Mao Zedong

Where they went

7 related events

1. 1
   1921Founding of the Chinese Communist Partyparticipant

   In July 1921 thirteen delegates met in the French Concession of Shanghai and, with Comintern support, founded the Chinese Communist Party, choosing Chen Duxiu as its leader.

2. 2
   1927Shanghai Coup and the Nanjing National Governmentrelated figure

   On 12 April 1927, in the middle of the Northern Expedition, Chiang Kai-shek violently purged Communists and labour organizations in Shanghai, and on 18 April set up a National Government in Nanjing. The First United Front was broken.

3. 3
   1934 – 1935Long Marchcommander

   Driven from its base at Ruijin in Jiangxi by Nationalist encirclement campaigns, the Communist Red Army walked about 12,000 km over a year from October 1934 to northern Shaanxi; along the way Mao Zedong took the leadership.

4. 1937 – 1945Second Sino-Japanese Warcommander

   A clash at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beiping on 7 July 1937 became the occasion for Japan’s full-scale invasion of China. China resisted for eight years through the United Front; from 1941 the war merged with the Pacific War, ending with Japan’s surrender in 1945.

5. 4
   1937 – 1941Second United Frontleader

   When the war with Japan broke out, the Nationalists and Communists joined hands again in September 1937 to form an anti-Japanese national united front; the Red Army was reorganized as the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army of the National Revolutionary Army.

6. 5
   1946 – 1949Chinese Civil Warcommander

   After Japan’s surrender, full-scale civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists resumed in 1946. Having won over the peasants through land reform, the Communists triumphed in three great campaigns in 1948–1949, and the Nationalist government moved to Taiwan.

7. 6
   1972Nixon’s Visit to Chinarelated figure

   US President Nixon visited Beijing, met Mao Zedong and issued the Shanghai Communiqué. Sino-American rapprochement ushered the Cold War into an era of détente.

Related works

People who appear alongside

• Chiang Kai-shek1887 – 1975

  Leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party who unified China through the Northern Expedition and led the Nanjing government through the war with Japan; after losing the civil war he moved to Taiwan and ruled the Republic of China there

• Zhou Enlai1898 – 1976

  First premier of the People’s Republic of China (1949–1976), long in charge of diplomacy, who arranged Nixon’s 1972 visit

• Chen Duxiu1879 – 1942

  Founder of the magazine New Youth who led the New Culture Movement under the banner of “democracy and science”, then helped found the Chinese Communist Party and became its first leader

• Konoe Fumimaro1891 – 1945

  Aristocratic prime minister (1937–1939, 1940–1941) who widened the war in China and built the wartime order — the National Mobilization Law, the “New Order in East Asia” and the Imperial Rule Assistance Association; he took his own life when named a war-crimes suspect

• Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa)1901 – 1989

  Emperor of Japan (r. 1926–1989), sovereign during the war with China and the Pacific War, who announced the surrender by radio on 15 August 1945

• Wang Jingwei1883 – 1944

  Veteran Nationalist leader and follower of Sun Yat-sen who collaborated with Japan during the war and set up a client regime in Nanjing in 1940

• Richard Nixon1913 – 1994

  37th US president (1969–1974) who issued the Nixon Doctrine, visited China and pursued détente, and withdrew US troops from Vietnam; he resigned over Watergate

Themes this person appears in

• Republican China and Imperial Japan1912 – 1949

  The age when the Republic of China, born of the 1911 Revolution, passed through warlord division, the May Fourth Movement, the United Front and the Northern Expedition, fought Japan’s invasion and split in civil war — as Japan moved from Taishō democracy through the Manchurian Incident and military coups to the war in China and the Co-Prosperity Sphere, and colonized Korea resisted through the March First Movement and armed struggle

• The Cold War1945 – 1991

  From Yalta to the dissolution of the Soviet Union — half a century in which two blocs led by the US and the USSR divided the world