CHINA259A

This course offers a comprehensive overview of the history of the Chinese Communist Party with a particular focus on the Mao Zedong Thought and Mao's rise to power. Key topics in this course include the Soviet Union's influence on China, the Yan'an Rectification Campaign, regime consolidation in the early People's Republic of China, and the Cultural Revolution. The goal of this course is to familiarize you with the logic of China's communist revolution and the most important political campaigns launched by the Communist Party. We will devote a substantial amount of time to reading original works of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong. This course helps students of Chinese Studies to understand and interpret Mao's writings and thoughts, as well as the basic organizational and managerial structure of the Chinese Communist Party and its unique political language.