The revolutionary leader who led the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to power and founded the People's Republic of China left behind a profoundly contradictory historical legacy. He shaped the narratives of revolution, nation-building and national independence, but also left behind immense social trauma as a result of successive political campaigns and persecutions. Over the past five decades, China has undergone radical changes.
When Mao died, China was still a poor and relatively isolated communist state. Today, it is the world's second-largest economy, deeply embedded in the supply and value chains of global capitalism, with a vast private sector, a large urban middle class and a highly digitalized society. Zhang Lun, a professor at Cergy-Paris University, said Mao left behind four major political legacies: the authoritarian and highly centralized political system; a model of governance that relies on revolution and political campaigns to solve social problems; populist tendencies marked by anti-elitism and anti-rationalism; and utopian visions of egalitarianism and moralism.
From the perspective of political legacies, Zhang told DW, the most fundamental change in China over the past five decades has been "de-Maoization" — while its greatest challenge has been that this process was never fully completed. Mao's name remains written into the CCP's constitution, while his thought remains part of China's official ideology and his portrait still hangs in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Mao helped forge the Chinese Communist Party, and his insistence on the party's supremacy over the state and society has remained a fundamental principle throughout the decades, said Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt, professor at the University of Zurich.
Veteran journalist and political commentator Chang Ping agrees, adding that what has truly endured is the institutional core of the principle that "the party leads everything," serving a state vision of being able to "concentrate resources to accomplish major tasks." The CCP, he said, can pursue such objectives "at all costs" — meaning the interests of ordinary people can be sacrificed to the maximum extent necessary to preserve the regime. Under current leader Xi Jinping, a number of political concepts and methods of governance associated with the Mao era — such as ideological unity and the spirit of "struggle" — have again attracted attention. Xi's actions such as abolishing the presidential term limits, strengthening his personal authority and the incorporation of his political thought into the party and state constitutions have invited comparisons between him and Mao.
Chang argues that the very term "return" is misleading, since elements of the Mao era have never fully disappeared. Authoritarian rule, political rigidity, weak rule of law and the lack of effective guarantees for citizens' rights, he argues, are not only important elements of Mao's political legacy but also among the most significant continuities between the Mao era and China's current political system, he underscored. And Xi, who personally suffered during the Cultural Revolution, seems even move closer to Mao-era policies.
"What Xi learned from the Cultural Revolution was not the lesson of a victim, but the lesson of power," Chang told DW. The lesson was not that "such a system must never exist again," but rather that "whoever loses power is at the mercy of others," he added. Felix Wemheuer, professor of modern China studies at the University of Cologne, echoed this view.
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