In this analytical history of the rise to power of Mao Zedong (then Romanised as Mao Tse-tung), the New Statesman’s then-Asia correspondent Dorothy Woodman writes that the future Chinese leader “has never known any other life than that of patient, confident struggle”. By January 1949, the communists in China were victorious over Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist followers, a struggle that had run since 1927. Only 22 years later was “the outside world”, Woodman writes, beginning to understand how complex that struggle was. She determines that Mao’s success as a revolutionary leader was thanks to two main qualities: his understanding of peasant communities, from his own farm upbringing, and his gifts as an intellectual, having spent time studying Marxist principles. “The revolution which began in 1911 enters on its second phase in 1949,” writes Woodman. The founding of the People’s Republic of China was formerly proclaimed on 1 October 1949.
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