MAO ZEDONG: THE MAN WHO MADE MODERN CHINA

Episode 13 | Human History — IndividualsIn this History episode we focus on Mao Zedong — the man who unified China after a century of chaos and also caused a famine that killed between 15 and 55 million people in four years, the worst in human history. His face is still on every Chinese banknote.This episode covers his childhood in Hunan, the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, the Long March, the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, the Great Leap Forward and the specific mechanisms that turned bad policy into the worst famine in human history, the Cultural Revolution as a political purge using teenagers as instruments, and the Chinese Communist Party's 1981 formulation that Mao was seventy percent correct and thirty percent wrong — and why that formulation is politically convenient but historically insufficient.The most consequential political figure of the 20th century outside of Europe.#HistoryMystery #MaoZedong #China #CulturalRevolution #HistoryPodcast