7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7School in Changsha in 1918. He then went to Peking (later
Beijing) University, where he became embroiled in the
revolutionary May Fourth Movement in 1919. This move-
ment marked the decisive turn in Chinese revolutionary
thought in favor of Marxist Communism as a solution to
China’s problems.
In 1921 Mao helped found the Chinese Communist
Party. Two years later, when the Communists forged an alli-
ance with Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist party, the Kuomintang,
he left work to become a full-time revolutionary. It was at
this time that Mao discovered the great potential of the
peasant class for making revolution. This realization led
him to the brilliant strategy he used to win control of China:
gain control of the countryside and encircle the cities.
The Communists and the Nationalists coexisted in an
uneasy relationship until the end of World War II. The
Nationalist leader after 1925 was Chiang Kai-shek, who
was determined to rule China. He never trusted the
Communists, and at times he persecuted them. In October
1927 Mao led a few hundred peasants to a base in the Jinggang
Mountains, on the Jiangxi-Hunan border, and embarked
on a new type of revolutionary warfare in the countryside
in which the Red Army would play the central role.
Road to the People’s Republic of China
Mao Zedong’s 22 years in the wilderness can be divided
into four phases. The first of these is the initial three years
when Mao and Zhu De, the commander in chief of the
army, successfully developed the tactics of guerrilla war-
fare from base areas in the countryside.
The second phase (the Ziangxi period) centres on the
founding in November 1931 of the Chinese Soviet Republic
in a portion of Jiangxi Province, with Mao as chairman.
The Red Army, grown to a strength of some 200,000