Mao's Life

After Chiang Kai-shek started the total civil war in the summer of 1946, Mao Zedong worked with Zhu De and Zhou Enlai in directing the People's Liberation Army to employ active defense and concentrate a superior force to destroy the enemy forces one by one. Fighting the Kuomintang forces in one place after another in northern Shaanxi together with Zhou Enlai and Ren Bishi, Mao Zedong directed the northwest theatre of war and the War of Liberation throughout the country from March 1947 through March 1948. In the summer of 1947, the PLA shifted from the strategic defensive to the strategic offensive. Under the leadership of the Party Central Committee headed by Mao Zedong, the PLA overthrew the Kuomintang government after launching the three campaigns of Liaoxi-Shenyang, Huai-Hai and Beiping-Tianjin and carrying out operations after crossing the Yangtze River in April 1949. In March 1949, Mao Zedong chaired the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh CPC Central Committee and delivered an important report. The Session decided to shift the focus of the Party's work from rural to urban areas, defined the basic policies the Party should adopt after the countrywide victory and called on the whole Party to remain modest, prudent and free from arrogance and rashness in its style of work and to preserve the style of plain living and hard work. On July 1 of the same year, Mao Zedong published "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship," defining the nature of the political system of the People's Republic and its basic domestic and foreign policies.

On October 1, 1949, the People's Republic of China was proclaimed, and Mao Zedong was elected Chairman of the Central People's Government. In June 1950, he presided over the Third Plenary Session of the Seventh CPC Central Committee and set forth the general task of working for a fundamental turn for the better in the nation's financial and economic situation. In October of the same year, in response to the US military invasion of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the US threat to the security of Northeast China, the CPC Central Committee headed by Mao Zedong decided to launch the war to resist US aggression and aid Korea. From 1950 through 1952, China under Mao Zedong's leadership carried out the agrarian reform, the suppression of counterrevolutionaries and other democratic reforms.