Mao Zedong

American  

[mou zuh-doong, dzuh-, mou zuh-dawng] / ˈmaʊ zəˈdʊŋ, dzə-, ˈmaʊ ˈzʌˈdɔŋ /

Wade-Giles, Mao Tse-tung

noun

1. 1893–1976, Chinese Communist leader: chairman of the People's Republic of China 1949–59; chairman of the Chinese Communist Party 1943–76.

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Mao Zedong Cultural  

1. A Chinese revolutionary leader of the twentieth century. He led an army of workers and peasants on the Long March in the 1920s and used guerrilla warfare techniques successfully on both the Japanese invaders and the forces of the Chinese government under Chiang Kai-shek. In 1949, his armies took over the country and established the People's Republic of China. Mao continued as chairman of China's Communist party and as premier. His “Little Red Book,” Quotations from Chairman Mao, was standard reading for schoolchildren of the country. Toward the end of his life, he brought about the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, in which all capitalist or elitist culture was to be purged. Mao died in 1976.

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Example Sentences

They are Mao Zedong, the long-deceased dictator who founded the People's Republic of China, and presided over some of the most traumatic chapters in China's recent history.

From BBC • Apr. 19, 2026

China’s Mao Zedong forced party officials to give self-corrective monologues in which they asked forgiveness for their own stupidity and failing to follow his wise leadership.

From Salon • Mar. 19, 2026

Mao Zedong, the founder of communist China, regularly purged his top lieutenants, sometimes more than once, after bringing them back.

From BBC • Mar. 13, 2026

Mr. Bird also discusses land redistribution, from the incremental version favored by Henry George, the 19th-century American political economist, to the violent reforms implemented by Mao Zedong in China.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 31, 2025

Nor could any authority with powers short of Mao Zedong have stopped them.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker