Description
Born in Hunan Province in 1893, Mao Tse-tung is the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, which he ruled as Chairman from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976. The son of a prosperous peasant, he adopted Marxism-Leninism while working at Peking University and was a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party. His Great Leap Forward of 1958, when he tried to spur China from an agrarian to an industrial economy, was such a debacle that tens of millions of Chinese starved to death in the Great Famine—the worst man-made disaster until that time.–Issued in 1921, right after the founding of the CCP, this cash coin features two crossed flags. The first, Five Races Under One Union, has five stripes representing the Han, the Manchus, the Mongols, the Hui, and the Tibetans. The second, the Iron Blood 18-Star Flag, was used by the army of the Republic of China.