On a touch screen: drag to move, pinch to zoom, double-tap to zoom in.
We can show you where every important control lives — the map, timeline, chapters, modes, search and your notes. Nothing advances until you choose Next.
This atlas maps the twenty-seven years in which Mao Zedong’s Communist Party ruled China, from the proclamation of the People’s Republic in October 1949 to Mao’s death in September 1976. The central question is how a party that had won a civil war became a state able to reach into every village, factory and family, and what its methods did to the hundreds of millions of people it governed. China is drawn here province by province, because the Party’s great campaigns — land reform, the collectives, the people’s communes, the Cultural Revolution — rolled across the country unevenly, and the map shows each one arriving. Red hatching marks a campaign under way and solid red the order it left behind; charcoal marks the provinces where the Great Famine of 1959–61 killed most.
Twelve chapters argue the era. They explain why the regime emerged so strong, how it was maintained, how it changed the lives of peasants, workers, women, minorities and the young, and who challenged it, from Tibetan rebels and outspoken students to Mao’s own defence minister. The rim of the map tells the foreign story, as Beijing’s Soviet ally became its enemy and its American enemy became a partner. Every site is drawn where it happened, and the worst of the era is marked as memory. Take the guided tour, or scrub the timeline and question the map yourself.
Keys: ←→ chapters · space play time · +− zoom · ⌘K search · ? all keys.
This is one of twenty-one atlases — the ★ at the top left returns to the library at any time.