We can say from Chairman Mao Tse-tung's biography that he was born on December 26, 1893, opening his eyes to an agitated world scorched by the flames of war; the son of peasants, he was seven years old when "Boxer Rebellions" began; a student at a Teachers' Training College, he was in his eighteenth year when the empire collapsed and he enlisted himself as a soldier, later to become a great organizer of peasants and of the youth in Hunan, his native province. Founder of the Communist Party and of the Red Army of workers and peasants, he established the path of surrounding the cities from the countryside developing People's War as the military theory of the proletariat. He was the theoretician of New Democracy and founder of the People's Republic; a promoter of the Great Leap Forward and of the development of socialism; the leader of the struggle against the contemporary revisionism of Khrushchev and his henchmen, leader and head of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. These are landmarks of a life devoted thoroughly and solely to the revolution. The proletariat has seen three gigantic triumphs in this century: Two of them belong to Chairman Mao, and if one is glory enough, two are even more.
From Fundamental Documents of the Communist Party of Peru
Autobiographical notes from Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China
Photographs and paintings