Mao Zedong ruled China from 1949 until his death in 1976, presiding over the Korean War, the Sino-Soviet split, the catastrophic Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution — one of the most violent and disorienting political upheavals of the 20th century. Explaining History has covered Mao’s China across all of these phases, from the alliance with Stalin through the radicalism of the Red Guards to the memory politics of Xi Jinping’s China today.
Mao and the Communist World: 1949–1966
When the People’s Republic was founded in 1949, Mao entered an uneasy alliance with Stalin — a relationship built on mutual need but undermined by mistrust, competing ambitions, and the Korean War. After Stalin’s death, Mao expected to lead the world communist movement. His collision with Khrushchev split the global left in two and reshaped Cold War politics from Africa to Latin America.
Mao, Stalin and Khrushchev: 1949–1957
Stalin, Mao and the Korean War
Maoism and Anti-Imperialism
Mao, Deng and the Sino-Soviet Split
The Sino-Soviet Split — In Conversation with Larry Auton Leaf
The Cultural Revolution: 1966–1976
In 1966 Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, mobilising millions of young Red Guards to tear down party bureaucrats, intellectuals, and anyone deemed insufficiently revolutionary. The result was a decade of terror, denunciation, and political chaos that destroyed countless lives and left China’s institutions in ruins. These episodes examine the experience of those who lived through it and the ideological machinery that drove it.
Mao’s Lost Generation: Youth, Ideology and the Cultural Revolution
Maoist Struggle Sessions and the Cultural Revolution
After Mao: Reform, Memory and China Today
After Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping dismantled central planning and opened China to market forces — producing the most rapid economic transformation in history. But the political system remained a one-party state, and the memory of Mao’s catastrophes was carefully managed rather than honestly confronted. These episodes examine China’s transformation and the politics of historical memory under Xi Jinping.
China’s Transformation 1978–84
Official Remembering and Forgetting in Xi Jinping’s China
China and the West in the 21st Century
Episodes on the Great Leap Forward and Mao’s famine will be added to this collection shortly.
Related Collections
- The Cold War
- The Russian Revolution
- The Vietnam War
- Stalin and the Soviet Union
- Browse all topic collections →
Further Reading
These articles from the Explaining History archive go deeper on the history behind these episodes:
- Maoism Explained Part One — A clear introduction to Maoist ideology and its roots in Chinese revolutionary thought.
- Origins of Mao’s Cultural Revolution — The political crises inside the Communist Party that triggered the Cultural Revolution.
- Western Intellectuals and Mao’s China — Why so many Western thinkers were seduced by the Maoist experiment.
- The Cultural Revolution — A longform article on Mao’s Cultural Revolution: its origins, the Red Guards, and the lasting trauma it inflicted on Chinese society.
- Deng Xiaoping: The Pragmatic Revolution — A longform article on Deng’s transformation of China from Maoist orthodoxy to market-driven modernisation.
