Qin Shi Huang

. Its literary merit is difficult to evaluate in the light of the author's controversial political status, and it is more highly thought of within the PRC than abroad.
. Mao wrote poetry, mainly in the ci and shi forms. He also hired several "doubles" to make it less clear which figure was the emperor. These include:. Late in life, after his assassination had been attempted too often for comfort, he grew paranoid of remaining in one place too long and would hire servants to bear him to different buildings in his palace complex to sleep in each night. He wrote several other philosophical treatises, both before and after he assumed power.

Nevertheless, these trips provided opportunities for assassins, the most famous of whom was Zhang Liang. Mao is the attributed author of Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, known in the West as the "Little Red Book": this is a collection of extracts from his speeches and articles. (It was on one of these tours that he died). Children:. The emperor often took tours to major cities in his empire to inspect the efficiency of the bureaucracy and to symbolize the presence of Qin's prestige. This is a common Chinese naming convention. The myth also claims that this is the reason why the Japanese language is so similar to the Chinese one, and also the fact that the Japanese people look so similiar to the Chinese. Note that the character ze (泽) appears in all of the siblings' given names.

The myth claims that they settled down in one of the Japanese islands. Siblings:. These people never returned, as they knew that if they did return without the "immortality pill", they would surely be executed. Ancestors:. These deeds became a popular story of the emperor sending a Zhifu islander as the religious leader of ships with hundreds of young men and women in search of the pill of immortality. Wives:. Qin Shi Huang was interested in immortality and visited Zhifu Island. This is intended primarily as an anti-counterfeiting measure as Mao's face is widely recognized in contrast to the generic figures that appear in older currency.

The video game Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb sends the archaeologist into the tomb of Qin Shi Huang to recover a secret artifact hidden there. In the mid-1990s, Mao Zedong's picture began to appear on all new renminbi currency from the People’s Republic of China. The Great Wall is actually the symbol for 'help' in his language, and the true reason for its construction was in hope that a passing alien ship would find it and rescue him. At the same time, contemporary views about him in the PRC are affected by bans on works that criticise Mao heavily. In the Area 51 book series, Qin Shi Huang is revealed to be an alien exile stranded on Earth during an interstellar civil war. However, in an era where economic growth has caused corruption to increase in mainland China, there are those who regard the era of Mao as a time of peace and equality. Bob Bainborough portrayed Qin Shi Huang in an episode of History Bites. Mao is also criticized for creating a cult of personality.

The 2002 movie Hero tells the story of assassination attempts of Qin Shi Huang (played by renowned Chinese actor Chen Daoming) by legendary warriors. His actions during the Cultural Revolution regarding the "Four Great Evils" polarizes many Chinese. The time traveller also interferes with a lot of important historical events related to the emperor. In mainland China, many people still consider Mao a hero in the first half of his life, but hold that he was too idealistic after gaining power. In the show, Qin Shi Huang is actually a person named Zhao Pan from the Kingdom of Zhao who takes over the identity of Ying Zheng and rises to power with the help of a time traveller from the 21st century. China has moved sharply away from Maoism since Mao's death, and most people outside of China who describe themselves as Maoist regard the Deng Xiaoping reforms to be a betrayal of Mao's legacy. The 2001 Hong Kong TVB drama serial, A Step into the Past, presents a whole new perspective on the emperor's story, with Raymond Lam Fung as Qin Shi Huang. The ideology of Maoism has influenced many communists around the world, including third world revolutionary movements such as Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, Peru's Shining Path, the revolutionary movement in Nepal, and also the Revolutionary Communist Party in the United States.

The 1999 movie The Emperor and the Assassin focused on the identity of his father, his heartless treatment of his officials, and betrayal by a concubine, paving the way for Jing Ke's assassination attempt. Even among those who find Mao's ideology to be either unworkable or abhorrent, many acknowledge that Mao was a brilliant political and military strategist - Mao's military writings continue to have a large amount of influence both among those who seek to create an insurgency and those who seek to crush one. The 1996 movie The Emperor's Shadow uses the various legends about him to make a political statement on Chinese Communism, and focuses on his relationship with the rebellious musician, Gao Jianli. There is more consensus on Mao's role as a military strategist and tactician during the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War. The 1984 book Bridge of Birds (by Barry Hughart) portrays him as a power-hungry megalomaniac who achieved immortality by having his heart removed by an Old Man of the mountain. Still other critics of Mao fault him for not encouraging birth control and for creating a demographic bump which later Chinese leaders responded to with the one child policy. Jing Ke, in contrast, was a chivalrous warrior and one of his lines was "tens of thousands of injured people are all my comrades." A huge newspaper ad for this play proclaimed: "Invasion will definitely end in defeat; peace must be won at a price." The underdog fighting against the aggression of a cruel and powerful foreign invader and being supported by a sympathetic volunteer from another country was obviously a theme with considerable contemporary relevance. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were also considered to be major disasters in his policy.

In the play Ying Zheng was portrayed as a cruel tyrant and an aggressor and invader of other states. Some, including members of the Communist Party of China, hold Mao responsible for initiating the Sino-Soviet Split. The play was based on an actual historical event, the attempted assassination of Ying Zheng by Jing Ke of Wei, at the request of the Prince of Yan, in 227 BC. While the Tigers obtained favorable trade terms from the United States, most Third World capitalist countries did not, and they saw nothing like the social gains in China or the economic growth of the Tigers. During the Korean War, the play Song of the Yi River was produced. As if to support this theory, the United States placed a trade embargo on China that lasted until Richard Nixon decided Mao had made himself a force to be reckoned with in dealing with the Soviet Union. To be sure, Qin Shi Huang could always be seen as relevant in fiction and folklore. Mao believed that "socialism is the only way out for China," because the United States and other Western countries would not allow China to join the ranks of advanced capitalism.

The new theory claimed that the cause of the fall of Qin lay in the lack of thoroughness of Qin Shi Huang's "dictatorship over the reactionaries, even to the extent of permitting them to worm their way into organs of political authority and usurp important posts.". The regime that took over in Taiwan was composed of the same people ruling the Mainland for over 20 years when life expectancy was so low, yet life expectancy there also increased. To round out this re-evaluation, a new interpretation of the precipitous collapse of the Qin Dynasty was put forward in an article entitled "On the Class Struggle During the Period Between Qin and Han" by Luo Siding, in a 1974 issue of Red Flag, to replace the old explanation. Some of the gains may have simply been the result of a country no longer at war, so perhaps any regime could achieve such improvements. Unfortunately, he was not as thorough as he should have been and after his death, hidden subversives, under the leadership of the chief eunuch Zhao Gao, seized power and used it to restore the old feudal order. Skeptics observe that similar gains in life expectancy occurred in the East Asian Tigers, most notably Taiwan, which was ruled by Mao's opponents, the Kuomintang. The new evaluations described how, in his time (an era of great political and social change), he had no compunctions in using violent methods to crush counter-revolutionaries, such as the "industrial and commercial slave owner" chancellor Lü Buwei. Indeed, Mao once famously remarked that "Women hold up half the heavens".

Personal attributes, such as his quest for immortality, so emphasized in traditional historiography, were scarcely mentioned. They also argue that the Maoist era improved women's rights by abolishing prostitution, a phenomenon that was to return after Deng Xiaoping and post-Maoist CCP leaders increased liberalization of the economy. In the new era, Qin Shi Huang was seen as a farsighted ruler who destroyed the forces of division and established the first unified, centralized state in Chinese history by rejecting the past. Some of Mao's supporters view the Kuomintang as having been corrupt and credit Mao with driving them off the Chinese mainland to Taiwan. The work was published by the state press to be a mass popular history, and sold 1.85 million copies within two years. They also state their belief that Mao also industrialized China to a considerable extent and ensured China's sovereignty during his rule. The reevaluation movement was launched by Hong Shidi's biography Qin Shi Huang. Supporters also state that under Mao's regime, China ended its "Century of Humiliation" from Western imperialism and regained its status as a major world power.

Since 1972, however, a radically different official view of Qin Shi Huang has been given prominence throughout China. In addition to these increases, the total population of China increased 57% to 700 million, from the constant 400 million mark during the span between the Opium War and the Chinese Civil War. The perennial debate of the fall of the Qin Dynasty was also explained in Marxist terms, the peasant rebellions being a revolt against oppression - a revolt which undermined the dynasty, but which was bound to fail because of a compromise with "landlord class elements". At his death, they claim illiteracy had declined to less than seven percent, and average life expectancy had increased to more than 70 years (alternative statistics also quote improvements, though not nearly as dramatic). The work described the First Emperor's major steps toward unification and standardization as corresponding to the interests of the ruling group and the merchant class, not the nation or the people, and the subsequent fall of his dynasty a manifestation of the class struggle. Supporters of Mao point out that before 1949, for instance, the illiteracy rate in Mainland China was 80 percent, and life expectancy was a meager 35 years. This is exemplified in the Complete History of China, which was compiled in September, 1955, as an official survey of Chinese history. According to Deng Xiaoping, Mao was "seven parts right and three parts wrong", and his "contributions are primary and his mistakes secondary.".

The new interpretation given of Qin Shi Huang was generally a combination of traditional and modern views, but essentially critical. Most mainland Chinese believe that Mao Zedong was a great revolutionary leader, although he made serious mistakes in his later life. The establishment of the new, revolutionary regime meant another re-evaluation of the First Emperor, this time following Marxist theory. Some people emphasize the major failures such as the Sino-Soviet Split, the Great Leap Forward and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. With the coming of the Communist Revolution in 1949, new interpretations again surfaced. Mao's legacy has produced a large amount of controversy. Chiang's Northern Expedition of the late 1920s, which directly preceded the new Nationalist government at Nanjing was compared to the unification brought about by Qin Shi Huang. His quotations were included in boldface or red type in even the most mundane writings.

Ma compared him with the contemporary leader Chiang Kai-shek and saw many parallels in the careers and policies of the two men, both of whom he admired. Over the years, Mao's image became displayed everywhere, in every home, office and shop. He called Qin Shi Huang one of the great heroes of Chinese history. Party members were encouraged to carry a copy with them and possession was almost mandatory in order for membership. Another historian, Ma Feibai (馬非百), published in 1941 a full-length revisionist biography of the First Emperor entitled Qin Shi Huangdi Zhuan (《秦始皇帝傳》). In October 1966, Mao's Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (also known as the "Little Red Book") was published. In the time when he was writing, when Chinese territory was encroached upon by foreign nations, leading Kuomintang historian Xiao Yishan emphasized the role of Qin Shi Huang in repulsing the northern barbarians, particularly in the construction of the Great Wall. Their feelings for him were so strong that many followed his urge to challenge all established authority.

In the three decades between the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the outbreak of the Second World War, with the deepening dissatisfaction with China's weakness and disunity, there emerged a new appreciation of the man who had unified China. Thus they were his greatest supporters. The political rejection of the Confucian tradition as an impediment to China's entry into the modern world opened the way for changing perspectives to emerge. China's youth had mostly been brought up during the Communist era, and they had been told to love Mao. Only in modern times were historians able to penetrate beyond the limitations of traditional Chinese historiography. The Cult of Mao proved vital in starting the Cultural Revolution. Most were designed to tarnish the First Emperor's image. Numerous posters and musical compositions referred to Mao as "A red sun in the centre of our hearts" (我们心中的红太阳) and a "Savior of the people" (人民的大救星).

Almost all of these have been discredited by modern sinologists as hearsay and legend. Large quantities of politicised art were produced and circulated - with Mao at the centre. There are also many varying tales of Heaven's anger against the First Emperor, such as the story of a stone fallen from the sky engraved with words denouncing the emperor and prophesying the collapse of his empire after his death. In 1962, Mao proposed the Socialist Education Movement (SEM), in an attempt to 'protect' the peasants against the temptations of feudalism and the sprouts of capitalism that he saw re-emerging in the countryside (thanks to Liu's economic reforms). For instance, the accusation that he had 460 scholars executed by having them buried with only their heads above ground, and then decapitated is at the very least unlikely to be completely true and it is probable that the incident was fabricated to create a legend of Confucian martyrdom. Mao said the following about cults at the 1958 Party congress in Chengdu, where he expressed support for the idea of personality cults - even ones like Stalin's:. Because of this systematic Confucian bias on the part of Han scholars, many of the stories recorded about Qin Shi Huang are of doubtful historical value and many were probably invented to emphasize his negative traits. Some people argue that personality cults go against the basic ideas of Marxism, but the propaganda that was inherent with most Communist regimes contradicted this, as can be seen by the Cult of Stalin.

He explained the ultimate weakness of Qin as a result of its ruler's ruthless pursuit of power, the precise factor which had made it so powerful; for as Confucius had taught, the strength of a government ultimately is based on the support of the people and virtuous conduct of the ruler. Mao presented himself as an enemy of landowners, businessmen and Western and American imperialism, as well as an ally of impoverished peasants, farmers and workers. Jia Yi's essay, admired as a masterpiece of rhetoric and reasoning, was copied into two great Han histories and has had a far-reaching influence on Chinese political thought as a classic illustration of Confucian theory. One of the reasons Mao is most remembered is the Cult of Mao, the personality cult that was created around him. The famous Han poet and statesman Jia Yi concluded his essay The Faults of Qin with what was to become the standard Confucian judgment of the reasons for Qin's collapse. Deng Xiaoping defeated Hua Guofeng in a bloodless power struggle shortly afterwards. They eventually compiled the list of the Ten Crimes of Qin to highlight his tyrannical actions. Eventually, the moderates won control of the government.

Later, Confucian historians condemned the emperor who had burned the classics and buried Confucian scholars alive. The other was the reformers, led by Deng Xiaoping, who wanted to overhaul the Chinese economy based on pragmatic policies and to de-emphasize the role of ideology in determining economic and political policy. Ideological prejudices against the Legalist State of Qin were established as early as 266 BC, when Confucian philosopher Xun Zi compared it to barbarian tribes and wrote "Qin has the heart of a tiger or a wolf … [and is] avaricious, perverse, eager for profit, and without sincerity". One was the restorationists led by Hua Guofeng who advocated a return to central planning along the Soviet model. In traditional Chinese historiography, the First Emperor was almost always portrayed as a brutal tyrant, superstitious (a result of his interest in immortality and assassination paranoia) and sometimes even as a mediocre ruler. On the other side were the rightists, which consisted of two groups. In this way his work was carried on through the centuries and became a lasting feature of Chinese society. On one side were the leftists led by the Gang of Four, who wanted to continue the policy of revolutionary mass mobilization.

The next Chinese dynasty, the Han Dynasty, rejected Legalism (in favor of Confucianism) and moderated the laws, but kept Qin Shi Huang's basic political and economic reforms intact. As anticipated after Mao’s death on September 9, 1976, there was a power struggle for control of China. This was a time of extreme civil unrest, and everything the emperor had worked for had crumbled away, for a short period. When Mao could not swim any longer, the indoor swimming pool he had at Zhongnanhai was converted into a giant reception hall, according to Li Zhisui. It was during Qin Er Shi's "rule" that powerful families came to war, with the strongest of them rising to power and bringing order back to the land, thus starting the next dynasty of emperors. Mao remained passive as various factions within the Communist Party mobilized for the power struggle anticipated after his death. The imperial palace and state archives were burned, and the Qin Dynasty came to an end. In the last years of his life, Mao was faced with declining health due to either Parkinson's disease or, according to Li Zhisui, motor neuron disease, as well as lung ailments due to smoking and heart trouble.

Revolts quickly erupted, and within four years of Qin Shi Huang's death, his son was dead. In 1969, Mao declared the Cultural Revolution to be over, although the official history of the People's Republic of China marks the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 with Mao's death. Qin Er Shi was not nearly as capable as his father was. Mao lost trust in many of the top CCP figures. Qin Shi Huang was buried in his mausoleum, with the famous Terracotta Army, near modern day Xi'an (Shaanxi province), but his burial chamber has yet to be opened. It was declared that Lin was planning to depose Mao, and he was posthumously expelled from the CCP. Huhai became the Second Emperor (Er Shi Huangdi), known by historians as Qin Er Shi. Later, it is unclear whether Lin was planning a military coup (or assassination), but before he could be questioned, Lin died trying to flee China (probably anticipating his arrest) in a suspicious plane crash over Mongolia.

They forced his first son Fusu to commit suicide, stripped the command of troops from Meng Tian — a loyal supporter of Fusu — and killed Meng's family too. It was during this period that Mao chose Lin Biao to become his successor. After his death, Li Si and the chief eunuch Zhao Gao persuaded his second son Huhai to forge the Emperor's will. The Revolution led to the destruction of much of China's cultural heritage and the imprisonment of a huge number of Chinese intellectuals, as well as creating general economic and social chaos in the country. Qin Shi Huang did not like to talk about death and he never really wrote a will. This allowed Mao to circumvent the Communist hierarchy by giving power directly to the Red Guards, groups of young people, often teenagers, who set up their own tribunals. Eventually, after about two months, Li Si and the imperial court were back in Xianyang, where the news of the death of the emperor was announced. Facing the prospect of losing his place on the political stage, Mao responded to Liu and Deng's movements by launching the Cultural Revolution in 1966.

The idea behind this was to prevent people from noticing the foul smell emanating from the wagon of the emperor, where his body was starting to decompose severely. Liu and others began to look at the situation much more realistically, somewhat abandoning the idealism Mao wished for. Li Si also ordered that two carts containing fish be carried immediately before and after the wagon of the emperor. They attempted to marginalize Mao, and by 1959, Liu Shaoqi became State President, but Mao remained Chairman. The secretive nature of the emperor while alive allowed this stratagem to work, and it did not raise doubts among courtiers. Following these events, other members of the Communist Party, including Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, decided that Mao should be removed from actual power and only remain in a largely ceremonial and symbolic role. Most of the imperial entourage accompanying the emperor was left uninformed of the emperor's death, and each day Li Si entered the wagon where the emperor was supposed to be traveling, pretending to discuss affairs of state. The resulting tension between Khrushchev (at the head of a politically/militarily superior government), and Mao (believing he had a superior understanding of Marxist ideology) eroded the previous patron-client relationship between the USSR and CCP.

Li Si decided to hide the death of the emperor, and return to Xianyang. Upon the death of Stalin, Mao believed (perhaps because of seniority) leadership of "correct" Marxist doctrine would fall to him. It would take two months for the government to reach the capital, and it would not be possible to stop the uprising. Stalin had established himself as the fount of correct Marxist thought well before Mao controlled the CCP, and therefore Mao never challenged the suitability of any Stalinist doctrine (at least while Stalin was alive). Prime minister Li Si, who accompanied him, was extremely worried that the news of his death could trigger a general uprising in the empire, given the brutal policies of the government, and the resentment of the population forced to work on Herculean projects such as the great wall in the north of China or the mausoleum of the emperor. Most of the problems, regarding communist unity, resulted from the death of Stalin and his replacement by Khrushchev. His death occurred in the beginning of September 210 BC at the palace in Shaqiu prefecture, about two months away by road from the capital Xianyang. The withdrawal of Soviet aid, border disputes, disputes over the control and direction of world communism, whether it should be revolutionary or status quo, and other disputes pertaining to foreign policy contributed to the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s.

Ironically, this potion was meant to make Qin Shi Huang immortal. During the so-called Three Years of Natural Disasters, the excess number of deaths "reached 16 million and other sources give higher figures." (Moise 142) Finally, the Great Leap ended in 1960, as a tremendous economic failure. Reportedly he died of drinking a potion, which was made by his court scientists and doctors, containing too much mercury. According to Sun Yefang, the death rate was around 2.54 percent in 1960 and around 9 million "excess deaths" occurred that year. The emperor died while on a tour to Eastern China, searching for the legendary Islands of the Immortals (off the coast of Eastern China) and for the secret of eternal life. However, the policies of the Great Leap coincided with another round of natural disasters in 1960. Very little survives today of the great wall built by the First Emperor. According to historian Edwin Moise:.

It was built much more north than the current Great Wall which was built only during the Ming Dynasty, when China had at least twice more inhabitants than in the days of the First Emperor, and when more than a century was devoted to building the wall (as opposed to a mere ten years during the rule of the First Emperor). Due to the tremendous crop failure in 1959 caused by incompetent policies from the Great Leap Forward, around 9 to 12 million people died. This wall, for whose construction hundreds of thousands of men were mobilized, and an unknown number died, is the precursor version of the current Great Wall of China. In 1957, before the Great Leap, about 7–10 million people died. These tribes (the Xiongnu) were subdued, but the campaign was essentially inconclusive, and to prevent the Xiongnu from encroaching on the northern frontier any longer, the emperor ordered the construction of an immense defensive wall, linking several walls already existing since the time of the Warring States. A mainstream figure is that some thirty million people died during the famine that followed. Qin Shi Huang continued military expansion during his reign, annexing regions to the south (what is now Guangdong province was penetrated by Chinese armies for the first time) and fighting nomadic tribes to the north and northwest. There is a great deal of controversy over the number of deaths by starvation during the Great Leap Forward.

Edicts written in the new script were carved on the walls of sacred mountains around China, such as the famous carved edicts of Mount Taishan, to let Heaven know of the unification of Earth under an emperor, and also to propagate the new script among people. Unrealistic grain demands by the government, Soviet withdrawl of support, natural disasters, and an economy that had spent ten years recovering from decades of war and chaos caused famine across the nation. A new script was developed by Li Si, called the small seal script, based on the script in use in the State of Qin, and this new script was made mandatory, thus doing away with all the regional scripts and local Chinese characters that existed in the various Chinese states. Severe droughts also occurred, further reducing agricultural output. Perhaps most importantly, the Chinese script was unified. Khrushchev cancelled Soviet technical support because of worsening Sino-Soviet relations. Qin Shi Huang and Li Si unified China economically by standardizing weights and measures, the currency, the length of the axles of carts (so every cart could run smoothly in the ruts of the new roads), the legal system, and so on. According to Zhang Rongmei, a Geometry teacher in rural Shanghai during the Great Leap Forward,.

The emperor also developed an extensive network of roads and canals connecting the provinces to accelerate trade between them and to accelerate military marches to revolting provinces. Although the steel quotas were reached, critics point out much of the steel produced was useless, as it had been made from scrap metal. Qin Shi Huang ordered all the members of the former royal houses of the conquered states to move to Xianyang (咸陽), the capital of Qin, in modern day Shaanxi province, so they would be kept under tight surveillance for rebellious activities. By 1959, the Great Leap Forward had become a disaster for Red China. In the State of Qin, feudalism had been abolished in the 4th century BC, and the realm had been divided into commanderies with governors dismissed at will by the ruler. Numbers were inflated, although "they were not just lies intended for public consumption, they were actually believed." (Moise 140). This administrative system was only an extension to the whole empire of the system already in place in the State of Qin before the Chinese unification. A damaging number of agricultural peasants were moved to steel production.

An inspector (監  jiàn) was also in post in each commandery, in charge of informing the central government about the local implementation of central policies, reporting on the governors' exercise of power, and possibly resolving conflicts between the two governors. However, instead of maintaining the steady growth, Mao and other party leaders believed they could achieve unrealistically high quotas. The civilian governor was also reassigned to a different commandery every few years to prevent him from building up a base of power. At first, the Great Leap began with tremendous success, with agricultural and steel production running very high. The civilian governor was superior to the military governor, a constant in Chinese history. Under this economic program, Chinese agriculture was to be collectivized and rural small-scale industry was to be promoted. Thus each commandery was run by a civilian governor (守  shǒu) assisted by a military governor (尉  wèi). In 1958, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward, a plan intended as an alternative model for economic growth which contradicted the Soviet model of heavy industry that was advocated by others in the party.

Civilian and military powers were also separated to avoid that too much power falls in the hands of a single civil servant. Authors such as Jung Chang allege that the Hundred Flowers Campaign was merely a ruse to root out "dangerous" thinking more easily. Power in the commanderies was in the hands of governors dismissed at will by the central government. However, after a few months, Mao's government reversed its policy and rounded up those who criticized the Party in what is called the Anti-Rightist Movement. They instead divided the empire into thirty-six commanderies (郡). This was initially tolerated and even encouraged, since it was thought that constructive criticism would be beneficial to the Party. To avoid the anarchy of the Warring States Period, Qin Shi Huang and his prime minister Li Si completely abolished feudalism. Given the freedom to express themselves, liberal and intellectual Chinese began opposing the Communist Party and questioning its leadership.

Then in that same year, at the age of 38, the king of Qin proclaimed himself First Emperor (see chapter above). Programs pursued during this time include the Hundred Flowers Campaign, in which Mao indicated his willingness to consider different opinions about how China should be governed. He continued the tradition of tenaciously attacking and defeating the feudal states (dodging a celebrated assassination attempt by Jing Ke while doing so) and finally took control of the whole of China in 221 BC by defeating the last independent Chinese state, the State of Qi. During this period, China sustained yearly increases in GDP of about 4–9% as well as dramatic improvements in quality-of-life indicators such as life expectancy and literacy. Zheng ascended the throne in 247 BC at the age of 12 and a half, and was king under a regent until 238 BC when at the age of 21 and a half he staged a palace coup and assumed full power. Land was redistributed from landowners to poor peasants and large-scale industrialization projects were undertaken, contributing to the construction of a modern national infrastructure. However, the story is dubious since the Confucians would have found it much easier to denounce a ruler whose birth was illegitimate. The CPC introduced price controls largely successful at breaking the inflationary spiral of the preceding ROC as well as a Chinese character simplification aimed at increasing literacy.

This tale arose because Zheng's mother had originally been a concubine of Lü Buwei before he gave her to his good friend Zichu shortly before Zheng's birth. Following the consolidation of power, Mao launched a phase of rapid collectivization, lasting until around 1958. According to a widespread story, Zheng was not the actual son of Zichu, but the son of the powerful chancellor Lü Buwei. (Li's book, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, has been subject to controversy.). Zichu is known posthumously as King Zhuangxiang of Qin. Li Zhisui, who claimed to be his physician. Zichu later returned to Qin after many adventures and with the help of a rich merchant called Lü Buwei, and he managed to ascend the throne of Qin, Lü Buwei becoming chancellor (prime minister) of Qin. Mao often did his work either in bed or by the side of the pool during his chairmanship, according to Dr.

He was the son of Zichu, a prince of the royal house of Qin who served as a hostage in the State of Zhao under an agreement between the states of Qin and Zhao. He took up residence in Zhongnanhai, a compound next to the Forbidden City in Beijing, and there he decreed the construction of an indoor swimming pool and other buildings. Zheng was born in Handan (邯鄲), the capital of the enemy State of Zhao. From 1954 to 1959, Mao was the Chairman of the PRC. It was governed by Legalist philosophy and focused earnestly on military matters. It was the culmination of over two decades of popular struggle led by the Communist Party. The competition was extremely fierce and by 260 BC there were only a handful of states left (the others having been conquered and annexed), but Zheng's state, Qin, was the most powerful. After the Japanese were defeated in World War II, the Communists defeated the Kuomintang in an ensuing civil war and established the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949.

This period of Chinese history is referred to as the Warring States Period. In the early morning of December 10, 1949, Red Army troops laid siege to Chengdu, the last KMT-occupied city in mainland China, and Chiang Kai-shek evacuated from the mainland to Taiwan that same day. At the time of the young Zheng's birth, China was divided into warring feudal states. On January 21, 1949, Kuomintang forces suffered massive losses against Mao's Red Army.
. Likewise, the Soviet Union gave quasi-covert support to Mao (acting as a concerned neighbor more than a military ally, to avoid open conflict with the US) and gave large supplies of arms to the Chinese Communists, although newer Chinese records indicate the Soviet "supplies" were not as large as previously believed, and consistently fell short of the promised amount of aid. Westerners sometimes write "Qin Shi Huangdi", which is improper given Chinese naming conventions; it is more conventional to write "Qin Shi Huang" or "First Emperor". After the end of World War II, the US continued to support Chiang Kai-shek, now openly against the Communist Red Army, led by Mao Zedong, in the civil war for control of China as part of its view to contain and defeat "world communism".

This name Qin Shi Huang (i.e., "First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty") is the name that appears in the Records of the Grand Historian written by Sima Qian, and is the name most favored today inside China when referring to the First Emperor. According to Edwin Moise, in Modern China: A History 2nd Edition,. It seems likely that huangdi was shortened to obtain a three-character name, which matches the three-character name of Chinese people (it is extremely rare for Chinese people to have a name made of four or more characters). However, Americans sent a special diplomatic envoy, called the Dixie mission, to the Communists by 1944. The word huangdi (emperor) in his name was also shortened to huang, so that he became known as Qin Shi Huang. Both the Communists and Nationalists have been criticised by academics for fighting amongst themselves rather than ally against the Imperial Japanese Army. The habit started to have his name preceded by Qin (秦), which does not refer to the State of Qin anymore, but to the Qin Dynasty, a dynasty now replaced by the Han Dynasty. In turn, Mao spent some of the war fighting the Kuomintang for control of certain parts of China.

Qin Shi Huang could no longer be called "First Emperor", as this would imply that he was the "First Emperor of the Empire of Han". This fact was not understood well in the US, and precious lend-lease armaments continued to be allocated to the Kuomintang. Eventually, in 202 BC the Han Dynasty managed to reunify the whole of China, which now became officially known as the State of Han (漢國), which can also be translated as the Empire of Han. Chiang, in contrast, sought to build the ROC army for the certain conflict with Mao's communist forces after the end of World War II. However, soon after the emperor's death, his regime collapsed, and China was beset by a civil war. The US regarded Chiang as an important ally, able to help shorten the war by engaging the Japanese occupiers in China. Contemporaries called the emperor "First Emperor", dropping the "of the State of Qin", which was obvious without saying. During the Sino-Japanese War, Mao Zedong's strategies were opposed by both Chiang Kai-shek and the United States.

The name China (中華 or 中國) was never used officially for the country China until 1912 when the Republic of China (中華民國) was founded. Also while in Yan'an, Mao divorced He Zizhen and married the actress Lan Ping, who would become known as Jiang Qing. The official name of the newly united China was still "State of Qin", Qin having absorbed all the other states. Mao further consolidated power over the Communist Party in 1942 by launching the Cheng Feng, or "Rectification" campaign against rival CPC members such as Wang Ming, Wang Shiwei, and Ding Ling. Qin Shi Huang had now become the First Emperor of the State of Qin. From his base in Yan'an, Mao led the Communist resistance against the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). He abolished posthumous names, by which former kings were known after their death, judging them inappropriate and contrary to filial piety, and decided that future generations would refer to him as the First Emperor (Shi Huangdi), his successor would be referred to as the Second Emperor (Er Shi Huangdi, literally "second generation emperor"), the successor of his successor as the Third Emperor (San Shi Huangdi, literally "third generation emperor"), and so on, for ten thousand generations, as the Imperial house was supposed to rule China for ten thousand generations ("ten thousand" is equivalent to "forever" in Chinese, and it also means "good fortune"). At this Conference, Mao entered the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China.

Qin Shi Huang adopted the name First Emperor (Shi Huangdi, literally "commencing emperor"). It was during this 9600-km, year-long journey that Mao emerged as the top Communist leader, aided by the Zunyi Conference and the defection of Zhou Enlai to Mao's side. This word huangdi was rendered in most Western languages as "emperor", a word with also a long history going back to ancient Rome, and which Europeans deemed superior to the word "king". To evade the KMT forces, the Communists engaged in the "Long March", a retreat from Jiangxi in the southeast to Shaanxi in the northwest of China. Thus, by joining these two words, which no one had ever done before, Qin Shi Huang created a title on par with his feat of uniting the seemingly endless Chinese realm, in fact uniting the world (ancient Chinese, like ancient Romans, believed their empire encompassed the whole world, a concept referred to as all under heaven). Chiang Kai-shek, who had earlier assumed nominal control of China due in part to the Northern Expedition, was determined to eliminate the Communists. The word di also referred to the Supreme God in Heaven, creator of the world. Mao was removed from his important positions and replaced by individuals (including Zhou Enlai) who appeared loyal to the orthodox line advocated by Moscow and represented within the CPC by a group known as the 28 Bolsheviks.

The word huang also meant "big", "great". Under increasing pressure from the KMT encirclement campaigns, there was a struggle for power within the Communist leadership. These Three Huang and Five Di were considered perfect rulers, of immense powers, and very long lives. Mao, with the help of Zhu De, built a modest but effective guerilla army, undertook experiments in rural reform and government, and provided refuge for Communists fleeing the rightist purges in the cities. Wishing to show that he was no more a simple king like the kings of old during the Warring States Period, he created a new title, huangdi (皇帝), combining the word huang (皇) which was used to call the legendary Three Huang (Three August Ones) who ruled at the dawn of Chinese history, and the word di (帝) which was used to call the legendary Five Di (Five Sovereigns) who ruled immediately after the Three Huang. It was during this period that Mao married He Zizhen, after Yang Kaihui had been killed by KMT forces. After conquering the last independent Chinese state in 221 BC, Qin Shi Huang was now the king of a state of Qin ruling over the whole of China, which was unprecedented. There, from 1931 to 1934, Mao helped establish the Chinese Soviet Republic and was elected chairman.

(posthumous name) of Qin", but this never happened. He and his rag-tag band of loyal guerillas found refuge in the Jinggang Mountains in southeastern China. Had he received a posthumous name after his death like his father, he would have been known by historians as "King NN. Mao barely survived this mishap (he escaped his guards on the way to his execution). As a king, he was referred to as "King of Qin" only. Mao escaped the white terror in the spring and summer of 1927 and led the ill-fated Autumn Harvest Uprising at Changsha, Hunan, that autumn. The given name was never used except by close relatives, therefore it is also incorrect to refer to the young Qin Shi Huang as "Prince Zheng", or as "King Zheng of Qin". During this time, Mao also developed more practical ideas, such as a three-stage theory of guerilla warfare and the concept of the people's democratic dictatorship.

In Chinese antiquity, people never joined family name and given name together as is customary today, so it is anachronistic to refer to Qin Shi Huang as "Ying Zheng". It is difficult to determine the true validity of this theory, however, since so many analyses of it have been heavily influenced by political biases. Qin Shi Huang was born in the Chinese month zheng (正), the first month of the year in the Chinese calendar (in the 3rd century BC the Chinese year started before the Winter solstice, and not after as it does today), and so he received the name Zheng (政), both characters being used interchangeably in ancient China. By applying the theory of the dialectic to real-world conflicts, then by asserting that only the empirical reality of the conflict mattered, Mao developed a type of dialectic theory that was studied for decades. . Mao also built on the theories of Hegel and Marx to create a new theory of materialist dialectics. For all the tyranny of his autocratic rule, Qin Shi Huang is still regarded today as some sort of a colossal founding father in Chinese history whose unification of China has endured for more than two millennia (with interruptions). This meant a process of getting party cadres to understand local realities and trying to integrate the concerns of peasants with party policy, something called Mass Line.

Having unified China, he and his prime minister Li Si passed a series of major reforms aimed at cementing the unification, and they undertook some Herculean construction projects, most notably the precursor version of the current Great Wall of China. Mao hypothesized that peasants could form the basis of a communist revolution, but only if the party elites took the message of revolution to the grass roots and make it comprehensible to the peasant population. Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇) (November or December 260 BC-September 10, 210 BC), personal name Zheng, was king of the Chinese State of Qin from 247 BC to 221 BC, and then the first emperor of a unified China from 221 BC to 210 BC, ruling under the name First Emperor. Marxism-Leninism could only exist in concrete manifestations, meaning that it could only work if it was applied to certain situations. Mao's thought transformed traditional Marxism into a political ideology that could work to win a revolution and consolidate power in China. These ideas have had a monumental impact on generations of Chinese and have significantly affected the rest of the world.

During this time, Mao developed many of his political theories. Main article: Maoism. The report that Mao produced from this investigation is considered the first important work of Maoist theory. In early 1927, he was dispatched to Hunan province to report on the recent peasant uprisings in the wake of the Northern Expedition.

During the Chinese Civil War’s first KMT-CCP united front, Mao served as the director of the Peasant Training Institute of the Kuomintang (also known as KMT or Nationalist Party). Two years later he was elected to the Central Committee of the party at the Third Congress. At age 27, Mao attended the First Congress of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai on July 23, 1921. Instead of going abroad which was the path of many of his radical compatriots, Mao spent the early 1920s traveling in China, and finally returned to Hunan, where he took the lead in promoting collective action and labor rights.

(When Mao was 14, his father had arranged a marriage for him with a fellow villager, Luo [羅氏], but Mao never recognized this marriage.) (See section 7 Family). Also in Beijing, he married his first wife, Yang Kaihui, a Peking University student and Yang Changji’s daughter. While working for the Peking University library as an assistant librarian, Mao acquired a taste for books, something he was to retain in later years. From Yang's recommendations, he worked under Li Dazhao, the head of the university library and attended speeches by Chen Duxiu.

After graduation from Hunan Normal School in 1918, Mao traveled with his high-school teacher and future father-in-law, Professor Yang Changji (杨昌济), to Beijing during the May Fourth Movement, when Yang lectured at Peking University. In the 1910s, Mao returned to school, where he became an advocate of physical fitness and collective action. During the 1911 Revolution he served in the Hunan provincial army. His ancestors had migrated from Jiangxi province during the Ming Dynasty and had pursued farming for generations.

The eldest son of four children of a moderately prosperous peasant farmer, Mao Zedong was born in the village of Shaoshan in Xiangtan county (湘潭縣), Hunan province. . At the height of his personality cult, Mao was commonly known in China as the "Four Greats": "Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great Supreme Commander, Great Helmsman". Mao Zedong is still sometimes referred to as Chairman Mao (毛主席).

Mao has also been criticized for his contribution to the split with the USSR, his establishment of a one-party dictatorship, and initiating the internal turmoil during the Cultural Revolution. However, critics point out that Mao's inappropriate economic policies in conjunction with the Three Years of Natural Disasters caused the famine of 1959–1961, which lead to the deaths of millions of Chinese. Mao is widely credited for creating a mostly unified China free of foreign domination for the first time since the Opium Wars. He forged but then later split the alliance with the Soviet Union and launched the Cultural Revolution.

While in power, he started a series of experiments aimed at speeding up China's economic development known as the Great Leap Forward. On October 1, 1949, Mao declared the formation of the People's Republic of China at Tiananmen Square. Throughout his leadership, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) became the ruling party of mainland China as the result of its victory in the Chinese Civil War.  Mao Zedong^? (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976; Mao Tse-tung in Wade-Giles) was the chairman of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China from 1943 and the chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China from 1945 until his death.

"Serve the People". "The Foolish Man Who Removed A Mountain". "In Memory of Doctor Bethune". On Guerilla Warfare.

On the Correct Handling of the Contradictions Among the People; 1957. On Literature and Art; 1942. On New Democracy; 1940. On Contradiction; 1937.

On Practice; 1937. Li Na (李讷): daughter to Jiang (whose birth given name was Li), married to Wang Jingqing (王景清), son Wang Xiaozhi (王效芝). Li Min (李敏): daughter to He, married to Kong Linghua (孔令华), son Kong Ji'ning (孔继宁), daughter Kong Dongmei (孔冬梅). Mao Anqing (毛岸青): son to Yang, married to Shao Hua (邵华), son Mao Xinyu (毛新宇).

Mao Anying (毛岸英): son to Yang, married to Liu Siqi (刘思齐), who was born Liu Songlin (刘松林), killed in action during the Korean War. Mao Zehong, sister (executed by the Kuomintang in 1930). Mao Zetan (毛泽覃, 1905-1935), younger brother. Mao Zemin (毛泽民, 1895-1943), younger brother.

Mao Enpu (毛恩普), paternal grandfather. Mao Yichang (毛贻昌, 1870-1920), father, courtesy name Mao Shunsheng (毛顺生). Wen Qimei (文七妹, 1867-1919), mother. Jiang Qing: (江青), married 1939 to Mao's death.

He Zizhen (贺子珍, 1910-1984) of Jiangxi: married May 1928 to 1939. Yang Kaihui (杨开慧, 1901-1930) of Changsha: married 1921 to 1927, executed by the Kuomintang in 1930.