MAPS OF HISTORY · IB HISTORY · THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC UNDER MAO
IB HISTORY · 1949 – 1976 · 12 CHAPTERS
IB History: The People’s Republic under Mao — notes, maps and essay plans
How a party that had just won a civil war reached into every village in China, and what its campaigns, its famine and its Cultural Revolution did to the people it ruled: twenty-seven years, province by province.
This page gathers the atlas’s IB notes: where each of its 12 chapters fits the syllabus, the concepts and evidence it supports, practice questions with model essay plans, primary sources, and starting points for the Internal Assessment.
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Where it fits the course
Every chapter’s IB notes name the parts of the course it serves. Across the atlas they add up to this:
- Paper 2 · Authoritarian Rule · 12 CHAPTERS
- Paper 3 · Asia and Oceania, section 12.12 · 12 CHAPTERS
- Old course · World history topic 10: Authoritarian states (20th century) · 7 CHAPTERS
- Old course · World history topic 11: Causes and effects of 20th-century wars · 1 CHAPTER
- Old course · World history topic 12: The Cold War: superpower tensions and rivalries (20th century) · 1 CHAPTER
- Old course HL · History of Asia and Oceania, section 15 · 5 CHAPTERS
Chapter by chapter
The atlas holds 69 points of evidence and 29 primary sources across 12 chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 are free, so their evidence is shown here in full; for the others you get one point and the practice question, and the rest waits in the atlas. Each chapter title opens the chapter’s free page, with the full explanation.
1. Consolidating Victory
CHAPTER 1 · 1949–1950 · CONCEPTS: CAUSATION, CHANGE, PERSPECTIVES
EVIDENCE TO USE · ALL 6 POINTS (A FREE CHAPTER)
- When Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic on 1 October 1949, the Communist Party had about 4.5 million members for some 540 million people, so it governed at first through the army and six regional bureaux run largely by generals.
- The Common Program of September 1949 promised a coalition of four classes, including the “national bourgeoisie”, and three of the six vice-chairmen of the new government were non-Communists, which helped win acceptance in the cities.
- The Agrarian Reform Law of June 1950 transferred about 700 million mu of land, more than two-fifths of China’s farmland, to some 300 million peasants by 1953, giving the regime a mass base in the villages.
- Land reform was carried out through “speak bitterness” meetings that often ended in killings; most estimates put the dead at between one and two million, and the violence made villagers complicit in the new order.
- The Marriage Law of 1 May 1950 banned arranged marriage, concubinage and child betrothal and allowed women to divorce, yet more than 10,000 women were reported killed or driven to suicide in marriage disputes in the Central-South region in 1951 alone.
- The Sino-Soviet Treaty of 14 February 1950 gave the new state a security guarantee and a loan of 300 million dollars, at the price of Soviet bases at Port Arthur until 1955 and joint companies in Xinjiang.
2. Korea and the Campaigns
CHAPTER 2 · 1950–1953 · CONCEPTS: CAUSATION, CONSEQUENCE, SIGNIFICANCE
EVIDENCE TO USE · ALL 6 POINTS (A FREE CHAPTER)
- Chinese “People’s Volunteers” crossed the Yalu on 19 October 1950 after UN forces crossed the 38th parallel, and by January 1951 they had retaken Seoul, giving the new state immense prestige at home.
- China’s dead in Korea number 197,653 by Beijing’s latest official count (2020) and up to about 400,000 by other estimates, among them Mao’s son Mao Anying, killed in an air raid in November 1950.
- The “Double Tenth” directive of 10 October 1950 launched the Campaign to Suppress Counter-revolutionaries; a 1954 security report counted 712,000 executed, 1.29 million imprisoned and 1.2 million placed under surveillance.
- Mao suggested in early 1951 that executions should run at about one per thousand people, and Yang Kuisong’s research in Party documents shows the centre setting ratios and then slowing the killing in late April 1951.
- The Three-Anti campaign of 1951–52 purged corrupt officials, and in February 1952 two senior cadres of the Tianjin prefecture, Liu Qingshan and Zhang Zishan, were executed for embezzlement as a warning to the Party.
- The Five-Anti campaign of 1952 investigated private firms for bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, contract fraud and theft of economic secrets, leaving them dependent on the state long before their nationalisation in January 1956.
3. Tibet and the Frontiers
CHAPTER 3 · 1950–1959 · CONCEPTS: PERSPECTIVES, CAUSATION, CONTINUITY
EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6
- In October 1950 about 40,000 PLA troops crossed the upper Yangtze and broke Tibet’s army of some 8,000 at Chamdo, leaving the Lhasa government with no military option and no foreign support.
Practice question: Evaluate the methods used by the People’s Republic to secure control of Tibet between 1950 and 1959.
5 more points of evidence, 3 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 3 in the atlas.
4. The Soviet Model
CHAPTER 4 · 1953–1957 · CONCEPTS: CHANGE, CONSEQUENCE, CONTINUITY
EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 5
- Under the First Five-Year Plan of 1953–57 China’s steel output rose from 1.35 million tonnes to 5.35 million, and industrial output grew by about 18 percent a year, built around 156 Soviet-aided projects.
Practice question: Discuss the impact of the First Five-Year Plan and collectivisation (1953–1957) on the lives of China’s workers and peasants.
4 more points of evidence, 3 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 4 in the atlas.
5. A Hundred Flowers
CHAPTER 5 · 1956–1957 · CONCEPTS: CAUSATION, PERSPECTIVES, SIGNIFICANCE
EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 5
- Khrushchev’s secret speech of February 1956 and the Hungarian rising of October 1956 convinced Mao that grievances must be aired, so on 27 February 1957 he called for disagreements among the people to be settled by discussion.
Practice question: Why did the Hundred Flowers campaign of 1956–57 end in the Anti-Rightist Campaign?
4 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 5 in the atlas.
6. The Great Leap Forward
CHAPTER 6 · 1958–1960 · CONCEPTS: CAUSATION, CONSEQUENCE, SIGNIFICANCE
EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6
- In November 1957 in Moscow Mao promised that China would overtake Britain in steel within fifteen years, and at Beidaihe in August 1958 the year’s steel target was doubled to 10.7 million tonnes.
Practice question: “The Great Leap Forward failed because of Mao’s personal decisions.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?
5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 6 in the atlas.
7. The Great Famine
CHAPTER 7 · 1959–1961 · CONCEPTS: CAUSATION, CONSEQUENCE, PERSPECTIVES
EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6
- Estimates of the famine’s dead range from about 15 million to 45 million: Jiang Zhenghua reached about 17 million, Ansley Coale 27 million, Yang Jisheng 36 million and Frank Dikötter at least 45 million.
Practice question: Evaluate the impact of the Great Leap Forward on the lives of China’s rural population.
5 more points of evidence, 3 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 7 in the atlas.
8. Retreat and Recovery
CHAPTER 8 · 1961–1965 · CONCEPTS: CHANGE, CONTINUITY, CAUSATION
EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6
- In April–May 1961 Liu Shaoqi spent 44 days in rural Hunan, and at the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference in January 1962 he said the disaster was “three parts natural disaster, seven parts man-made”.
Practice question: To what extent was Mao’s authority challenged by other Party leaders between 1961 and 1965?
5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 8 in the atlas.
9. The Cultural Revolution
CHAPTER 9 · 1966–1968 · CONCEPTS: CAUSATION, PERSPECTIVES, CONSEQUENCE
EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6
- Mao reviewed about a million Red Guards in Tiananmen Square on 18 August 1966, the first of eight rallies that brought some 12 million young people to Beijing by late November.
Practice question: Examine the reasons why Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
5 more points of evidence, 3 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 9 in the atlas.
10. Down to the Countryside
CHAPTER 10 · 1968–1971 · CONCEPTS: CONSEQUENCE, CHANGE, SIGNIFICANCE
EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6
- Following Mao’s directive of December 1968, about 17 million urban young people were sent to villages and frontier farms between 1968 and 1980, the largest numbers in 1968–70 and again in the mid-1970s.
Practice question: Discuss the role of the People’s Liberation Army in maintaining Mao’s rule between 1966 and 1971.
5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 10 in the atlas.
11. From Soviet Ally to Nixon
CHAPTER 11 · 1960–1972 · CONCEPTS: CAUSATION, CHANGE, PERSPECTIVES
EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 5
- In July–August 1960 Khrushchev recalled all 1,390 Soviet experts from China, leaving projects such as the Lanzhou uranium enrichment plant unfinished until Chinese engineers completed it in 1964.
Practice question: Compare and contrast the reasons for China’s break with the Soviet Union (1956–1969) and its rapprochement with the United States (1969–1972).
4 more points of evidence, 3 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 11 in the atlas.
12. Mao’s Death and Legacy
EPILOGUE · 1976 · CONCEPTS: SIGNIFICANCE, PERSPECTIVES, CONTINUITY
EVIDENCE TO USE · 1 OF 6
- At the Qingming festival of 4–5 April 1976 huge crowds in Tiananmen Square mourned Zhou Enlai and attacked the radical leaders, the largest spontaneous protest of the Mao era.
Practice question: “Mao’s rule was maintained more by terror than by consent.” Discuss.
5 more points of evidence, 2 primary sources and the model plan for this question are in the IB notes of chapter 12 in the atlas.
Practice questions and essay plans
Every chapter ends with a practice question and a model plan: a thesis, three points with evidence and a link back to the question, a counter-argument and a judgement. The plan for chapter 1 is shown in full; for the others, here is the outline, and the rest is in the atlas.
PAPER 2 · THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC UNDER MAO · CHAPTER 1
Examine the reasons why the Chinese Communist Party was able to consolidate its rule over China between 1949 and 1953.
The Party consolidated its rule because it combined a victorious army with policies that tied social groups to the new state. Land reform bound the peasant majority through both gain and complicity, the New Democracy coalition and price stability won the cities, and the war in Korea licensed a terror that removed remaining opponents.
Military victory gave the Party a monopoly of force that no Chinese government had held since 1911.
EVIDENCEThe five-million-strong PLA took the south-west by December 1949 and Hainan by May 1950, and generals ran six great regions until 1954.
LINKConsolidation therefore began as military occupation, which explains why later campaigns relied on army-style mobilisation.
Land reform made the peasant majority dependent on, and complicit in, the new order.
EVIDENCEBy 1953 about 700 million mu passed to some 300 million peasants through struggle meetings in which between one and two million people were killed.
LINKPeasants who had taken land in public needed the Party to stay in power, so land reform consolidated rule through shared responsibility.
The New Democracy coalition and economic stabilisation won urban acceptance.
EVIDENCEThe Common Program protected private property, non-Communists became vice-chairmen of the government, and Chen Yun halted inflation by early 1950.
LINKBusinessmen and professionals cooperated at first, giving the Party time to build its own administration before turning on them in 1952.
Some historians, such as Dikötter, argue that consolidation rested above all on terror, pointing to the 712,000 executions recorded in 1950–53 and to coached violence in land reform. On this view the coalition and the land were tactics that hid a planned dictatorship.
Terror was essential, yet it worked because it was combined with real material gains and an attractive promise of order after decades of war. Consolidation succeeded because the Party offered peasants land and townspeople stability while removing anyone who might organise opposition.
Read the chapter behind this plan: Consolidating Victory.
PAPER 2 · THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC UNDER MAO · CHAPTER 3
Evaluate the methods used by the People’s Republic to secure control of Tibet between 1950 and 1959.
Beijing secured Tibet by combining military force with a negotiated bargain that left the old order in place, and the bargain made control cheap until 1956. Applying ordinary Chinese campaigns to the Tibetan lands outside the bargain then provoked a revolt, so the methods that secured the frontier also undermined it.
Military force created the conditions for every later arrangement.
The Seventeen-Point Agreement made control cheap by co-opting the Tibetan elite.
Applying Han campaigns to Kham and Amdo destroyed the bargain.
The evidence for each point, the counter-argument and the judgement are in the IB notes of chapter 3 in the atlas. Read the chapter first: Tibet and the Frontiers.
PAPER 2 · THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC UNDER MAO · CHAPTER 12
“Mao’s rule was maintained more by terror than by consent.” Discuss.
Terror was indispensable to Mao’s rule, yet the regime also rested on forms of consent and dependence that terror alone cannot explain. Land, order, national pride and the cult won real support, while the work unit and household registration created dependence, so terror worked within a broader system of control.
Terror removed opponents at decisive moments.
Real gains and nationalism won consent.
Dependence bound people even without terror or consent.
The evidence for each point, the counter-argument and the judgement are in the IB notes of chapter 12 in the atlas. Read the chapter first: Mao’s Death and Legacy.
PAPER 2 · THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC UNDER MAO · CHAPTER 4
Discuss the impact of the First Five-Year Plan and collectivisation (1953–1957) on the lives of China’s workers and peasants.
The Plan years improved the lives of many urban workers while subordinating peasants to the needs of industry. Workers gained secure jobs and welfare through their work units, whereas peasants lost control of their grain, then of their land, and finally of their freedom to move, so the period created two classes of citizen.
Urban workers gained security and welfare from rapid industrialisation.
Peasants paid for industry through the grain monopoly.
Collectivisation and household registration removed peasants’ economic and personal independence.
The evidence for each point, the counter-argument and the judgement are in the IB notes of chapter 4 in the atlas. Read the chapter first: The Soviet Model.
Primary sources
Each chapter’s IB notes carry primary sources with their origin and the context you need before reading them. The sources of chapter 1 are shown in full here.
TEXT · CHAPTER 1
The Common Program of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (extracts)
- CREATOR
- Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference
- DATE
- 29 September 1949
- ORIGIN
- The interim constitution adopted by the first plenary session of the CPPCC in Peking, two days before the People’s Republic was proclaimed
Context. The Common Program served as the constitution until 1954. Article 7 of the same document set out the suppression of “counter-revolutionaries” (see Chapter 2).
Official English translation (Foreign Languages Press, 1950), via Wikisource · original ↗
TEXT · CHAPTER 1
On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship (extract)
- CREATOR
- Mao Zedong
- DATE
- 30 June 1949
- ORIGIN
- Article written for the 28th anniversary of the Communist Party, published in the Party press three months before the People’s Republic was proclaimed
Context. Mao was answering critics, at home and abroad, who said the coming Communist government would be a dictatorship. The same article defined “the people” as four classes led by the working class and the Party.
Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, vol. IV (Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1961), via marxists.org · original ↗
Every other source in the atlas (27)
- Chapter 2: Korea and the Campaigns
- Statement by the President on the Situation in Korea (extract) Harry S. Truman, President of the United States · 27 June 1950
- The Common Program, Article 7 Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference · 29 September 1949
- Chapter 3: Tibet and the Frontiers
- Agreement on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet (extracts) Central People’s Government of the PRC and the Local Government of Tibet · 23 May 1951
- Briefing on Tibet to the US National Security Council (extract) Allen Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence (as recorded by S. Everett Gleason) · 26 March 1959
- Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, Article 3 First National People’s Congress · 20 September 1954
- Chapter 4: The Soviet Model
- Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, Preamble (extract) First National People’s Congress · 20 September 1954
- Regulations on Household Registration of the People’s Republic of China, Article 10 Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress; promulgated by Mao Zedong as Chairman · 9 January 1958
- On the Question of Agricultural Co-operation (extract) Mao Zedong · 31 July 1955
- Chapter 5: A Hundred Flowers
- Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, Articles 87 and 89 First National People’s Congress · 20 September 1954
- On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People (published text, extract) Mao Zedong · Speech of 27 February 1957; revised text published 19 June 1957
- Chapter 6: The Great Leap Forward
- National Intelligence Estimate 13–2–59: Present Trends in Communist China (extract) US Intelligence Community · 10 February 1959
- Introducing a Co-operative (extract) Mao Zedong · 15 April 1958; published June 1958
- Chapter 7: The Great Famine
- Crude death rates by province, 1960 (deaths per 1,000 people) Compiled by Maps of History from official provincial statistics · Data for 1960; published 1999
- Special National Intelligence Estimate 13–61: The Economic Situation in Communist China (extract) US Intelligence Community · 4 April 1961
- Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China (extract) Sixth Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China · 27 June 1981
- Chapter 8: Retreat and Recovery
- Statement by the President on the First Chinese Nuclear Device (extract) Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States · 16 October 1964
- Directive on Public Health (extract) Mao Zedong · 26 June 1965
- Chapter 9: The Cultural Revolution
- Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (the “Sixteen Points”), point 5 (extract) Central Committee of the Communist Party of China · 8 August 1966
- Memorandum from the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson Walt W. Rostow · 20 September 1966
- Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, Article 13 Fourth National People’s Congress · 17 January 1975
- Chapter 10: Down to the Countryside
- Chairman Mao’s Latest Directive Mao Zedong · Published 22 December 1968
- Memorandum from Kissinger to President Nixon: Indications of Possible Tense Situation in Communist China (extract) Henry A. Kissinger, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs · 22 September 1971
- Chapter 11: From Soviet Ally to Nixon
- Memorandum from Kissinger to President Nixon: The US Role in Soviet Maneuvering Against China (extract) Henry A. Kissinger · 29 September 1969
- Memorandum of Conversation: Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon (extract) US record of the meeting (Winston Lord, notetaker) · 21 February 1972
- Joint Communiqué of the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China (extract) Governments of the United States and the People’s Republic of China · 27 February 1972
- Chapter 12: Mao’s Death and Legacy
- Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China (extract) Sixth Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China · 27 June 1981
- Letter from President Ford to Premier Hua Guofeng Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States · 9 September 1976
Internal Assessment starting points
Each starting point is an idea for an investigation: a question, the concept it tests, the kinds of sources you could use and where they are held, and one caution. The investigation must be your own work, and your teacher approves the question.
To what extent did provincial leadership determine the severity of the Great Famine in Anhui compared with Jiangsu, 1959–61?
CONCEPTCausation
SOURCESPublished provincial statistics and county gazetteers; Party investigation reports reproduced in documentary collections; memoirs and oral histories; demographic studies.
CAUTIONOfficial death rates undercount deaths, and access to provincial archives in China has been restricted since the 2010s, so state clearly which figures you rely on and why.
How far did the Seventeen-Point Agreement of 1951 shape Chinese policy in Tibet before the rising of 1959?
CONCEPTContinuity
SOURCESThe agreement text; Chinese official statements; US and British diplomatic records; Tibetan oral histories.
CAUTIONAlmost every source is partisan, so compare Chinese, Tibetan and outside accounts and explain each one’s purpose.
How accurately did US intelligence assess the Great Leap Forward and the famine, 1958–62?
CONCEPTPerspectives
SOURCESNational Intelligence Estimates; State Department and consulate reports from Hong Kong; refugee interview programmes.
CAUTIONIntelligence documents are partly redacted and were written for policy-makers, so their errors are evidence of what outsiders could see, not of what happened.
Why did the published text of Mao’s speech “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People” differ from what he said in February 1957, and what does the difference reveal?
CONCEPTChange
SOURCESThe published text of June 1957; notes and later editions of the original speech; contemporary newspapers; translated documentary collections on the Hundred Flowers.
CAUTIONVersions of the speech survive through later transcriptions; identify each version’s provenance before comparing them.
How did propaganda posters present women’s work during the Great Leap Forward, and how far did this match women’s experience?
CONCEPTPerspectives
SOURCESPropaganda posters; women’s oral histories; studies of rural women’s work.
CAUTIONPosters show the ideal the state wanted, and oral histories are shaped by later memory, so neither alone shows what happened.
What do published memoirs reveal about the experience of sent-down youth in Yunnan, 1968–79?
CONCEPTConsequence
SOURCESPublished memoirs and collected testimonies; official histories of the state farms; documents on the 1978–79 strikes.
CAUTIONMemoirs are written decades later and by those willing to publish; consider whose voices are missing.
To what extent was Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 a result of the Sino-Soviet border conflict of 1969?
CONCEPTCausation
SOURCESUS memoranda and conversation records; Chinese statements; translated Soviet and Chinese documents.
CAUTIONUS records are rich and Chinese ones are scarce, so be careful not to explain Chinese decisions only through American eyes.
Revision tools
The atlas ends with a map quiz that asks you to find places and moments on the map itself (part of membership and of the Exam Sprint). The quick quiz and the discussion questions with our answers are free pages on this site, and the printable study guide gathers every chapter’s notes into one document for revision.
Read next
- Mao’s rise to power, 1911–1949 · CHINA IN REVOLUTION
- China in the Cold War · THE COLD WAR
Maps of History is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the International Baccalaureate Organization. IB course names describe alignment only; paper, theme and section names follow the new course outline and may change when the final guide is published.
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