Based on authentic historical materials, this book presents vivid portrayals of Mao Zedong through imagined dialogues between his spirit and the ghosts of dozens of well-known figures, including Marx, Qin Shi Huang, Zhu Yuanzhang, Chiang Kai-shek, Stalin, Khrushchev, Hitler, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, and Deng Xiaoping. It also depicts the grievances of numerous victims persecuted during Mao’s era as they appeal before the Jade Emperor, culminating in a grand celestial trial. Through these literary devices, the authors vividly present before us a Mao Zedong characterized as ambitious, arrogant, and ruthless.

This Mao Zedong—who combined Western Marxism with elements of traditional Chinese culture—was domineering and violent, obsessed with personal worship, intolerant of dissent, and utterly unwilling to listen to differing opinions. Acting with obstinate single-mindedness, he implemented policies of public ownership and egalitarian wealth redistribution across China. The result, during his rule, was extreme economic backwardness and prolonged hunger and poverty for the people. By inciting class hatred and promoting policies of ideological control, he used the lower social strata to suppress independent-minded intellectuals. He propagated class struggle not only in society at large but even within families, causing the entire population to live for years amid hostility, confrontation, fear, and suffering.

Mao Zedong was the son of a relatively well-off peasant in Shaoshan, Hunan Province. He studied in a private Confucian school for six years, mastering the Four Books and Five Classics, and later graduated from a provincial normal school. He carefully read Zizhi Tongjian and also enjoyed novels such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin, from which he absorbed various techniques of power and political maneuvering. After the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894, Western imperialist powers divided China into spheres of influence, plundering resources and oppressing and killing civilians, leaving the people in deep misery. Witnessing the suffering of famine-stricken villagers in his hometown, Mao began seeking opportunities to rebel.

After Lenin’s successful coup in Russia in 1917, Mao embraced Marxism’s vision of building a just and beautiful society on earth. In 1920, he established a Communist group in Changsha. He organized coal miners’ strikes in Anyuan, fled to Jinggangshan in Jiangxi, joined with local armed forces, married He Zizhen—the daughter of a local strongman—and established himself as a mountain warlord.

At this time, Mao’s ruthless and violent personality had already begun to surface. In the Jiangxi Soviet, he ordered subordinates to root out so-called counterrevolutionaries within the existing Red Army, employing cruel private tortures such as burning, beatings, driving bamboo splinters under fingernails, and nailing hands to tables. Red Army cadres who had originally supported him resisted these persecutions but were branded as counterrevolutionary traitors. On one occasion, Mao reportedly executed 700 Red Army cadres in a single purge. His objective was to dismantle the original Red Army structure and consolidate his own power. Statistics suggest that from 1927 to 1933, tens of thousands of Red Army members were killed in these purges.

When the Nationalist forces launched encirclement campaigns against the Central Soviet, the Red Army won the first four counter-campaigns. However, after the failure of the fifth counter-campaign in October 1934, they retreated in disarray. In January 1935, at the enlarged Politburo meeting in Zunyi, Guizhou, a three-man military leadership group was formed. Through political maneuvering, Mao gradually consolidated supreme authority and began enforcing authoritarian rule within the Communist Party and the Red Army.

In October 1936, the Red Army arrived in northern Shaanxi. Many patriotic young people and intellectuals, eager to strengthen the nation and resist Japan, flocked to join the Communist cause. Yet Mao, deeply suspicious, continued launching rectification campaigns to search for spies, traitors, and counterrevolutionaries within the revolutionary ranks. Many passionate supporters were unjustly criticized, imprisoned, interrogated, or even executed.

Throughout Chinese history, peasant uprisings often rallied under the slogan “equalize wealth.” Traditional Chinese thought also held that inequality, rather than scarcity, breeds resentment. Mao merged his belief in communism with these traditional ideas, implementing land reform in the rural areas under his control and gaining the support of impoverished peasants. After three years of civil war, the Communists triumphed and established the People’s Republic of China, extending land reform nationwide.

Land reform was marked by violence and bloodshed. Work teams incited hooligans and impoverished peasants to brutally beat landlords, employing cruel tortures such as wooden clamps on hands and feet and forcing victims to kneel on broken glass. Many who could not endure the abuse committed suicide. Even landlords known for kindness were beaten and executed, including those without serious offenses. The number of landlords who died during land reform is impossible to calculate accurately.

Landlords who had accumulated property through diligence and thrift, and overseas Chinese laborers in America who had sent home their hard-earned savings to purchase land and houses, could not escape confiscation. In cities, the Communist authorities seized the assets of bureaucratic capitalists and imposed public-private partnerships on private enterprises. More than a decade later, during the Cultural Revolution, the property of national capitalists was effectively confiscated as well.

In 1958, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward. Tens of millions were mobilized to produce steel through backyard furnaces. Deep plowing, close planting, and exaggerated production reports spread across rural areas. In August 1958, the People’s Commune system was introduced, providing free communal meals and promising to supply all necessities to peasants, in pursuit of an unrealistic form of “communism.”

The Great Leap Forward wasted enormous resources and labor. Collective grain production dropped sharply, and soon communal grain reserves were exhausted. Peasants were forbidden to cultivate private plots. From 1959 to 1961, more than 40 million people reportedly starved to death in rural China. In some regions, parents exchanged children to eat them. Later in this book appears a memoir by Nobel laureate Mo Yan recounting the horrifying scenes of famine after collectivization in 1960, when economic collapse led peasants to eat mud, coal, and even human flesh, with corpses strewn across the countryside.

In November 1956, the Eighth Party Congress launched a rectification movement. In April 1957, the Party invited non-Party individuals to offer criticisms. By June, however, Mao issued directives to counter the “Rightists’ attack” on the Party. Nationwide, 550,000 individuals who had voiced opinions were labeled Rightists, classified as enemies. Of them, about half—urban intellectuals dismissed from public service—were sent back to rural hometowns to farm. In total, approximately three million people were persecuted as Rightists or right-leaning elements. Many were sent to remote labor camps, where starvation was so severe that some reportedly ate maggots from latrines or even corpses. Countless Rightists died of hunger. Those allowed to remain in their original work units were relegated to menial jobs and endured persistent political discrimination.

In July 1959, at the Lushan Conference of central and provincial leaders, Defense Minister Peng Dehuai criticized the steel campaign and the famine. Supported by Zhou Xiaozhou, Huang Kecheng, and Zhang Wentian, he was denounced by Mao as part of an anti-Party clique. During the Cultural Revolution, Peng and Zhang were subjected to brutal struggle sessions, forced to wear tall dunce caps and placards, humiliated and physically abused; Zhang suffered repeated heart attacks during these sessions.

After the 7,000 Cadres Conference in 1962, Mao temporarily stepped back, allowing Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping to repair the economy through pragmatic policies. But in 1963, Mao declared a struggle between socialist and capitalist lines within the Party and launched the Socialist Education Movement. In 1966, he initiated the Cultural Revolution, meeting Red Guards eight times, encouraging rebellion, proclaiming that “great disorder under heaven is excellent,” and urging them to overthrow authority. Red Guards attacked Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and officials aligned with them, beating people, ransacking homes, destroying cultural relics, burning books, smashing statues, and engaging in armed factional fighting that caused countless deaths.

The so-called “five black categories,” intellectuals across various fields—including those who had returned from the United States, Canada, Britain, and Hong Kong to build socialism—former members of the Nationalist Party or Youth Corps, professionals who had worked in Nationalist institutions, and veterans including anti-Japanese heroes were beaten and persecuted. Many unable to endure the attacks committed suicide. China at that time resembled a living hell filled with cries of anguish.

The book recounts dozens of individual victims. Many were imprisoned and tortured merely for criticizing Mao’s policies; some were executed.

Zhang Zhixin, a Party member and Korean War volunteer, criticized the General Line, the Great Leap Forward, and the People’s Commune policies, as well as the cult of loyalty dances. She was imprisoned as a counterrevolutionary, tortured, repeatedly re-sentenced, and ultimately executed in 1975 at age 45 after six years in prison.

Lin Zhao, who had participated in land reform and later graduated from Peking University, was labeled a Rightist in 1957, imprisoned, and executed in 1968 at age 36 after writing essays criticizing the regime. Authorities reportedly charged her mother five cents for the bullet used in her execution.

Li Jiulian, a Red Guard from Jiangxi, was imprisoned for private letters expressing doubts about Cultural Revolution policies. Her case sparked widespread public support, yet she was eventually executed in 1977 at age 31.

Zhong Haiyuan, an elementary school teacher who campaigned to clear Li Jiulian’s name, was sentenced to death at age twenty-something; her organs were reportedly removed during execution.

Yu Luoke, author of “On Class Background,” criticized the bloodline theory that justified persecution. He was executed at age 28. Mass killings of so-called “black categories” occurred in Beijing’s Daxing County, Dao County in Hunan, Ningyuan County, and elsewhere, with thousands killed by shooting, beating, burning, drowning, or live burial. In Guangxi, reports documented instances of cannibalism during violent purges.

Mao transformed China into a vast prison of hatred and poverty. To preserve authoritarian rule, he mobilized the lower classes to suppress independent thinkers. Ironically, Mao himself was the son of a well-off peasant, and top Communist leaders such as Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Kang Sheng came from landlord families.

Indulgence of historical crimes is itself a crime against the future. History is the foundation of civilization. Over forty years of reform have not fully rectified distorted historical narratives, partly because Mao has never been thoroughly repudiated. The Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution remain only partially addressed, their evaluations softened over time.

More than forty years after Mao’s death, his body remains on display in Beijing, and his thought has never undergone comprehensive public criticism. Meanwhile, personality cult, ideological control, internet censorship, and imprisonment of dissenters continue. Some detainees have reportedly been confined in psychiatric institutions and forcibly medicated.

The Trial of Mao Zedong calls on the public to remain vigilant and prevent the recurrence of terror. Without confronting the unresolved historical burdens of the Party’s first and second thirty years, those burdens will continue to haunt the present.

The book was written during the height of Hong Kong’s 2019 anti-extradition movement. Millions protested against the extradition bill, demanding withdrawal of the legislation, an independent inquiry into police conduct, and universal suffrage. The movement grew into a broader struggle against authoritarian rule. Protesters from all walks of life—students, professionals, civil servants, lawyers, medical workers—participated in largely peaceful demonstrations despite repression.

Clashes intensified. By November 2019, thousands had been arrested and many injured. Universities such as the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Polytechnic University became battlegrounds. The United States Congress passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act with unanimous support, later signed into law by President Trump, signaling international backing for Hong Kong’s autonomy.

The authors argue that the 2019 movement represents a continuation of resistance to authoritarianism, following the Cultural Revolution and the 1989 Tiananmen protests. With global support absent in 1989 but present in 2019, Hong Kong’s struggle has become a symbol of opposition to tyranny and a potential bridgehead for China’s eventual transition toward constitutional democracy.

NEXT: Prologue