During World War II, Mao Zedong, leader of China's Communist Party, mobilized peasants by implementing land reform where the Communists had control and by fighting valiantly against the Japanese. By the end of 1944, when this photo of Mao addressing his followers was taken, the Communists had a military force of more than half a million and control of more than eighty million Chinese. © Bettmann/Corbis.