Once the totalitarian regime is established, various disasters are bound to recur. A totalitarian state is diagonally opposite to liberal democracy, which is characterized by prevalence of horizontal connections, the sum total of which constitute a social contract. An ideal totalitarian structure, to the contrary, is like a zero-impedance conductor: orders flow from the top to the lowest level all without any obstacle. It was this totalitarian system that enabled Mao, the charismatic leader, to use his overwhelming social support to overthrow his political rivals within the system when his authority was weakened. Like a courtly struggle, the Cultural Revolution was for the sake of Mao’s personal power, but the cost of social destruction was incomparably greater.

This chapter delves into Mao’s endeavors to reconfigure socialist industrialization from the late 1950s through the mid-1970s. Amid waning Sino–Soviet relations, Mao criticized Soviet-style centralized planning and advocated decentralization during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961). This policy shift granted local officials increased horizontal control over major state-owned enterprises (SOEs), such as Angang. Following the Great Leap Forward’s collapse, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) constructed new industrial SOEs within inland “Third Front” regions as a bulwark against potential American and Soviet attacks, thereby reducing resource allocation for Angang and Manchuria. Commencing in 1966, the Cultural Revolution further decentralized power from nationally-owned SOEs such as Angang to local CCP cadres and military forces. Despite these attempts to deviate from the Soviet model, these efforts still preserved essential aspects of socialist industrialization. Nevertheless, the Sino–US rapprochement of 1972 presented China with the prospect of integration into the US-led capitalist global economy.

This chapter examines how borderlands state building backfired against the background of aggressive collectivization movements in the two counries from 1958 to 1964. During agricultural collectivization, state building by the two communist states at the border became increasingly coercive. The border people nevertheless sought to take advantage of the porous international boundary to resist state incursion by voting with their feet, making the extension of state authority and its functions a highly contested process. The years from 1958 to the escalation of the Vietnam War in 1964 witnessed a widening gap between what the two centralizing governments sought to achieve at their shared border and the capabilities of the state organs stationed on the ground to pursue the diplomatic and state-building tasks assigned to them by the political centers. The famine caused by the Great Leap Forward drove an increasing number of unauthorized border crossings. The Vietnamese communists, who initiated their own cooperative movement in 1958, perceived the emerging chaos in China as detrimental to the consolidation of the DRV state. This severely tested the ability of the Chinese and Vietnamese local officials to enforce their recently established border control institutions, making this a prominent bilateral issue.

Chapter 4 delves into the “great leap” of small hydropower during the Maoist period. It analyzes the distinctive feature of the expansion of the hydropower nation as it was influenced by Maoist ideology: Mass participation. Despite the common assumption that Communist China blindly pursued mega dams, Mao believed in “walking on two legs”: Large Soviet-style dams on the one hand, and small indigenous hydro projects that could be built and operated by the masses on the other. With the goal of boosting agricultural productivity and rural electrification, the PRC state mobilized communes nationwide to harness local rivers for the generation of electricity. This chapter examines local experiences of small hydro campaigns, focusing on Yongchun in Fujian Province. Across the country, tens of thousands of small hydroelectric power stations were constructed within a few years. The lack of prior hydrological investigations and professional knowledge, however, meant that many of these stations were not able to deliver stable electrical output, while they also resulted in the fragmentation of local rivers.

In 1958–59, Khrushchev acted aggressively, most notably with his ill-conceived attempt to force the Allies out of Berlin. This move was partly a response to Mao's actions in the Taiwan Strait and a similar calculation of war risks. Both leaders believed their gambles would not trigger a military response from the United States, but Khrushchev soon realized he had miscalculated. Instead of adhering to his deadline, Khrushchev engaged the West in a dialogue. In September 1959, he visited the United States, gaining the recognition he so desired. Meanwhile, the Great Leap Forward, which Mao launched to prove that China was better than the USSR at building socialism, resulted in a massive famine in China. The failure of the Great Leap boosted Khrushchev's confidence, but Sino-Soviet relations continued to worsen.

Since modern tyrannies tend to be ideological in character, they rely heavily on rhetoric or propaganda. This chapter consists of eight speeches that illustrate different ways that rhetoric has been used to foster tyrannical or immoral and violent policies in modern politics. The speakers include Maximilien Robespierre, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Goebbels, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, and Deng Xiaoping.

The chronic inefficiencies of clothing production in the Mao years can be attributed in some part to cotton rationing. Chapter 5 explores the impact of rationing on selling, buying and using cloth. Shortages of cotton cloth were virtually guaranteed through a combination of problems in the agrarian sector and priority given to exports in the trade sector. Fabric shortages led to a seemingly interminable cycle of patching and recycling clothes. ‘Supply failing to meet demand’ (gong bu ying qiu) and ‘[getting] clothes made is difficult’ (zuo yi nan) were consistent refrains. While there were some creative responses to shortages, rationing also meant that clothes had to be worn for years on end. Introduced just as the zhifu regime was taking shape, ration coupons were instrumental in consolidating it.

In Mao’s China (1949–1976), coal shortage limited industrialization and economic growth. Under the conditions of a Western embargo, the adoption of Soviet mining technology in accordance with the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance (1950) was the only choice when the Chinese coal mining industry was predominantly manual and needed mechanization to increase its output.

The Soviet and Chinese documents examined in this chapter from 1956 to 1965 on Sino-Soviet co-operation in science and technology in the coal industry reveal a genuine sense of fraternal co-operation but different managerial cultures within the socialist ecumene, with not only different expectations but also different ways of doing things and very different resource bases. This chapter provides new insights into China’s position in the Eastern Bloc and vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. The findings confound our understanding of this period as one of deep ideological hostility on the part of the PRC party-state toward the capitalist West, showing instead that in international trade and co-operation, the priority was not ideology but rather economic development.

Using the example of 1950s historiography, this chapter aims to analyze why the CCP has not succeeded in dominating China’s collective memory. In doing so, it will identify four main reasons for the party’s failure: first, the weaknesses of the resolution from 1981; second, the phase(s) of intellectual and academic freedoms in the 1980s; third, the CCP’s inability to overcome inner-party disagreements on the question of how the Party should assess its own “historical mistakes”; fourth, the fact that memories cannot be suppressed permanently. The chapter shows that the historiography is an ongoing process that is not yet completed, and that China’s current president Xi Jinping’s politics of history has led the CCP into a dead end since this political approach attempts both to suppress alternative views of post-1949 history and to finally establish official narratives on a long-term basis.

Like their predecessors, Communist officials initially placed strict restrictions on birth control and abortion, encouraging high fertility rates. Focusing on the early years of the People’s Republic from 1949 until the Great Leap Forward, this chapter shows that even in this constrained environment, literature on sex and birth control continued to be published, promoting disparate narratives on sexuality and fostering diverse local contraceptive practices. The need to more fully mobilize women’s labor led to a gradual loosening of birth control limitations. Yet, the availability of information about sex, as well as access to birth control, abortions, and sterilizations, differed dramatically according to location, class, and education level.

One of the most influential individuals of modern history is Mao Zedong – or Chairman Mao. He lived an extraordinary life. Influenced by the Marxist-Leninist ideology of communism while a student at Peking University, Mao was a founding member of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1927. He immediately led an insurrection – the Autumn Harvest Uprising – that initiated a civil war with the Kuomintang (KMT), the nationalist party that then ruled China. It was a war that would last until 1949 (although interrupted by the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945). When Mao’s CPC finally defeated the nationalists, the KMT and its followers retreated to Taiwan. This is the reason that China still does not recognise Taiwan as an independent country today.

As reports of mass famine turned from a trickle to a flood in 1960, the leadership slowly realized that the party had made a mistake of historical proportion. According to Ministry of Public Security data, 675 counties and cities had death rates exceeding 2 percent of population in the early 1960s, compared to the normal 1 percent or so. In forty counties, mainly in Anhui, Sichuan, Henan, Guizhou, and Qinghai, the death rates exceeded 10 percent of the population (Yang et al. 2012: 395). Economists and demographers estimate that the Great Leap Forward caused sixteen to thirty million unnatural deaths in the early 1960s (Kung and Lin 2003). The policy of using confiscated grain to finance a rapid buildup of industrial capacity championed by Mao and his colleagues had led to one of the greatest man-made disasters in the twentieth century.

Authoritarian regimes must grapple with a fundamental source of instability that a significant redistribution of power, often unseen or only partially observed, can radically alter the incentives of regime insiders and overturn initially stable equilibria (Acemoglu et al. 2008). Although institutional features such as authoritarian legislatures and a ruling party can alleviate the incentives to usurp the incumbent leader to some extent, especially among lower-level officials (Gandhi 2008; Svolik 2012), they cannot fundamentally remove the incentives to grab power forcefully in the top echelon of these regimes. For one, one-party states by design entrust enormous power in the hands of the top few officials or even in the hands of one person. For ambitious officials just one layer below the very top facing a low probability of ordinary promotion, the reward for achieving an extra step upward can be enormous and can justify a risky gamble, especially if an external shock leads to a significant redistribution of power. Even for those who are already in the top echelon of the ruling party, a gamble to break the existing power-sharing equilibrium can reap enormous rewards as the power and resources of authoritarian colleagues are consolidated into one’s hands. Knowing the dangers of these possibilities, authoritarian leaders also have the incentives to preempt potentially threatening colleagues by removing them from power with coercive measures. In the absence of credible constitutional frameworks or electoral pressure to stop the actions of the top leadership, the stable façade of authoritarian politics can quickly descend into coups, purges, and assassinations.

In mid-1975, a sickly Mao had one of the last meetings with the Politburo. During the meeting, Mao shook hands with the entire Politburo, probably for the last time in his life. When he greeted alternate Politburo member and Vice Premier Wu Guixian, Mao confessed, “I don’t know who you are.” An embarrassed Wu said, “Chairman, we met in 1964 during the national day parade.” Mao compounded her embarrassment by responding, “I didn’t know that” (Mao 1975).

China’s use of Switzerland changed as a result of the Sino-Soviet split, as China tried to compensate for the loss of assistance from the Soviet Union and its allies by increasing its relations with Western Europe. The Swiss missions in Switzerland were important for China’s efforts to increase its presence in Latin America and Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The case of nine Chinese who were arrested in Brazil in 1964 is used to demonstrate how China’s missions in Switzerland contributed to China’s global presence, and how the Swiss government and Swiss businesses were affected by Chinese actions abroad. Swiss support for Tibet and Tibetan refugees is discussed to show that the Swiss government also took advantage of the importance that Switzerland played for China, and managed to get away with actions that China did not tolerate from other nations. The chapter also discusses the effects that the Great Leap Forward had on Chinese and Swiss bilateral trade relations from 1958 to 1965, how Swiss companies and government officials tried to increase trade, and how the Sino-Soviet split led China to increase the scope of its network of embargo goods dealers that it operated out of Bern.

Chapter 5 gives an overview of the Chinese Communist Party’s many campaigns against corruption throughout its history up to 1990. As with Taiwan and South Korea in previous chapters, authoritarian anti-corruption success in China has depended on a strongly motivated leadership with discretionary power driving reforms and a capable party-state implementing them. This combination of factors allowed Chairman Mao’s Three Antis–Five Antis Campaign (1951–53) to curb corruption and help the new communist regime penetrate and reform China’s complex urban areas. However, the disastrous failure of the Great Leap Forward (1958–62) triggered a rise in bribe-taking and embezzlement, especially among rural cadres, and later campaigns under Mao aimed at controlling corruption ended in failure. After Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping prioritized liberalizing economic reforms and proved unwilling to jeopardize these reforms by cracking down on the corruption that had come with them. The party leadership conducted a large-scale purge of allegedly corrupt officials to assuage public discontent after the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square, but it ultimately had little effect.

When the Communist Party of China announced a new government on October 1, 1949, the economy that government inherited was in shambles. China had been at war for over twelve years and much of the infrastructure of the country had been destroyed or badly damaged and prices were rising at 51 percent per month or 13,000 percent per year. The Guomindang government fleeing to Taiwan took much of the country’s foreign-exchange and gold reserves with them, along with many of the managers of the banks and industrial firms. Inflation and war left many of the businesses that stayed barely able to function even when their managers and technicians did not flee.

Chapter 7 focuses on the economic and political reforms of General Secretary Zhao Ziyang (1919–2005) and his predecessor Hu Yaobang (1915–1989). The reforms are placed within the context of both the controversial “reform and opening” policies of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997), and also the larger context of intra-Party ideological debates dating back to founding of the nation. Zhao’s early career as Party secretary in his native county before 1949 is contrasted with his later posting to Guangdong as part of an initiative to break local resistance to land reform in the 1950s. The disastrous Great Leap Forward is presented as a formative experience for Zhao, leading him to side with Mao’s critics, a decision which would in turn lead to his fall from power in 1967. His eventual rehabilitation by Zhou Enlai in 1971 is described as having led Zhao to support political and economic reform beginning with the Li Yizhe controversary of 1974 and culminating in his work in the late 1970s as Party secretary in Sichuan, where he was responsible for implementing Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in the agricultural sector. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Zhao’s rapid promotion to premier by 1980, and his pragmatic approach to political reform and liberalization, which would lead to his eventual downfall for a second time on the eve of the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, and contested legacy in the PRC today.