Show Notes
No one is disputed like Mao. Was he a mass murderer, a Communist hero, a charlatan, or a great poet? The saviour of the peasants, or the man who extracted from them all that he could?
Mao’s biography is a nest of contradictions. He led the largest revolution in world history, then presided over its largest famine – and even then, life expectancy rose 20 years over the course of his rule. He launched rebellions – against a government he already controlled. He purged his enemies and friends alike.
Some 50 years after his death, he remains a central figure in Chinese politics. The Communist Party of China posthumously declared him to be 70% right and 30% wrong, but his face still hangs over Tiananmen Square.
In this second episode on China’s history, Rebecca Karl – author of China’s Revolutions in the Modern World – returns to tell Richard Hames about the Mao era, with all its promises, contradictions and catastrophes.
Watch the previous episode with Rebecca, on China’s century of revolutions.
Explore the map we’re making throughout this series of DYOR, of all the people, events and ideas of the Mao era.
00:00 Intro
4:00 Who Was Mao?
10:52 The 1950s: Land Reform & Early Socialism
24:27 Gender, Class Divides & Welfare
38:37 The Hundred Flowers Campaign Explained
50:15 Famine & The Great Leap Forward
1:03:09 Was the Famine the End of Socialism? Cold War & the Third Front
1:15:02 The Cultural Revolution Explained
1:28:57 How the Cultural Revolution Ended
1:37:30 Jiang Qing, the Gang of Four & Deng Xiaoping’s Return
1:47:49 Mao’s Legacy: Is China Socialist Today?
Support our work.
More from Novara Media
In Brighton, for a special recording of Downstream IRL, Ash Sarkar sat down with Naomi Klein, and organiser, writer and co-founder of the Debt Collective, Astra Taylor. They gathered to discuss their new book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World.
Three years ago, just weeks after the genocide began, writer Omar El Akkad posted a tweet, attached to some footage showing the extent of the ruin that Israel had already visited on Gaza. The compelling thought, crystallised in that viral tweet, would go on to become the name of his bestselling book: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.
For a century, China underwent a series of invasions, revolutions and counter-revolutions. In China, it’s known as the Century of Humiliation.
This week marked three years since the Hamas attack of October 7th, and the beginning of the Israeli state’s genocidal onslaught against the Palestinian people. In that time, Western leaders from Joe Biden and Donald Trump to Keir Starmer and now Andy Burnham have refused to call the genocide what it is, despite the consensus of genocide scholars. One outlier among Western leaders during this period has been Humza Yousaf.
Huawei makes the pipes and cables that power the Chinese internet. Its global reach has made China into a superpower.