In the center of Beijing, overlooking the vast expanse of Tiananmen Square, hangs a portrait of Mao ZedongMao Zedong mao-zedong The founder and supreme leader of the People’s Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976. A revolutionary strategist, Marxist theorist, and political poet, he led the Communist Party to victory in the civil war, transformed China through collectivisation and industrialisation, and unleashed the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution with catastrophic consequences. Mao Zedong rose to leadership of the Chinese Communist Party through the Long March and Yan’an years, developing a distinctive theory of revolution adapted to Chinese conditions: emphasis on the peasantry rather than the urban proletariat as the revolutionary class, ‘people’s war’ as military strategy, the importance of political mobilisation alongside military action, and the concept of ‘contradictions’ as the engine of historical change. His military and political strategy defeated the Nationalists in the civil war (1945–49) and established the People’s Republic on 1 October 1949. In the early years of the PRC, land reform transferred land to peasants and began the process of collectivisation; the Korean War intervention preserved North Korea and demonstrated China’s military capacity. The Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957), the Great Leap Forward (1958–62), and the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) represent the catastrophic dimensions of his rule: mass mobilisations that killed tens of millions through famine and political violence. His opening to Nixon in 1972 represented a strategic reorientation of China’s foreign policy, using American counterbalance to constrain Soviet pressure. The Chinese Communist Party’s 1981 assessment — that Mao was ‘70% correct and 30% wrong’ — reflects the genuine dilemma of a state that owes its existence to his victories while acknowledging the horror of his later policies. Mao occupies a unique position in the pantheon of twentieth-century leaders in that it is genuinely difficult to assess whether the revolutionary victories of 1949 — which ended the ‘century of humiliation’, reunified China, and created the conditions for subsequent development — justify the tens of millions killed in the Great Leap and Cultural Revolution. The Chinese Communist Party’s resolution of the question — praise the victories, acknowledge the mistakes, move on — is politically necessary but intellectually inadequate. The more honest assessment requires holding two truths simultaneously: that the revolution Mao led addressed real historical injustices and created the unified state that made China’s subsequent development possible, and that the policies he implemented killed more Chinese people than any foreign aggressor since the Mongols. The tension between these two truths is not resolved by choosing one; it is the essential condition of any serious engagement with Chinese twentieth-century history.. It is 4.5 by 6 meters, weighs 1.5 tons, and is replaced every year before National Day. Rumors persist that the portrait shrinks slightly with each iteration—a subtle, almost magical shrinking of the Great Helmsman’s influence. But as Tania Branigan notes in her book Red Memory, the image remains colossal, its gaze inescapable.

In this week’s podcast, I explored the politics of memory in modern China. Tiananmen Square is not just a physical space; it is a palimpsest of Chinese history. It was the site of the 1919 student protests against the Treaty of VersaillesTreaty of Versailles Full Description The peace settlement signed on 28 June 1919 that ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied powers. Its most controversial provisions included the “war guilt clause” (Article 231), which assigned responsibility for the war to Germany and formed the legal basis for reparations; the transfer of German territories including Alsace-Lorraine, Posen, and parts of Silesia; and strict limits on the German military. Germany received no negotiating role and signed under protest. Critical Perspective The Versailles settlement has been blamed for causing the Second World War, but this is an oversimplification that owes more to Nazi propaganda than historical analysis. Margaret MacMillan and others have argued that the treaty was harsh but not crippling — Germany retained its industrial capacity and its borders with major powers remained intact. The real failure was in implementation: reparations were inconsistently enforced, and no Allied power was willing to use force to uphold the settlement when Germany began to rearm., the place where Mao declared the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, and the stage for the Red Guard rallies of the Cultural RevolutionCultural Revolution Mao Zedong’s decade-long campaign of radical political and social transformation launched in China in 1966, in which Red Guards attacked ‘capitalist roaders’ and ‘counter-revolutionaries’, destroying cultural heritage, paralysing the education system, and killing an estimated half million to two million people. The Cultural Revolution was Mao’s response to his political marginalisation following the catastrophic Great Leap Forward. In 1966, bypassing the party apparatus that had constrained him, Mao appealed directly to youth — mobilising millions of students as Red Guards to ‘bombard the headquarters’ of the party bureaucracy. Red Guards attacked teachers, intellectuals, party officials, and anyone associated with ‘old culture, old customs, old habits, old ideas.’ Universities were closed; professors were paraded through streets in dunce caps; historical monuments, temples, and artworks were destroyed. An entire generation lost its education. The party establishment — including future leader Deng Xiaoping — was purged, imprisoned, or sent to rural re-education camps. The violence was not centralised but diffuse, as competing Red Guard factions turned on each other in cities across the country. By 1968, the chaos had become ungovernable and Mao deployed the People’s Liberation Army to restore order, sending urban youth to the countryside in what was simultaneously a pacification measure and a punishment. The Cultural Revolution formally ended with Mao’s death in 1976 and the arrest of the Gang of Four; the Chinese Communist Party’s 1981 assessment held that it had been a catastrophic error for which Mao bore primary responsibility. The Cultural Revolution exposed the fundamental instability of Maoist politics: a system premised on continuous revolutionary struggle could not achieve the institutional consolidation needed to govern a modern state without either betraying its revolutionary principles or destroying the institutions that made governance possible. The revolution consumed itself. More broadly, it illustrates the particular danger of charismatic authoritarian rule combined with ideological purity demands: once the standard of ideological correctness is deployed as a political weapon, there is no institutional check on its escalation. Everyone becomes potentially guilty; denunciation becomes survival strategy; the most radical faction wins by outbidding all others. The children who spent their formative years as Red Guards — the generation that Mao called upon to smash the old world — were the same generation that had to rebuild China’s institutions in the decades that followed, carrying the trauma of what they had done and what had been done to them.. And, of course, it is the site of the 1989 massacre—an event that has been meticulously scrubbed from the official record.

The Century of Humiliation

To understand the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), one must understand the narrative of the “Century of Humiliation” (1842-1949). The Party presents itself not just as a governing body, but as the saviour of the nation—the force that ended the domination of foreign powers and restored China’s dignity.

This narrative is reinforced through “Red Tourism.” Sites like Mao’s birthplace in Shaoshan or the revolutionary base at Yan’an have been turned into pilgrimage destinations, blending historical drama with commercial kitsch. As Branigan writes, business marches in step with the Party. These sites encourage citizens to “recall past bitterness” (pre-1949 misery) to appreciate “present happiness.”

However, this narrative requires selective amnesia. The “bitterness” must always be located before 1949. The Great Leap ForwardThe Great Leap Forward A catastrophic economic and social campaign led by Mao Zedong prior to the Cultural Revolution. Its massive failure and the resulting famine weakened Mao’s position within the party, providing the primary motivation for him to launch the Cultural Revolution to regain absolute control. The Great Leap Forward was an attempt to rapidly transform China from an agrarian economy into a socialist industrial society through collectivization and the construction of “backyard furnaces” for steel production. It resulted in one of the deadliest man-made famines in human history.
Read more, which caused a famine killing tens of millions, and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution are glossed over or ignored entirely. In the National Museum, the Cultural Revolution—a decade of trauma—is relegated to a dingy corner, while mobile phones and space capsules take center stage as proof of “socialism with Chinese characteristicsSocialism with Chinese Characteristics Short Description (Excerpt):The official ideology adopted by Deng Xiaoping in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. It provided the theoretical justification for introducing market capitalism and foreign investment while maintaining the Communist Party’s absolute political control. Full Description:Socialism with Chinese Characteristics represents the great pivot away from Maoism. It argues that the primary goal of socialism is to develop the productive forces of the nation, and that market mechanisms are neutral tools that can be used to achieve this. Critical Perspective:Critics view this as a euphemism for state capitalism. It allowed the party to survive the collapse of global communism by delivering economic growth, but it generated massive inequality. It represents a tacit admission that the ideological goals of the Cultural Revolution were a failure, replacing the promise of utopian equality with the promise of national wealth.
Read more.”

The Memory of Silence

Forgetting is a powerful tool of statecraft. In the West, we often assume that historical truth will eventually out, but as we see in post-war Germany or even modern Britain, societies often collude in their own amnesia. In China, this silence is enforced by the state but also adopted by families as a survival mechanism.

Under Xi Jinping, himself a “princeling” born of the revolution, the narrative has tightened. The “Chinese Dream” links the revolutionary past directly to a prosperous, powerful future, bypassing the messy, bloody middle. The Party’s legitimacy now rests on delivering economic growth and nationalism. As long as the economy grows, the silence holds. But as growth slows, the reliance on nationalism—and the memory of overcoming foreign aggression—becomes ever more critical.

Mao’s portrait remains because to remove it would be to pull the thread that unravels the entire tapestry. He may have been “70% right and 30% wrong” according to official doctrine, but he is the anchor. Without him, the Party has no history, and without history, it has no mandate.

Part 3: Tidied Transcript

Nick: Welcome again to the Explaining History podcast.

If I sound a bit odd today, I’ve had a tooth pulled out this morning. So bear with me!

Before we get into anything, a quick reminder: the Russian History Masterclass for students is happening on January 26th at 3pm UK time. This isn’t just about memorizing facts; it’s about structuring arguments, understanding historiography, and getting the top marks. There are only 100 tickets, so grab yours via the link in the show notes.

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Today, I want to talk about memory—specifically, official forgetting in China. I’m looking at Tania Branigan’s excellent book Red Memory. In the third chapter, she discusses Tiananmen Square and its resonance beyond the 1989 massacre.

Branigan writes:

“Across the way hangs a portrait of Mao… He gazes over the soldiers and selfie-taking tourists… Most assume that the picture will hang there as long as the party hangs onto power… Though a friend once claimed to me that it shrank by an inch every year… It seemed more than unlikely.”

Tiananmen Square has three key dates, each roughly 40 years apart: 1919, 1949, and 1989.

For Chinese people, the square represents the May Fourth Movement of 1919, where students protested the betrayal of China at the Treaty of Versailles. This nationalist anger against foreign imperialism is partly why communism took root.

Then there is 1949, when Mao proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic, declaring that the “Century of Humiliation” (starting with the Opium Wars) was over. The square was quadrupled in size to become a public theatre of power.

And then, 1989. For foreigners, this is the defining event—the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. This destroyed the Party’s claim to serve the people. Its rule now rests on economic well-being and the restoration of national pride.

Since 1989, the Party has redoubled its commitment to “patriotic education.” It has rewritten textbooks and opened “Red Tourism” sites like Mao’s birthplace. Citizens are encouraged to “recall past bitterness” (pre-1949 misery) to cherish present happiness.

Branigan notes a telling detail from the National Museum. A glass case holds notes from Liu Shaoqi investigating the Great Famine of roughly 1960. The famine killed between 30 and 70 million people—the greatest human catastrophe of the 20th century. Yet, the museum captions it vaguely as “difficulties,” without explaining the cause. Liu’s investigation helped end the famine but led to his own death during the Cultural Revolution—a second catastrophe that the museum relegates to a dingy corner.

Forgetting is not unique to China. Post-war West Germany had a similar “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude about the war years. States shape public memory to maintain moral authority. In China, the Party cannot fully acknowledge the disasters of MaoismMaoism Full Description:Maoism (or Mao Zedong Thought) emerged as a response to the specific material conditions of semi-feudal, semi-colonial societies. Unlike orthodox Soviet Marxism, which viewed the urban working class as the vanguard of history, Maoism argued that in colonized nations, the vast peasantry constituted the true revolutionary force. Key Theoretical Shifts: The Peasant Revolution: The rejection of the Eurocentric Marxist view that peasants were reactionary; instead, they are mobilized as the engine of socialist transformation. People’s War: A military-political strategy aimed at mobilizing the rural population to encircle and eventually capture the urban centers of power. Anti-Imperialism: The framing of the class struggle as inextricably linked to the struggle for national liberation against foreign colonial powers. Critical Perspective:Critically, Maoism represented a “sinification” of Marxism that de-centered the West. By asserting that the path to socialism did not require waiting for Western-style industrial capitalism to develop first, it provided a blueprint for insurgencies across the Global South (the “Third World”). However, this focus often justified the militarization of social life, where society was permanently organized on a war footing against real or imagined imperialist threats. because Mao is the foundation of their legitimacy. He is seen as “70% right, 30% wrong,” but the specifics of the “wrong” remain blurry.

Xi Jinping, a “princeling” of the revolution, has embraced this heritage. His “Chinese Dream” links the revolutionary struggle directly to modern prosperity—mobile phones and space capsules are presented as the rewards of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

In democratic countries, we see similar battles over memory. In the US and UK, there is a push for “patriotic” narratives in education, trying to inculcate national pride in increasingly diverse societies.

I hope you found that useful. Don’t forget to check out the Patreon and the Masterclass tickets.

Take care, everybody. All the best. Bye-bye.