Marshall here, welcome back to The Realignment.

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This episode is a part of The Realignment's daily series covering the big themes of 2022

in the last month of the year, December.

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On to today's episode, the 2022 theme in topic today is China, especially in the context

of the recent protests in the country over zero COVID, the 20th party Congress back in

October that extended Xi Jinping's rule and of course the debate over how and why the

West so misjudged China's history and trajectory after Mao left the scene in 1936.

We're speaking with Frank Dicutter, author of five books on China's history and dictatorship,

including China actor Mao, the rise of a super-hower which just came out and I cannot recommend

enough to how to be a dictator, the cultural personality in the 20th century and of course

the people's trilogy is three books on China under Mao from 1940, 1976, won the tragedy

of liberation to Mao's great famine and the final book in the series, the Cultural Revolution.

This is all a dip we've worn topic and Frank's work which is driven by deep access to archival,

...