Mao Zedong Chinese Communist revolutionary and leader cs The son of a peasant farmer Mao Zedong Mao Tse Tung led the Red Army which undertook the epic Long March and overthrew the Nationalist Chinese dictator Chiang KaiShek in As Chairman of the Peoples Republic of China and of the Chinese Communist Party he set about transforming China but his attempt to modernise the countrys industrial base the Great Leap Forward and the disastrous Cultural Revolution caused dramatic upheavals in Chinese society After his death in his successors introduced social and economic initiatives that reversed many of Maos policies