Five decades after Mao's death, his political legacy continues to shape China

Mao Zedong died on September 9, 1976, leaving behind a China that was poor, isolated, and communist. Fifty years later, that country no longer exists. Today's China is the world's second-largest economy, woven into global supply chains, home to a vast private sector, a sprawling urban middle class, and digital infrastructure that reaches into nearly every corner of society. Yet something fundamental has remained unchanged: the political architecture Mao built still shapes how power flows through the Chinese state.

According to Zhang Lun, a professor at Cergy-Paris University, Mao bequeathed four major political legacies to China. The first was an authoritarian system of highly centralized control. The second was a model of governance that treats revolution and political campaigns as tools for solving social problems. The third was a populist streak marked by suspicion of elites and expertise. The fourth was a utopian vision of equality and moral transformation. Over the past five decades, China has undergone what scholars call "de-Maoization"—a partial, incomplete dismantling of these structures. But the process was never finished. The most fundamental of Mao's legacies, the principle that the Communist Party stands above the state and society, has never truly been displaced.

Mao's name remains inscribed in the CCP's constitution. His thought is still official ideology. His portrait still hangs in Tiananmen Square. Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt, a professor at the University of Zurich, notes that Mao's insistence on party supremacy over all other institutions has persisted as a foundational principle across the decades. Veteran journalist Chang Ping adds that what has truly endured is the institutional core of the idea that "the party leads everything"—a principle that allows the state to concentrate resources to accomplish major objectives "at all costs," meaning the interests of ordinary people can be sacrificed to the maximum extent necessary to preserve the regime.

Under Xi Jinping's leadership, concepts and methods associated with the Mao era have resurfaced with new prominence. Xi has abolished presidential term limits, strengthened his personal authority, and incorporated his political thought into party and state constitutions. These moves have prompted comparisons between him and Mao. But Chang argues that the very language of "return" is misleading, since elements of the Mao era never fully disappeared in the first place. Zhang makes a similar point: authoritarianism, political rigidity, weak rule of law, and the absence of effective protections for citizens' rights are not only hallmarks of Mao's legacy but also continuities that run unbroken from the Mao era into China's current political system. Xi himself lived through the Cultural Revolution as a victim. Yet Felix Wemheuer, a professor of modern China studies at the University of Cologne, suggests that Xi drew a different lesson from that experience than one might expect. The lesson was not that such a system must never exist again, but rather that whoever loses power becomes vulnerable to others. For political reasons, Mao's historical status as founder of the state, military, and party must be upheld.

Yet scholars caution against collapsing Xi and Mao into equivalence. Mao possessed historical authority and personal charisma that Xi does not. Mao could bypass party institutions, skip party congresses for years, and mobilize the masses against the party and state apparatus itself. He was a populist with anarchic tendencies who even tolerated the temporary collapse of the party-state system at the grassroots level during 1966-67. Xi, by contrast, would never permit such a situation. He emphasizes control and top-down governance, consolidating power by strengthening institutions and the party apparatus. Mittelstaedt notes a deeper distinction: Mao was a revolutionary who destroyed existing institutions and was fundamentally anti-bureaucratic. Xi does the opposite. Mao stood above the party; his power derived from being Mao himself. Xi is "a party man through and through," his authority rooted in party institutions, governing through them. At the end of the day, Xi remains a product of the system Mao created.

In recent years, waves of Mao nostalgia have surfaced among some Chinese citizens, particularly younger generations. Online, people invoke Mao's name and express longing for what they describe as an era without social inequality, when everyone supposedly had enough to eat. But Chang argues that what they are actually longing for is neither Mao nor the real Mao era. The actual Mao era was marked by rigid hierarchies: an urban-rural household registration divide, different levels of privileges and supplies for officials, a system in which family background could determine one's fate. In many respects, it was more unequal than China today—and voicing grievances could be fatal. The imagined vision of a more equal world is therefore an indictment of the present situation, with widening inequality, soaring housing prices, and persistently limited social mobility.

Many express their dissatisfaction with contemporary reality through Mao's image and language. Chang connects this to the continuing contraction of space for public criticism in China. When independent trade unions, street protests, free media, and opposition parties are tightly restricted, Mao remains a historical symbol that official ideology cannot entirely exclude. The result is a striking irony: some people invoke Mao's language of anti-bureaucracy, resistance to oppression, and even "rebellion" to criticize what they see as corruption, inequality, and abuses of power in Xi's China today. Mittelstaedt describes Mao as a double-edged sword. He remains an important symbol of the CCP's political legitimacy—but parts of the revolutionary language he left behind can also be turned into standards by which contemporary reality is measured and found wanting.