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1-9 of 9
- Art Director
Tse-tung Mao, along with Yat-sen Sun and Kai-Shek Chiang, was one of the most important figures to modern Chinese history. Born to a peasant family--his father was a farmer--in Shaoshan, China, on December 26, 1893, Mao was raised in the grinding poverty of rural Hunan province, where he developed a hatred of the Imperial Chinese government while still a boy. In 1911 Mao left school to join the revolution against Manchu rule. In the years that followed, Mao grew increasingly more radical, and in 1921 became one of the founding members of the Chinese Communist Party. When a power struggle between the Communists and Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists erupted into open warfare in 1927, Mao proclaimed "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" and eagerly joined the fight. Badly outnumbered by Chaing's army, the Communists were slowly driven out of eastern China and, on the brink of defeat, Mao led a retreat to the mountains of the northwest in 1934, a 6,000-mile trek that became known as "The Long March". Mao emerged as one of the top field commanders and became the chairman of the Chinese People's Communist Party.
After forming a new headquarters at Yenan, Mao remodeled the shattered Red Army into a powerful guerrilla force. By 1937 they were fighting the invading Japanese army from their bases in Manchuria. Striking a truce with the Nationalists, the Communists formed an uneasy alliance with Chaing's army to fight the invading Japanese. After the defeat of Japan in World War II in 1945, Mao's forces soon renewed their struggle against the Nationalists for control of China. By striking where Chiang was weak and cultivating the support of the rural peasants, the Communists were able to negate the Nationalist army's overwhelming superiority in men and materials, and by late 1948 the tide had turned against Chiang. In January 1949 Peking fell to the Red Army, forcing Chaing to flee into exile in Taiwan. In October, 1949 Canton, the last Nationalist stronghold, surrendered and on December 7, 1949, the last Nationalists fled to Taiwan, leaving Mao as the undisputed leader of the newly formed People's Republic of China.
Mao established control on China with a "rule of law" similar to the one in the Soviet Union and began to rebuild the war-torn country. A cunning, intelligent and frequently ruthless leader, Mao slowly helped China grow to become a world power. Relations with the US remained cold, and Mao sent Chinese "volunteers"--who were actually regular troops of the Chinese army--to fight with his Communist allies in North Korea in the early 1950s when they were on the verge of defeat after having initially invaded South Korea. Relations remained cold after China tested its first nuclear weapon in the late 1950s. Mao's so-called "five-year plans" to rebuild the farming and industrial economy cost the lives of millions of peasants and political opponents who spoke out against his policies. As relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated in the late 1960s, relations with the US slowly improved and in 1972 the US and China officially established diplomatic relations, with the US officially recognizing the People's Republic of China.
As he got older, Mao's legendary large appetite resulted in his being grossly overweight by age 60, and his being a heavy smoker also contributed to his growing health problems, but he still remained in firm control of his country. Mao died in 1976 at age 82.- Director
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Han Hsiang Li was born on 7 March 1926 in Jinxi, China. He was a director and writer, known for The Love Eterne (1963), Qian Long xia Yangzhou (1978) and Ti Ying (1971). He died on 17 December 1996 in Peking, China.- Deng Xiaoping was born on 22 August 1904 in Guang'an, Sichuan, China. He was married to Zhuo Lin, Zhang Xiyuan and Jin Weiying (Ah Jin). He died on 19 February 1997 in Peking, China.
- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Dan Zhao was born on 27 June 1915 in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China. He was an actor and director, known for Crows and Sparrows (1949), Wei hai zi men zhu fu (1953) and Shi zi jie tou (1937). He died on 10 October 1980 in Peking, China.- Yat-sen Sun was born on November 12, 1866 in Hsiang-shan, Kwangtung Province, China. He was married to Ching-Ling Soong and Lu Mu-chen. He died on March 12, 1925 in Peking, China.
Sun was survived by his first and second wives, a daughter, and a son, Sun Fo. His first marriage, at the age of 18, to Lu Mu-chen (1867-1952) had been traditionally arranged. She was the mother of his three children. The elder of their two daughters, Chin-yen, died in 1913. Sun's second marriage, to Soong Ch'ing-ling, in Tokyo on 25 October 1914 was controversial because he and his first wife had not been divorced. Sun never divorced his first wife, nonetheless, Soong Ch'ing-ling remained Sun's constant companion until the end of his life. - Philippe Daudy was born on 17 June 1925 in Paris, France. He died on 12 March 1994 in Peking, China.
- Teh Chu was born on 18 December 1886 in I-lung, Szechwan Province, China. He died on 6 July 1976 in Peking, China.
- En-lai Chou (Enlai Zhou) is wildly recognized as the most influential diplomat in the history of Communist China, but less commonly known as the right-hand man of Zedong Mao.
He was born in rural Hwaian, China, in 1898 (the exact date is unknown). The son of an imperial government bureaucrat, Chou was disillusioned by the Manchu court's concessions to the West and became a militant nationalist. He joined the socialist movement in 1917 while he was a student studying in Japan. Two years later, upon his return to China, he was arrested for being a leftist agitator. Upon his release in 1920 he fled to France, where he became an active corresponding member of the newly founded Communist Party. After finishing his Marxist studies, Chou went back to China in 1922 to join Yat-sen Sun, then cooperating with the Communists.
In 1924 he taught at Whampoa Military Academy, which was then under Communist control. In 1927, two years after Sun's death, fighting broke out between the Communist rebels and Nationalist troops loyal to Kuomintang leader Kai-Shek Chiang in Shanghai. During that time Chou became one of the top commanders of the Chinese People's Red Army, and by 1931 he became second-in-command with the rank of general alongside Mao. Chou played a key part in the Red Army's survival and took part in the "Long March" of 1934 when the Red Army, after suffering a string of defeats at the hands of the Nationalists, retreated across the country to rebuild their shattered forces. In 1937, after Japan invaded China from occupied Manchuria, Chou negotiated a truce between the warring Chinese armies to combat the Japanese. Throught the Second World War in China (1937-1945) Chou served as the Communists' chief liaison with Chiang Kai-shek, an assignment that signaled his transition from field commander to diplomat. As a result of his new role, Chou helped plan the overall strategy during the second civil war that broke out once again between the Communists and Nationalists after the defeat of Japan in late 1945, but he personally did not lead troops into combat again, for that was now solely Mao's job.
Following the Communist victory that resulted in the formation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Chou was named premier and foreign minister. During his long political career, Chou played an important role in the negotiations that ended the Korean War (1950-1953)--in which China sent troops to fight alongside the Communist North Korean army--as well as the French war in Indochina (1946-1954), the US involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s and the normalization of relations with the US in 1972. En-lai Chou died while in office in Peking (Bejing) from cancer on January 8, 1976, at the age of 77 or 78, second only to Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong in the Communist hierarchy, who ironically later died in September that same year. - Li Shuxian was born on 4 September 1924 in China. She was married to Puyi. She died on 10 June 1997 in Peking, China.