Case study: Mao and the People's Republic of China
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Flip to reveal answersWho was Mao Zedong and what region/years define him?
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Question
Who was Mao Zedong and what region/years define him?
Answer
The leader of the CCP who founded the People's Republic of China. Region: Asia; in power 1949–1976.
Question
When and what was the founding of the PRC?
Answer
Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949, after winning the Chinese Civil War.
Question
What was the Long March (1934–35)?
Answer
The CCP's 9,000 km retreat to escape Nationalist forces; it confirmed Mao as leader and became a founding myth.
Question
How did Mao take power?
Answer
By building a peasant-based guerrilla movement and winning the Chinese Civil War against the Nationalists.
Question
How did Mao consolidate power?
Answer
Land reform, campaigns against 'counter-revolutionaries', the 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign, terror, and a cult of personality.
Question
What was the cult of personality around Mao?
Answer
Worship of Mao as the infallible 'Great Helmsman', spread through the Little Red Book of his sayings.
Question
What was the Great Leap Forward (1958–62)?
Answer
Mao's drive to industrialise fast via communes and backyard furnaces; it caused the worst famine in history, killing tens of millions.
Question
What was the Cultural Revolution (1966–76)?
Answer
A campaign using the Red Guards to purge rivals and 'old' ideas, causing mass persecution and over a million deaths.
Question
What were the overall results of Mao's rule?
Answer
Total one-party control and a transformed, unified China — at a catastrophic human cost of tens of millions of deaths.
Question
Why does Mao suit Paper 2's two-example rule?
Answer
He is from Asia, so he pairs with a leader from a different region (e.g. Stalin/Hitler in Europe, Castro in the Americas).
Question
Compare how Mao and Stalin consolidated power.
Answer
Both used terror, purges and a personality cult; but Mao secured a freshly won revolution through mass mobilisation, while Stalin captured an existing party from within.
Question
What was the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957)?
Answer
A purge of critics and intellectuals; hundreds of thousands were silenced, imprisoned or sent to labour camps.
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Case studies (authoritarian leaders)
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