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NSWModern HistoryQuick questions
Section III (Personalities): Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Republic of China
Quick questions on Historiography of Mao Zedong: HSC Modern History Personality
8short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is the New Left sympathetic strand?Show answer
In the late 1960s and 1970s a sympathetic New Left engaged with Maoism:
What is the official PRC verdict?Show answer
The CCP's official verdict is the 1981 Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic, adopted at the Sixth Plenum of the Eleventh CC on 27 June 1981 and drafted under Hu Qiaomu. The Resolution is the master text for PRC official history. Its formula:
What is post-archive revisionism?Show answer
The opening of PRC provincial archives from the 1990s and the Soviet archives after 1991 produced a wave of revisionism, generally darker on Mao:
What is methodological evolution?Show answer
The field has moved through several methodological phases:
What is timeline of historiography?Show answer
Forgetting Chinese-language historiography. Yang Jisheng, Gao Hua, Yang Kuisong are essential.
What is q1?Show answer
Source A is an extract from Frank Dikoetter's Mao's Great Famine (2010). Using Source A and your own knowledge, explain the shifts in Mao historiography since 2000. [5 marks]
What is q2?Show answer
Evaluate the extent to which post-2000 archival access has transformed Mao historiography. [25 marks]
What is q3?Show answer
Compare the views of Andrew Walder and Frank Dikoetter on Mao's leadership. [10 marks]