Mao Zedong China S Revolution

Whether one views Mao Zedong as a hero or a demon, the "Great Helmsman" was undoubtedly a pivotal figure in the history of 20th-century China. The first part of this volume is an introductory essay that traces the history of 20th-century China, from Mao's early career up to the Chinese Communist Party's victory in 1949, through three decades of revolution, to Mao's death I 1976. The second half offers a selection of Mao's writings - including such seminal pieces as "On the New Democracy" and selections from the "Little Red Book" - and writings about Mao and his legacy by both his contemporaries and modern scholars. Also included are headnotes, a chronology, Questions for Consideration, photographs, a selected bibliography, and index.

Whether one views Mao Zedong as a hero or a villain, the ‘Great Helmsman’ was, undoubtedly, a pivotal figure in the history of twentieth-century China, a man whose life and writings provide a fascinating window on the Chinese experience from the 1920s onward. Part Mao biography, part historical overview of the turbulent story of China’s Communist revolutions, the introductory essay traces the history of twentieth-century China, from Mao’s early career up to the Chinese Communist Party’s victory in 1949, through three decades of revolution to Mao’s death in 1976. The second half of the volume offers a selection of Mao’s writings — including such seminal pieces as "On New Democracy" and selections from the Little Red Book — and writings about Mao and his legacy by both his contemporaries and modern scholars.

Through first-person accounts, informational text, and photos, students will learn about Chairman Mao’s theories, military strategies, and political policies known as Maoism, which forever changed the culture of China and communication between the East and the West.

China’s Communist Party seized power in 1949 after a long period of guerrilla insurgency followed by full-scale war, but the Chinese revolution was just beginning. China Under Mao narrates the rise and fall of the Maoist revolutionary state from 1949 to 1976—an epoch of startling accomplishments and disastrous failures, steered by many forces but dominated above all by Mao Zedong. “Walder convincingly shows that the effect of Maoist inequalities still distorts China today...[It] will be a mind-opening book for many (and is a depressing reminder for others).” —Jonathan Mirsky, The Spectator “Andrew Walder’s account of Mao’s time in power is detailed, sophisticated and powerful...Walder takes on many pieces of conventional wisdom about Mao’s China and pulls them apart...What was it that led so much of China’s population to follow Mao’s orders, in effect to launch a civil war against his own party? There is still much more to understand about the bond between Mao and the wider population. As we try to understand that bond, there will be few better guides than Andrew Walder’s book. Sober, measured, meticulous in every deadly detail, it is an essential assessment of one of the world’s most important revolutions.” —Rana Mitter, Times Literary Supplement

Acclaimed by the Daily Mail as 'definitive and harrowing' , this is the final volume of 'The People's Trilogy', begun by the Samuel Johnson prize-winning Mao's Great Famine. After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives between 1958 and 1962, an ageing Mao launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalist elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. But the Chairman also used the Cultural Revolution to turn on his colleagues, some of them longstanding comrades-in-arms, subjecting them to public humiliation, imprisonment and torture. Young students formed Red Guards, vowing to defend the Chairman to the death, but soon rival factions started fighting each other in the streets with semi-automatic weapons in the name of revolutionary purity. As the country descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning China into a garrison state marked by bloody purges that crushed as many as one in fifty people. When the army itself fell victim to the Cultural Revolution, ordinary people used the political chaos to resurrect the marked and hollow out the party's ideology. In short, they buried Maoism. In-depth interviews and archival research at last give voice to the people and the complex choices they faced, undermining the picture of conformity that is often understood to have characterised the last years of Mao's regime. By demonstrating that decollectivisation from below was an unintended consequence of a decade of violent purges and entrenched fear, Frank Dikotter casts China's most tumultuous era in a wholly new light. Written with unprecedented access to previously classified party documents from secret police reports to unexpurgated versions of leadership speeches, this third chapter in Frank Dikotter's extraordinarily lucid and ground-breaking 'People's Trilogy' is a devastating reassessment of the history of the People's Republic of China.

Explains why Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, and shows his Machiavellian role in masterminding it. This book documents the Hobbesian state that ensued. Power struggles raged among Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Qing - Mao's wife and leader of the Gang of Four - while Mao often played one against the other.

Academic interest in Mao Zedong's role in the Chinese Revolution remains intense, as scholars and commentators continue to analyze his thinking and the history of the movement for clues about the Chinese model and its supposedly unique features. The debate about Mao's career and influence is now enlivened by the consequences of the dramatic turn by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) away from the radical socialism he is said to represent and its granting of a far greater role to the market, though without shedding much of its political power. Collections of primary sources on Mao Zedong and CCP history, written by the communists themselves, are readily available but informed scholarship is indispensable to explain these sources and to put them in proper perspective. What were Mao's objectives? Were they consistent? In what ways did Mao manipulate the CCP and the state to his own political ends? To what extent did his political vision dominate Chinese politics in the revolutionary years and after 1949? And where is Chinese communism now headed? This new major work will help to identify some of the answers. Bringing together the best scholarship, reportage, and other materials, the collection includes the following: scholarly studies by Westerners on Mao's life and work, including wide-ranging studies of Mao's political career as a whole psychological studies studies on his role in the urban years, the rural period, the Japanese War, the Civil War, the 1950s, the deepening of the revolution under the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and the final years specialist essays on his views on topics such as philosophy, literature, economics, and the Soviet Union studies on his interpretation of Marxism assessments of his role in the Chinese Revolution by Soviet China watchers. Comprehensively indexed and with an introduction newly written by the editor, a leading expert in years and after 1949? And where is Chinese communism now headed? This new major work will help to identify some of the answers. Bringing together the best scholarship, reportage, and other materials, the collection includes the following: scholarly studies by Westerners on Mao's life and work, including wide-ranging studies of Mao's political career as a whole psychological studies studies on his role in the urban years, the rural period, the Japanese War, the Civil War, the 1950s, the deepening of the revolution under the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and the final years specialist essays on his views on topics such as philosophy, literature, economics, and the Soviet Union studies on his interpretation of Marxism assessments of his role in the Chinese Revolution by Soviet China watchers. Comprehensively indexed and with an introduction newly written by the editor, a leading expert in /LI> assessments of his role in the Chinese Revolution by Soviet China watchers. Comprehensively indexed and with an introduction newly written by the editor, a leading expert in the field, Mao Zedong and the Chinese Revolutionis a vital reference resource for all scholars and students of Chinese communism.

Mao Zedong's political career spanned more than half a century. The ideas he championed transformed China and inspired revolutionary movements across the world. In this book, leading scholars offer a critical evaluation of the life and legacy of China's most famous son.