LAST month, China marked Mao Zedong’s 50th death anniversary. He died on Sept 9, 1976. There is no limit to biographies on him, but one of the most authentic in English — Mao, the People’s Emperor — is by Dick Wilson. As the book rightly claims, Mao was “the most brilliant, the most controversial figure of this [20th] century, and the most enigmatic”.
The ‘ease’ in writing about Mao is the abundance of information about him at every stage of his life. He wanted to go to school, but his martinet father wanted help with farm work. One day, he turned up at a school, but the security guard didn’t let him in because of Mao’s age and grown-up physique. Mao nevertheless made his way in, even though most students were bewildered by his presence amongst them.
One key factor in Mao’s personal life was tragedy, which included the murder of his family members. Among them was his 29-year-old second wife,Yang Kaihui, the mother of their sons Anying, Anqing and Anlong. She was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and faced a firing squad.
A brother, Mao Zemin, was tortured and executed. His youngest brother, Mao Zetan, was a talented man. He didn’t go on the Long March, and, instead, chose to organise guerrilla warfare against the government headed by Chiang Kai-shek. He fell while fighting. Also captured and killed was Mao Zejian, Mao’s adopted sister. Similarly, Mao Chuxiong, the son of Mao Zetan, was murdered and buried secretly.
A lot of Mao’s peculiarities deserve to be noted.
Other than what scholars write about one of the modern era’s great men, a lot of peculiarities about Mao deserve to be noted. For instance, during the historic Long March, he ordered that a word should be displayed or scrawled on the back of everyone, so that the person following him should learn it. It was his way of emphasising the importance of literacy.
The Long March was truly a long march across 10,000 kilometres of plains, mountains and rivers. Those taking part consisted of three armies avoiding a clash with Chiang’s forces. It took them one year (1934-35) to reach Yanan in north-western China. The march began with around nearly 86,000 people, but less than 10,000 reached Yanan; the rest dying from hunger, illness, and exhaustion.
Among the prominent people in the Long March were Zhou Enlai, who later became China’s foreign minister and premier, and Zhu De, who was among the founders of the Red Army and helped overthrow China’s last imperial government.
Some 13 years after reaching Yanan, Mao Zedong felt strong enough to take Beijing, where he officially announced the formation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on Oct 1, 1949. He had entered Beijing on Jan 31, 1949 triumphantly and peacefully, because the Kuomintang’s (KMT) commanding officer, Gen Fu Zuoyi, had agreed to lay down arms. Thus, China’s capital city fell peacefully to Mao after a war that had killed an estimated 4.9 million people.
As the virtual emperor of the world’s greatest country population-wise, Mao was keen to meet another ‘emperor’, who was the head of state of the globe’s biggest country territorially — Joseph Stalin.
Details of their first meeting in Moscow on Dec 16, 1949, show a lack of warmth and hospitality on Stalin’s part. The Chinese guests were made to stay at places that were beneath the dignity of a delegation led by a head of state. Also, Stalin never invited them over to lunch or dinner and confined his hospitality to snacks. Many scholars, however, present an altogether different view and say Stalin couldn’t be so crude and undiplomatic. But the issue was more than diplomatic etiquette. What was bothering Stalin were larger geopolitical issues, for he didn’t feel happy about having a powerful neighbour in Russia’s east, while he faced America and Nato in the west.
Mao was intelligent enough to realise that a delay in conquering the southern part of the country could create complications and encourage non-communist forces to join Chiang’s army. He lost no time, rejected a peace offer, and ordered the Red Army to cross the Yangtze River and capture Nanjing, the KMT capital. Shanghai, the economic hub, fell next. Guangzhou (Canton) followed. A spectacular achievement was the capture of Hainan, an island, by an amphibious invasion wiping out KMT rule from the Chinese mainland. Chiang Kai-shek then fled to Taiwan.
Pakistan is lucky to have China as a neighbour and friend. During my visits to China, I found how the Chinese people remember that it was Pakistan that had brought the US and China together and that president Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao had their historic meeting on Feb 21, 1972, at Mao’s home in Beijing owing to Pakistan’s efforts.
The writer is Dawn’s External Ombudsman and an author.
Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2026
