From eternal struggle to pragmatism and institution-building

Mao Zedong was one of 13 representatives at the Communist Party's first congress in Shanghai in July 1921, but there was little about the lanky 27-year-old from rural Hunan that marked him out as a future leader.

Unlike many fellow party members, Mao did not have a degree, he had not trained in France or the Soviet Union (two trips to Moscow in the 1950s were his only chances to travel abroad), and with his rural roots he was unfamiliar with the urban industrial working class, the pillar of the Marxist revolution.

Mao's belief that, as a predominantly rural society, China's revolution would take place in the countryside at times made him a party outsider.

But as the Communist leadership was forced out of Shanghai, then out of the revolutionary base areas in Jiangxi, on to the Long March, and finally into the impenetrable caves in remote Shaanxi province, Mao was proved right.

His belief in eternal struggle - which led to some of the ugliest chapters of his rule, such as the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution - also led to clashes with almost every senior leader during his reign.

When Mao died at the age of 83 on September 9, 1976, his 'struggle philosophy' had almost destroyed the country's economy. His chosen successor, Hua Guofeng , planned to continue on the Maoist path, but was quickly elbowed aside by an ascendant Deng Xiaoping, who had the support of senior political and military leaders.