Young Chinese seek answers in Mao Zedong, half a century after his death

At the entrances to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the capital of China, the crowd folds repeatedly between the barriers as people slowly move toward the security checkpoints. September 9 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of the founder of the People’s Republic, Mao Zedong, whose embalmed body lies in the imposing mausoleum that stands at the center of the vast plaza. There are no reservations left to visit the tomb for the entire week. “We came because our parents and grandparents dream of doing this, but they are old and haven’t had the chance to travel far,” Pan and Wang, two students aged 22 and 24 respectively, said the day before.

The two friends traveled from Dalian in the country’s northeast specifically for that purpose. After two and a half hours in line, they succeeded. “Chairman Mao lies peacefully. I was deeply moved. The atmosphere is very solemn,” Wang said. “Thanks to him we emerged from wars and poverty,” they said as they left the mausoleum.

Half a century after his death, the Great Helmsman sparks interest among many young Chinese born decades after he left this world. Some find in his writings a guide for coping with employment and personal uncertainty; others find a language to express their discontent with inequality. For some he represents China’s strength and rise. This renewed interest is aided by an official memory that praises Mao’s founding role while downplaying his responsibility for the darkest episodes of his rule.

“Chairman Mao has been a beacon guiding me forward,” said Li, 24, an employee in the judicial system. He also traveled to Beijing to visit the mausoleum. “I couldn’t put into words what I felt,” this northern youth and grandson of a military man said. Li says that from graduation until he found work he went through what he describes as his own “odyssey.” During that time, reading the Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung helped him cope better with problems. “Mao’s thinking is full of philosophical reflection; it teaches you to look at reality through its contradictions and how those contradictions transform,” he said.

Mao, who died in the early hours of September 9, 1976, at 82 and after nearly three decades of absolute power, is far from a figure confined to history books in today’s China. His portrait presides over Tiananmen Gate, from which he proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949; his image still passes from hand to hand when cash is used; statues of him stand in front of many universities, factories, and public buildings. His ideas are taught from primary school through university and his thought is cited in the preamble to the Constitution and among the doctrines that guide the Communist Party of China (CPC). His iconography goes beyond official spaces: it is not unusual to find photographs of Mao in restaurants, homes, or taxis, sometimes as a political symbol and sometimes as a kind of protective amulet.

That physical and doctrinal omnipresence coexists with a public narrative that keeps the most devastating policies of his tenure in the shadows: the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), the campaign of forced collectivization and rapid industrialization that led to a famine estimated to have killed between 30 million and 45 million people; and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), a decade of purges, persecution, and political violence that left nearly two million dead, tens of millions persecuted and caused massive destruction of the country’s cultural heritage.

Pan, Wang and Li belong to a generation born and raised in a country Mao could hardly have imagined. The predominantly rural and impoverished China he left behind is today the world’s second-largest economy, its biggest exporter of goods, and an industrial, technological, space, and military power that competes with the United States for global influence. That transformation accelerated when, in the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping’s reforms moved the country away from much of Maoist economic policy. The young people now turning back to Mao are the children of a China built, to a large extent, by correcting many of his policies.

Yang Guobin, a professor of communication and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and director of that university’s Center for Culture and Digital Society, wrote by email that for China’s Generation Z (born in the late 1990s and early 2000s), Mao’s texts are “fresh in style and penetrating in content.” “They read about perseverance and adaptability in guerrilla warfare and interpret it as advice for coping with the difficulties of the labor market or their personal lives,” Yang said. Social networks, he added, let users exchange impressions and pick what best fits their feelings and ideas. “There is a Mao for every occasion,” he summed up.

Wang Yiran, 25, joined a Maoist reading group as a teenager. “I thought it was very cool because it was a space to talk about politics,” she said by phone. But she was soon disappointed when she saw many members “spreading hate online.” She left and continued studying Marxism on her own. Wang is unemployed and lives with her parents. She believes that since the pandemic “there is more competition, inequality and uncertainty.” “Mao supporters keep their confidence, although times are different,” she said. “Mao is our teacher and a red sun that illuminates, but he is not God.”

Despite that diversity of approaches, the role Mao officially occupies in China in 2026 leaves room for few nuances. The CPC set it in stone in 1981, during the reform and opening process, in a historic resolution that concluded his merits had been “far greater than his faults.” “Since what matters is the system, it was obviously not possible to criticize its creator too harshly,” Sinologist Sebastian Veg, a professor of intellectual history of contemporary China at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris, wrote by email.

That compromise allowed the CPC to do two things that might have seemed incompatible: abandon much of Mao’s economic model without renouncing the political legitimacy that derived from him. In 2021, China’s current president, Xi Jinping, reinforced the usefulness of that pact with the past and narrowed the scope for interpreting it. The CPC’s third historical resolution ratified the verdict on Mao, reduced mention of his errors to a few lines and incorporated him into an upward trajectory culminating with Xi’s era. In that reading, with Mao, China rose up; with Deng it grew wealthy; and with Xi it grows strong.

“We have corrected the mistakes of the past. We are not going to deny the achievements of a generation because of errors we have learned from,” Wang Yi, a professor at China’s National Academy of Governance, replied bluntly in July when asked directly about Mao’s legacy during a press conference organized by the Chinese Association for Public Diplomacy.

Beijing is thus trying to construct, in the words of Daniel Leese, a professor of Chinese history and politics at the University of Freiburg, “a seamless narrative that connects the past with the present, legitimizes the CPC’s historical mission, and discourages the population from asking critical questions,” he explained in a video call.

Leese, author of the essay Mao Cult, believes Xi — who has accumulated far more power than his predecessors Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin — has drawn an essential lesson from Mao: “The figure of a central leader and a very strong ideological direction” allowed him “to maintain very tight control over both the Party and society.” Xi began a third term as head of state in 2023 after removing the two-term limit in 2018, and everything suggests that next year he will secure a fourth five-year term as general secretary of the CPC.

“It was 50 years ago... he really was a great leader,” two customers at a café called The Spark of Golden Street in Xicheng district, west of Tiananmen, murmured. They sipped their drinks while looking at the posters and Mao figurines decorating the small space. Revolutionary slogans are on display too. In a notebook, patrons write dedications or practice Mao’s calligraphy. The thirtysomething owner said it is “necessary” to have more businesses that reinforce a “properly Chinese” aesthetic. “Young people, may your light illuminate China,” reads an inscription on the terrace above a painting of a red star.

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