China Under Mao 2900-L-CHUM-ANG
The course is going to focus on the following topics, all pertaining to the period 1935-1976 thus corresponding to the state-building process
undertaken by the Communist Party of China under the leadership of Mao Zedong.
1. Yan’an: roots of the New China [Yan’an: korzenie Nowych Chin]
2. Wining the Civil War [Wygrywanie Wojny Domowej]
3. Building the state: changing the family and the new state structure [Budowanie państwa: reforma rodziny i nowa struktura państwa]
4. Building the state: changing ownership and eliminating enemies [Budowanie państwa: reforma własności i zniszczenie wrogów]
5. Building the state: new friends and the Five Year Plan [Budwanie państwa: nowi przyjaciele i Pierwszy Plan Pięcioletni]
6. Building the state: reforming culture [Budowanie państwa: reforma kultury]
7. “Hundred Flowers” or intellectual life under Maoism [“Sto kwiatów” lub życie intelektualne pod władzą Mao]
8. Radicalization: The Great Leap plans and Sino-Soviet Split [Radykalizacja: plany Wielkiego Skoku i pęknięcie między ZSRR i ChRL]
9. Radicalization: The Great Leap famine and rural destruction [Radykalizacja: Wielki Skok: wielki głód i zniszczenie wsi
10. Religion and revolution [Religia i rewolucja]
11. Images of power and the power of propaganda [Obrazy władzy i siła propagandy]
12. Cultural Revolution: the politics [Rewolucja Kulturalna: polityka]
13. Cultural Revolution: the youth [Rewolucja Kulturalna: młodzież]
14. Cultural Revolution: the art [Rewolucja Kulturalna: sztuka]
Type of course
Course coordinators
Term 2023L: | Term 2024L: |
Learning outcomes
Educational results:
- ability to read, analyse, interpret, and discuss the primary sources from the twentieth century Chinese history and to reconstruct historical processes on their basis,
- ability to work on various sources produced through modern and traditional media,
- knowledge of the most fundamental problems, events and processes in the twentieth century Chinese history,
- ability to critically read and understand contemporary Chinese history,
- ability to produce both spoken and written utterances on the basic problems pertaining to contemporary Chinese history,
- consciousness of and ability to read and interpret twentieth century history through the East Asian perspective
Assessment criteria
Active participation (attendance, involvement in discussions, quizzes): 70%,
Presentation: 30%
Bibliography
Bianco, Lucien. Stalin and Mao: A Comparison of the Russian and
Chinese Revolutions. Translated by Krystyna Horko. Hong Kong: The
Chinese University Press, 2018.
Bonnin, Michel. The Lost Generation: The Rustication of China’s
Educated Youth (1968-1980). Translated by Krystyna Horko. Hong Kong:
The Chinese University Press, 2013.
Brown, Jeremy and Paul G. Pickowicz, eds. Dilemmas of Victory: The
Early Years of the People’s Republic of China. Cambridge, MA and
London: Harvard University Press, 2010.
Chen, Janet, Pei-Kai Cheng, Michael Lestz, and Jonathan D. Spence.
The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection. Third Edition.
New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014.
Clark, Paul. The Chinese Revolution: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008.
De Bary, Theodore and Richard Lufarno. Sources of Chinese Tradition,
Volume 2: From 1600 Through the Twentieth Century. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2000.
Esherick, Joseph W., Paul G. Pickowicz, and Anderw G. Walder, eds.
The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History. Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2006.
Goossaert, Vincent and David A. Palmer. The Religious Question in
Modern China. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011.
Hsia, Tsi-an. The Gate of Darkness: Studies on the Leftist Literary
Movement in China. New Edition. Hong Kong: The Chinese University
Press, 2015.
Idema, Wilt L. The Metamorphosis of Tianxian Pei: Local Opera Under
the Revolution (1949-1956). Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press,
2015.
Lary, Diana. China's Civil War: A Social History, 1945-1949. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Ma Jisen. The Cultural Revolution in the Foreign Ministry of China. Hong
Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2004.
Macfarquhar, Roderick and Michael Schoenhals. Mao’s Last Revolution.
Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2008.
Oxfeld, Ellen. Drink Water, But Remember the Source: Moral Discourse
in a Chinese Village. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
Pantsov, Alexander V. and Steven I. Levine. Mao: The Real Story. New
York: Simo & Schuster Paperbacks, 2012.
Pantsov, Alexander V. and Steven I. Levine. Deng Xiaoping: A
Revolutionary Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Passin, Herbert. China’s Cultural Diplomacy. New York: Frederick A.
Praeger, Publisher, 1963.
Schoenhals, Michael. Spying for the People: Mao’s Secret Agents, 1949-
1967. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Skinner, G. William. Rural China on the Eve of Revolution: Sichuan
Fieldnotes, 1949-1950. Edited by Stevan Harrell and William Lavely.
Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2017.
Smith, Stephen A. Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A
Comparative History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Smith, Stephen A., ed. The Oxford Handbook of the History of
Communism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Walder, Andrew G. China under Mao: A Revolution Derailed. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.
Westad, Odd Arne. Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-
1950. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.
Yang Jisheng. Tombstone: The Untold Story of Mao’s Great Famine.
London: Penguin Books, 2013.
Yang Xianyi. White Tiger, An Autobiography of Yang Xianyi. Hong Kong:
The Chinese University Press, 2002.
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: