Mao's Life

Going to extremes in his judgment of the class struggle situation in China in 1966, Mao Zedong launched the "cultural revolution." Manipulated by the two counterrevolutionary cliques under Lin Biao and Jiang Qing, the movement became especially rampant and went beyond Mao Zedong's expectation and control so that it lasted for ten years and incurred staggering damage and losses in many aspects of China. During the "cultural revolution," Mao Zedong did stop and correct a number of specific mistakes. He led the struggle to smash the Lin Biao counterrevolutionary clique and foiled the attempt of Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao and others to usurp the supreme power of China. In foreign policy, he set forth the "three worlds" strategy and the important principle that China would never seek hegemony, began to enter a new phase in foreign work and created favorable international conditions for China's modernization drive. Mao Zedong died in Beijing on September 9, 1976.

It is true that Mao Zedong made gross mistakes in his later years, but when his life is judged as a whole, his indisputable contributions to the Chinese revolution far outweigh his mistakes, and his merits are primary and his errors secondary. He is still held in great respect by the Chinese people. The CPC gave an all-round evaluation of all his revolutionary activities and thought in a resolution adopted by its Central Committee five years after his death. Mao Zedong Thought, the development of Marxism in China, is still the guiding ideology of the CPC. Mao Zedong's main works are included in the Selected Works of Mao Zedong (in four volumes) and Collected Works of Mao Zedong (in eight volumes).