Mao Zedong's China

Mao Zedong was the father of the People's Republic of China. He ruled as the Chairman of the Communist Party from 1949 until his death in 1976. While he is often credited with modernizing the country and making it a world power, his Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution were violently oppressive and responsible for the death of millions of people.

Mao Zedong's China is a broad topic. There is enough information about it to write an entire book, and people have! As you start your research, consider what facet of this topic you would like to focus on. When you do, it can be helpful to write a research question as a foundation for your research. Read Shapiro Library FAQs on writing research questions for more information.

Here is a research starter that can give you background information about Mao Zedong. This is an encyclopedia article, and like other background/reference sources, is a great source to give yourself context on a subject before you dive into deeper research. Background sources can help you decide how you would like to focus your research and which keywords might be helpful. They generally aren't acceptable sources to use in your papers because they summarize and condense information about a topic. The original research and primary sources reference sources cite can be a good place to start.

An older form of writing Chinese characters in Roman script spelled his name 'Mao Tse-tung.' While 'Mao Zedong' is the modern accepted spelling, you may still see the 'Mao Tse-tung' spelling in some older resources and publications.

Continue on to the primary sources page to see some example sources and more resources for finding primary sources on this topic.