Mao Zedong was raised in the small southeastern Chinese province of Hunan. He was the fourth child and the youngest son. Although his parents were considered peasants, his father owned several acres. This was more than the majority of the other peasants in the area owned, making his family more distinguished. Most of Mao's early years were spent helping around his parents' farm once he was old enough to take on easy tasks. Despite their higher status based on their large property, they were not immune to the problems that arose in agrarian regions. In 1910, a famine plagued Hunan. During this time, Mao Zedong and his family would have felt the same poverty and pains as the other local peasants.

In an act of rebellion against the familial expectations of him, Mao left home and moved to Changsha, the capital of the province of Hunan, around 1910. As the nation began to be re-shaped, Mao became a librarian and then a school principal. During this time, he was a prolific reader, focusing on books about power, government, and history. His reading included many works on Chinese literature and history, as well as The Communist Manifesto

On October 10, 1911, an anti-monarchical Wuchang Uprising against the Qing dynasty began. Wuchang is the capital of Hubei Province. Many soldiers from the Eighth Engineer Battalion of the New Army there were members of the revolutionary Progressive Society, which were closely linked to the Revolutionary Alliance led by Sun Yat-Sen. They quickly gained control of the entire city and sparked a wave of anti-Manchu uprisings in neighboring cities. Within just two weeks, the rebellion had spread to Changsha. When November ended, fifteen out of China's eighteen provinces had defected from Qing authority. News of these transformative events galvanized Mao's evolution from a patriotic supporter of the Chinese monarchy to an anti-monarchical revolutionary. Even before he received news of the Wuchang Uprising, he had decided to cut off the long pigtail that all Chinese men were required to wear as a sign of submission and loyalty to the Manchus. As the conflict between the revolutionaries and Qing monarchy escalated, Mao decided to join the revolutionary Hunan army as it made plans to invade the north.

Mao did not experience significant military action during the six months he spent as a soldier. He nevertheless obtained a first-hand experience of military life. The educator that Mao held in the highest regard was Yang Changji. In August 1919, Mao embarked on his first train ride to Beijing (from the neighboring city of Wuhan) with twenty-five of his comrades. There, Yang Changji agreed to accommodate Mao and three of his comrades in his home. Mao had met his teacher's daughter Yang Kaihui before, as a young girl. She was now a young woman, and Mao was awestruck by her beauty. Kaihui had heard her father proclaim Mao's intelligence and accomplishments before and was similarly smitten.

Mao's return to Changsha coincided with the anti-imperialist May Fourth Movement in Beijing. On May 4th, 1919, vigorous student protests began after the Chinese government failed to defend its national interests in light of the terms drawn by the Treaty of Versailles. Germany had surrendered the port of Qingdao and the surrounding Jiaozhou Bay after the Siege of Tsingtao, and Japan was determined to gain control of the former German colony. England, Italy, and France had benefited from an allying with Japan during World War I and were relying on Japan to cooperate in an emerging war against Soviet Russia and thus supported Japan's bid for control over these areas

On October 10, 1921, Mao was elected as the secretary as the Hunan committee of the CCP. When the Special Xiang District Committee formed under the dictate of the CCP's Central Bureau in May 1922, Mao was elected as secretary. He was also the head of the Socialist Youth League of Changsha's Executive Committee. He had already been serving as the general manager of the Self-Study University he founded in Changsha (after resigning from his headmaster position at the primary school he was working at) by August that year. He was beginning to monopolize the power of this underground Bolshevik movement and would exert an unparalleled influence over the newly recruited communists and socialists within the region.

As the CCP was in dire straits, it was Mao who concluded the communists would only secure power in China if it could brandish its own military force. His famed quote endures: "We must know that political power is obtained from the barrel of the gun." He recommended a strategic retreat to buy enough time to train an army of paupers, peasants, workers, and the landless. After Chen Duxiu sunk into depression when the KMT executed his eldest son, Qu Qiubai replaced him as the leader of the CCP. He agreed with Mao's suggestion that the CCP retreat into the mountains. On July 15 1927, there would be little choice: all communists were expelled from the KMT. The communists attempted to battle the KMT soldiers with the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army of China (the "Red Army"), but they were forced to accept defeat by September 15. They headed east, to the Jinggang Mountains in Jiangxi. He would never see his wife Kaihui again. She was pressured by a KMT commander to renounce her husband publicly. When she refused, she was sentenced to death on November 14, 1930.

He had married a local interpreter, He Zizhen, only four months after leaving his wife and three sons. Like Kaihui, who had heard of Mao's remarriage two years before her execution, Zizhen (who was only eighteen when she first met Mao) would eventually learn her husband was incapable of fidelity.

In May 1928, the number of communist fighters in Jinggang had grown to eighteen thousand. Mao took to the task of organizing them into disciplined soldiers. To obtain the resources needed to supply them with clothing, food, medicine, and weapons, he decided to implement a radical land redistribution scheme. He confiscated all the lands that belonged to landlords and peasants and Jinggang and then redistributed it to the rural villagers who supported the communist regime. Those who received the land were compelled to work on it. The Red Army soldiers gained more military experience as they took down the local landlords and gentry that opposed the policy.

Chiang deemed the communists to be a greater threat than the encroaching Japanese. In the years between 1930 and 1934, he would rally no less than five different military encirclement campaigns with the aim of eradicating the pesky communists once and for all. In his fifth encirclement campaign, he managed to deliver a devastating blow to the communist forces by personally mobilizing 700,000 of his men and forming a series of fortifications (in the form of cement blockhouses) around communist positions.

The communists were forced to flee for their lives in October. At the beginning of the march, 86,000 male and female communists in Jiangxi (soldiers and administrative personnel) broke through the weakest points of the KMT encirclement and headed towards the west. Zizhen accompanied Mao, but they had to leave their newborn son Anhong with Zizhen's sister He Yi. They would never see him again.

The CCP was happy to capitalize on the compelling heroism that was attributed to the Long March. News of the communists' epic struggle to resist the KMT inspired many young Chinese men and women to travel to Shaanxi to enlist in Mao's Red Army. When the Japanese withdrew from China after their defeat in World War II (1939-45) to the United States, the CCP confronted the KMT once again. In 1949, the KMT was decisively defeated. Mao heralded the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949.

His early years at the helm of the country were a great success. During this time, the CCP steered the country towards economic growth and greater political strength. After years of military rule under the warlords, the KMT army, and the Red Army, the people of China could finally live under civilian rule. Mao's effective leadership of the CCP during the early years was critical in establishing widespread confidence in its ability to govern the nation.

In October 1950, the People's Liberation Army troops participated in the Korean War against the forces of the UN. The "Resist America, aid Korea" campaign was effective in stirring patriotism across the nation, besides restoring confidence in the nation's military capacities after decades of military humiliation by the foreign imperialists. Troops were also dispatched to Tibet during this time after the Tibetans rebelled against the consolidation of Chinese rule. Meanwhile, the CCP consolidated their power within the country by authorizing police action against political adversaries, anti-communists, bandits, and groups of people who opposed the CCP's political dominance.

The early years of the People's Republic of China were nevertheless not free from conflict and strife. The Suppression of Counter-revolutionaries campaign inflicted violence on the former KMT leaders, the heads of secret societies, religious, and religious authorities. The Three-Antis Campaign decimated the communists who had been perceived as fraternizing too closely with the nation's capitalists. The capitalists themselves were subjected to The Five-Antis Campaign, which compelled obedience to the CCP via charges of tax evasion, bribery, theft of state property and dishonesty when entering into contractual obligations with the government contracts.

In 1953, Mao launched his First Five-Year Plan to promote the nation's rapid industrialization. This plan was based on the Soviet experience; the CCP benefited from financial assistance and technical expertise on how to plan and execute ambitious goals while remaining true to Stalinist economic priorities.

When Mao introduced the Hundred Flowers Campaign in 1956 ("Let a hundred flowers blossom, a hundred schools of thought contend," the objective was help convert the nation's intellectuals to communism. Instead, they began to critique the principles of communism, the CCP, and the Chinese government. They would pay dearly for openly voicing their dissent when Mao retaliated with a vicious Anti-rightist Campaign.