Mao Zedong Trivia
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57 free Mao Zedong trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Mao Zedong trivia quiz follows the founder of the People's Republic of China from a farm in Hunan to the mausoleum in Tiananmen Square. The easy questions cover the basics: the province he came from, the party he helped found, the epic retreat that made him its leader, the date he proclaimed the People's Republic, the little book everyone carried and the man who eventually took China in the opposite direction. From there it moves through his teenage arranged marriage, the pigtail he cut off in protest, his six months as a private soldier, the library job in Beijing that introduced him to Marxism, and the boat on South Lake where the first party congress hid from the police. The harder end covers the Autumn Harvest Uprising, Jinggangshan, the Futian incident, the Zunyi conference, the grasslands, Yan'an and Edgar Snow, the Xi'an Incident, the Hundred Regiments Offensive, land reform, the Korean War, the Hundred Flowers, the Great Leap Forward and the famine, Lushan, the Sino-Soviet split, the Cultural Revolution, Lin Biao's plane crash, his four wives and the '70 percent right' verdict. Every answer was checked against Mao's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our China and Joseph Stalin quizzes are natural companions.
30 of 57 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which pop artist began a famous series of portraits of Mao in 1972?
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol: he chose Mao after reading in Life magazine that Mao was the most famous person in the world.
Q 02What was Mao's father, Mao Yichang?
A poor peasant turned wealthy farmer
A poor peasant turned wealthy farmer: he bought grain from poorer farmers and sold it in town at a higher price.
Q 03Mao's mother, Wen Qimei, was a devout follower of which faith?
Buddhism
Buddhism: Mao shared her faith as a boy, but his reading turned him sceptical by his teens.
Q 04As a teenager, Mao quoted the Confucian classics to win arguments with whom?
His father
His father: accused of being unfilial, Mao answered with passages saying elders must be kind and affectionate.
Q 05What did Mao and a friend cut off in 1911 as a symbol of rebellion against the Manchu monarchy?
Their queue pigtails
Their queue pigtails: he and his friend then forcibly cut off the queues of several classmates.
Q 06Why did Mao quit the rebel army in 1912?
The revolution seemed over
The revolution seemed over, so he resigned and, as he later put it, decided to return to his books.
Q 07After dropping out of police, soap-making and law schools, what did the young Mao train to become?
A teacher
A teacher: at the teacher-training school in Changsha, his ethics professor Yang Changji befriended him, and Mao later married Yang's daughter.
Q 08Mao's 1917 article in the magazine New Youth urged readers to do what?
Increase their physical strength
Increase their physical strength: he practised it himself, tramping across the countryside with a friend and begging for food along the way.
Q 09What job did Mao take at Peking University in 1918 that introduced him to Marxism?
Assistant to the librarian
Assistant to the librarian: Mao signed in the newspaper readers, but most of them, he recalled, treated him as if he didn't exist.
Q 10Mao famously said that political power grows out of what?
The barrel of a gun
The barrel of a gun: he first said it at an emergency party meeting in August 1927, after a Nationalist purge had decimated the Communists.
Q 11The young Mao backed the May Fourth protests against which treaty's handover of Shandong to Japan?
The Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles: that summer Mao launched a radical weekly, the Xiang River Review, and the local military governor banned it within weeks.
Q 12In Shanghai, Mao met which New Youth editor who went on to lead the new Communist Party?
Chen Duxiu
Chen Duxiu: the party's first General Secretary was ousted as its leader in 1927, just six years after the party's founding.
Q 13Why did Mao claim to have missed the party's Second Congress in Shanghai in July 1922?
He lost the address
Q 21At which January 1935 conference on the Long March did Mao win back command over the Red Army?
Zunyi
Zunyi: the meeting ended the command of Bo Gu and German adviser Otto Braun, whose tactics were blamed for the Red Army's heavy losses.
Q 22Which crossing of the Tatu River did the Red Army fight for in May 1935 during the Long March?
The Luding Bridge
The Luding Bridge: defenders had pulled up most of its planks, leaving little but its iron chains stretched across the river.
Q 23Which American journalist wrote Red Star Over China, publicising Mao's base in the late 1930s?
Edgar Snow
Edgar Snow: he spent months with the Red Army in 1936, and in long interviews Mao told him the story of his own life.
He lost the address, he said, and could find no comrades to ask, so he went home and threw himself into organising labour unions.
Q 14Which body did Mao run in Guangzhou in 1926?
The KMT's Peasant Movement Training Institute
The KMT's Peasant Movement Training Institute: a Communist could run it because the two parties were then allies, and Mao was also the Nationalists' acting propaganda chief.
Q 15Which failed revolt did Mao lead against Changsha in 1927 before retreating to the Jinggang Mountains?
The Autumn Harvest Uprising
The Autumn Harvest Uprising: midway through, one of Mao's own regiments turned on another, and his army never took Changsha.
Q 16How did the Central Committee punish Mao in 1927 for his 'military opportunism'?
It expelled him from its ranks
It expelled him from its ranks, stripping his Politburo seat, yet he carried on building a rural base in the Jinggang Mountains.
Q 17Which general's forces did Mao's troops unite with in 1928 to become the core of the Red Army?
Zhu De's
Zhu De's: at their mountain base the two fought by rules such as 'When the enemy advances, we retreat; when the enemy retreats, we pursue'.
Q 18What happened to Mao's second wife, Yang Kaihui, in November 1930?
A KMT general had her executed
A KMT general had her executed after she refused to renounce Mao, who had already taken up with He Zizhen.
Q 19Which Soviet leader's 1956 denunciation of Stalin set Mao on the road to the Sino-Soviet split?
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev: by 1960 the rift had grown so deep that the Soviet Union abruptly pulled its experts out of China.
Q 20After the Long March, Mao ran the Communist movement for about a decade from which northern town?
Yan'an
Yan'an: Nationalist troops took the town in 1947, and Mao's army won it back the following year.
Q 24Which general arrested Chiang Kai-shek in the 1936 Xi'an Incident, forcing a united front with the Communists?
Zhang Xueliang
Zhang Xueliang: Chiang had him placed under house arrest, and he stayed a prisoner for more than five decades.
Q 25Which Shanghai actress did Mao marry after divorcing He Zizhen?
Jiang Qing
Jiang Qing: after Mao's death she was arrested, tried on television and in 1981 convicted and imprisoned.
Q 26As Mao's forces won the civil war in 1949, where did Chiang Kai-shek's government retreat?
Taiwan
Taiwan: Chiang's Republic of China kept China's seat at the United Nations until 1971, when Mao's government took it over.
Q 27What was the name of the US envoy group sent to the Chinese Communists in 1944?
The Dixie Mission
The Dixie Mission: its diplomat John Service was later forced out of the State Department, blamed amid the debate over who 'lost' China.
Q 28From which Beijing landmark did Mao proclaim the People's Republic of China?
Tiananmen Gate
Tiananmen Gate: Chiang Kai-shek's portrait had hung over the gate after 1945, and in 1949 a portrait of Mao took its place.
Q 29Which sport opened the way for Nixon to visit Mao, after a US player boarded the Chinese team's bus in 1971?
Table tennis
Table tennis: Chinese star Zhuang Zedong shook the American's hand and gave him a gift, and China soon invited the US team to play in China.
Q 30Mao's eldest son was killed by an air strike in 1950 while serving in which war?
Korean War
Korean War: news of his death was kept from Mao until January 1951, and he was buried with other Chinese soldiers in North Korea.