Mao Zedong

While Trump chases quick wins and flashy optics, Xi plays a generational game for global dominance.

By Julian Gewirtz

“Wild Swans,” a best-selling 1991 memoir, told the story of a stoic mother holding her family together amid torture and imprisonment under Mao’s regime.

By Adam Nossiter

The Chinese Communist Party has turned Lu Xun, a Mao-era hero who excoriated the establishment, into a bland, Disney-style character.

By Andrew Higgins and Qilai Shen

Gao Zhen, who emigrated to the United States years ago, was arrested during a visit to China and now faces up to three years in prison for artwork.

By Lily Kuo

China’s plan to raise pensions for farmers by less than $3 a month prompted rare criticism from lawmakers about the country’s threadbare social safety net.

By Vivian Wang

A former actress who grew up in poverty, she was one of the most hated women in modern Chinese history for her role in the Cultural Revolution.

By Nicholas Kristof

Once celebrated for its fiery spirits, the town of Maotai has reeled from a bad Chinese economy, changing tastes and a crackdown on boozy official banquets.

By Andrew Higgins and Gilles Sabrié

In “Red Dawn Over China,” the historian Frank Dikötter shows that Communism’s rise in China was an unlikely, violent event with a lot of outside help.

By Gary J. Bass

By reaching back to Maoist tactics of “rectification,” the Chinese leader is signaling that control over the gun requires a state of perpetual cleansing.

By Lily Kuo

A recent production of “Othello” proves that small creative flowers can grow between the dreary slabs of cultural concrete laid by the Communist Party.

By Andrew Higgins and Gilles Sabrié