Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung: The Period of the War of Resistance Against Japan

Mao Tse-tung founded the People's Republic of China in 1949. He had also been one of the founders of the Chinese Communist party in 1921, and he is regarded, along with Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin, as one of the three great theorists of Marxian communism. Mao Tse-tung was born on Dec. 26, 1893, into a well-to-do peasant family in Shao-shan, Hunan province. As a Marxist thinker and the leader of a socialist state, Mao gave theoretical legitimacy to the continuation of class struggle in the socialist and communist stages of development. He stressed the importance of land redistribution for the benefit of the rural peasantry, and his theories have strongly influenced the non-industrialized Third World.