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Mao Zedong co-founded the People's Liberation Army as the Red Armyand also created a mostly unified China free of foreign
rule for the first time since the Opium Wars. Mao gained much power and transformed the economic and social system in The
Great Leap Forward of 1958-62, recognised also as an economic disaster. The drastic changes he ordered in social and agricultural
policies, known in China as Three Years of Natural Disasters, caused the massive famine of 1959-1961.
Mao brought to China a totalitarian one-party-state and initiated the Cultural Revolution. This revolution purged,
tortured, and publicly humiliated millions. These people mostly included many Communists who had forced Mao to end the policies
that caused the famine of 1959-1961. During the revolution, Mao encouraged the destruction of a large part of China's cultural
heritage.
Also referred to as Chairman Mao, in the West and in China simply as the Chairman. Mao was commonly known in China as
the "Four Greats": "Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great Supreme Commander, Great Helmsman". Mao loved to
read, what he was most interested in was that of the Chinese history. It has been disputed that his skill at outmanoevering
his political opponents owed much to his understanding of Chinese imperial history. His political stands were influenced in
the development of Marxist thought and he also wrote poetry that is still famous today.
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