David Hannah Jr., age 14, of Chattanooga, Tenn., for his question:
WHO WAS MAO TSE TUNG?
A Chinese revolutionary and statesman named Mao Tse Tung became head of the Chinese Communist Party and in 1949 founded the People's Republic of China. From that time until his death in 1976, Mao was the leader of China.
Mao was born in 1893 in Hunan Province of China. He studied in Changsha, a city near his home, and in 1919 went to work in a library in Peking. He soon became a Communist and helped to start a Chinese Communist party in Shanghai.
China had become a republic in 1912 under the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party. In 1927, after a period when the Communists and Nationalists worked togeter, a split developed between the two parties.
Nationalist leader Chiang Kai shek and his army set up a government in Nanking and forced the Communists back into the mountains. Mao led the Communists on a long trek into northwest China, known as the Long March. During this march in 1934 and 1935, Mao became leader of the Communists.
When Japan attacked China in 1937, Mao and his soldiers joined the Nationalists to fight the Japanese. By the time Japan was defeated in World War II in 1945, the Communists were very strong.
War between the Nationalists and Communists started again. This time Mao's Communists won with the help of Russia. They controlled the Chinese mainland. The Nationalists escaped and established their government on the island province of Taiwan.
In 1949 Mao became the chairman or chief of state of a new Communist government at Peking. He signed a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union and obtained aid for China's development. In the next 10 years, Mao used radical programs to quickly change China into a Communist society.
Mao resigned as government chairman in 1959 but kept his post as party chairman.
Mao's contribution to the Marxist Leninist doctrine of Communism increased his influence in the Communist world. In the 1960s, he challenged the Soviet Union for the leadership of world Communism.
In 1966 Mao launched a "cultural revolution" in an effort to redevelop a revolutionary spirit in Chinese Communism.
In 1972 Mao met with United States President Richard Nixon and in 1975 he met with President Gerald Ford.
Chiang Kai shek was born in 1887. He joined the revolutionary party of Dr. Sun Yat sen, founder of the Chinese republic. After Dr. Sun died in 1925, Chiang became leader of the Chinese Nationalists.
Between 1926 and 1928 the Nationalists Army marched north under his command and gained control of China. Chiang set up the Nationalists government in Nanking and turned against the Communists.