Prof. Julia Lovell 藍詩玲教授 (Professor of Modern China, Birkbeck, University of London)

Since 2012 – and for the first time since the death of Mao in 1976 – China has experienced an official revival of Maoist culture and politics. Despite the huge human cost of Mao’s rule, on 1 October 2019 (the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China) the Chinese Communist Party staged a festival of patriotism invoking Mao as august builder of the party and nation. But this definition of Mao as respectable paterfamilias obscures other, more destabilising legacies of Maoism – a volatile mix of militarised autocracy, anti-colonial rebellion and ‘continuous revolution’... (For more please visit to our webpage)