jiangxi province in 1934, he led his followers on the 6,000-mile "Long March" to northwest China, where the invasion of the Japanese in 1937 gave him an excuse to train the army that later overwhelmed the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek and establish the People's Republic of China. Mao began by relying on Russia for aid, but in 1958 he split from his Soviet advisers to initiate the "Great Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong), Leap Forward" - a crash-modernization Chinese revolutionary and political program, doomed to failure by its poor leader, 1893-1976 planning. Forced to adopt more moderate policies, his hatred of "revisionist tendencies" led to the Cultural Revolution of 1966, in which his opponents were dismissed. He remained head of the CCP until his death. CHRONOLOGY
