Mao Zedong

Dictator of China (Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party)
Lived: 1893-1976

§ Background:
Born of fairly well-to-do peasant stock in Hunan, Mao was trained in Chinese classics and received a modern education. Observing the oppressive social conditions besetting China, Mao became one of the original members of the Chinese Communist Party, where he worked to recruit peasants to the new party. The party was then engaged in a running guerilla war with Chaing Kai-shek, ruler of "Nationalist" China.
§ Now a commander of one of the People's armies, Mao found himself in danger of encirclement and destruction. He famously led his ragtag force of 90,000 men, women and children on the grueling "Long March," a 6,000 mile trek through some of the most unpleasant terrain China has to offer. He arrived at the city of Yan'an having lost more than half of his force, but emerging as the undisputed leader of the Chinese Communist party.
§ During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45), Mao fought both the Chinese Nationalist forces and the Japanese until the United States forced Japan's surrender in 1945. With the Japanese now out of the way, the communists concentrated their efforts against the Nationalists, and by 1949 they drove Chaing's forces off the mainland to the island province of Taiwan.
§ In total control of (mainland) China, Mao sought to keep his people imbued with revolutionary vigor, and in 1958 he instituted his "Great Leap Forward." This piece of political thinking resulted in the deaths of approximately twenty million Chinese, and easily set back China's development by 30 years. Not yet satisfied, in 1966 Mao and his wife initiated the "Cultural Revolution," a ten-year period in which China's artists, intellectuals, moderate politicians and other unenlightened or unlucky folk were imprisoned and killed or sent out to work the fields until they died or were judged "reeducated" by the workers. This adventure in social engineering killed perhaps one million people and further delayed China's emergence as a great world power.
§ Mao died in 1976, beloved by his people. To summarize him as a man, it could be said that Mao was a great war leader, an exceptional political infighter, and an unbelievably brutal dictator.