Born in Shaoshan, Hunan in 1893, Mao Zedong was a poet, philosopher and revolutionary who led a large percentage of humanity for 32 years.

Mao Zedong studied at Beijing University, where he developed a passion for politics. He then specialized in Marxism, attending the first session of the National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and became its Chairman from 1943 to 1975.

In 1927 he led an army in Changsha, and spent the next 20 years on and off engaged in guerilla warfare against warlords, the Kuomintang, and the Japanese. This took him all over China, with the Long March to escape the KMT from Jiangxi to Shaanxi via the mountains of Sichuan.

Mao Zedong eventually moved away from guerilla warfare with his triumph over the KMT in 1949, and focused on running the newly formed People's Republic of China. He enacted sweeping reforms ranging from land and property ownership to education and marriage. Whilst these benefited the peasant and lower classes, they also led to the deaths of many of the upper and middle classes. He persecuted reactionaries with several other campaigns throughout his rule.

In 1958, he launched the Great Leap Forward, an initiative to collectivise and industrialise the nation that led to a great famine and millions of deaths. In 1959, Mao Zedong stepped down as Chairman of the PRC.

His final grand act was the Cultural Revolution, which plunged China into chaos for at least a decade. Schools closed, children renounced parents and teachers, cultural heritage was destroyed and millions of city-dwellers were sent to the countryside to be re-educated by peasants, causing hardship for both. Although Mao Zedong declare it over in 1969, official history puts the end of the Cultural Revolution with Mao's death in 1976.

Mao's effect on China is often deserving of his cult status: his politics unified and modernised a war-torn, divided, colonised and backward country, instilling it with new pride and hope and made huge progress in education, the equality of the sexes and of society. However, his policies also led to many millions of deaths and terrible social unrest. He was in the end just another fallible human being.