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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…
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How a political struggle became a project to remake the self — and why remembering it matters. Why 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…