Mao Zedong (December 26, 1893 September 9, 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which he led as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until his death in 1976. Ideologically a MarxistLeninist, his theories, military strategies, and political policies are collectively known as Maoism.

Mao was the son of a prosperous peasant in Shaoshan, Hunan. He supported Chinese nationalism and had an anti-imperialist outlook early in his life, and was particularly influenced by the events of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and May Fourth Movement of 1919. He later adopted MarxismLeninism while working at Peking University as a librarian and became a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), leading the Autumn Harvest Uprising in 1927. During the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the CCP, Mao helped to found the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, led the Jiangxi Soviet's radical land policies, and ultimately became head of the CCP during the Long March. Although the CCP temporarily allied with the KMT under the Second United Front during the Second Sino-Japanese War (19371945), China's civil war resumed after Japan's surrender, and Mao's forces defeated the Nationalist government, which withdrew to Taiwan in 1949.

On October 1, 1949, Mao proclaimed the foundation of the PRC, a MarxistLeninist single-party state controlled by the CCP. In the following years he solidified his control through the Chinese Land Reform against landlords, the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, the "Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns", and through a psychological victory in the Korean War, which altogether resulted in the deaths of several million Chinese. From 1953 to 1958, Mao played an important role in enforcing planned economy in China, constructing the first Constitution of the PRC, launching the industrialisation program, and initiating military projects such as the "Two Bombs, One Satellite" project and Project 523. His foreign policies during this time were dominated by the Sino-Soviet split which drove a wedge between China and the Soviet Union. In 1955, Mao launched the Sufan movement, and in 1957 he launched the Anti-Rightist Campaign, in which at least 550,000 people, mostly intellectuals and dissidents, were persecuted. In 1958, he launched the Great Leap Forward that aimed to rapidly transform China's economy from agrarian to industrial, which led to the deadliest famine in history and the deaths of 1555 million people between 1958 and 1962. In 1963, Mao launched the Socialist Education Movement, and in 1966 he initiated the Cultural Revolution, a program to remove "counter-revolutionary" elements in Chinese society which lasted 10 years and was marked by violent class struggle, widespread destruction of cultural artifacts, and an unprecedented elevation of Mao's cult of personality. Tens of millions of people were persecuted during the Revolution, while the estimated number of deaths ranges from hundreds of thousands to millions. After years of ill health, Mao suffered a series of heart attacks in 1976 and died at the age of 82. During Mao's era, China's population grew from around 550 million to over 900 million while the government did not strictly enforce its family planning policy.

A controversial figure within and outside China, Mao is still regarded as one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. Beyond politics, Mao is also known as a theorist, military strategist, and poet. During the Mao era, China was heavily involved with other southeast Asian communist conflicts such as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cambodian Civil War, which brought the Khmer Rouge to power. He ruled China through an autocratic and totalitarian regime responsible for mass repression as well as destruction of religious and cultural artifacts and sites. The government was responsible for vast numbers of deaths with estimates ranging from 40 to 80 million victims through starvation, persecution, prison labour, and mass executions. Mao has been praised for transforming China from a semi-colony to a leading world power, with greatly advanced literacy, women's rights, basic healthcare, primary education and life expectancy.

The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, officially the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is a political body that comprises the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It is currently composed of 205 full members and 171 alternate members (see list). Members are nominally elected once every five years by the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. In practice, the selection process is done privately, usually through consultation of the CCP's Politburo and its corresponding Standing Committee.The Central Committee is, formally, the "party's highest organ of authority" when the National Congress is not in a plenary session. According to the CCP's constitution, the Central Committee is vested with the power to elect the General Secretary and the members of the Politburo and its Standing Committee, as well as the Central Military Commission. It endorses the composition of the Secretariat and the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. It also oversees the work of various executive national organs of the CCP. The administrative activities of the Central Committee are carried out by the Central Committee's General Office. The General Office forms the support staff of the central organs that work on the Central Committee's behalf in between plenums.

The Committee usually convenes at least once a year at a plenary session ("plenum"), and functions as a top forum for discussion about relevant policy issues. The Committee operates, however, on the principle of democratic centralism; i.e., once a decision is made, the entire body speaks with one voice. The role of the Central Committee has varied throughout history. While it generally exercises power through formal procedures defined in the party constitution, the ability for it to affect outcomes of national-level personnel decisions is limited, as that function has generally been, in practice, carried out by the Politburo and retired party elders who retain influence. Nonetheless, Central Committee plenums function as venues whereby policy is discussed, fine-tuned, and publicly released in the form of "resolutions" or "decisions".

The Central Committee's plenums typically open and close in the State Banquet Hall of the Great Hall of the People, with the working meetings of the plenum being held at the military run Jingxi Hotel in Beijing.