In a conversation on New Wave History, political scientist and activist Dr Taimur Rahman offered a sweeping reinterpretation of China’s rise, challenging dominant Western accounts that credit market reforms alone for the country’s transformation into a global power.
Speaking about the period following the 1949 Chinese Revolution, Dr Rahman argued that modern China cannot be understood without recognising the century of upheaval that preceded it. From warlordism and famine to Japanese invasion, he said, China’s state collapse was reversed only through mass mobilisation and agrarian reform under the Communist Party. Mao Zedong, he noted, is still regarded in China as the founder of the modern state for unifying the country and ending a millennia-old system of elite domination.
Dr Rahman rejected the common claim that China’s growth began only after Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in the 1980s. Instead, he emphasised rapid industrial expansion in the 1950s with Soviet assistance, followed by a dramatic rupture after the Sino-Soviet split. Mao’s controversial Great Leap Forward, he explained, was an attempt to break from an urban-centred Soviet model by pushing industrialisation into rural areas. While acknowledging serious failures and human costs, he highlighted overlooked achievements, particularly massive water management projects that later underpinned food security and social stability.
The discussion also revisited the Cultural Revolution, which Dr Rahman described as a second revolution aimed at dismantling inherited hierarchies and challenging elite authority. He criticised both Western and Chinese official narratives for focusing narrowly on attacks against intellectuals while ignoring what he called China’s “ultra-left” foreign policy turn, including its alignment with the United States against the Soviet Union, Vietnam and other socialist movements during the Cold War.
According to Dr Rahman, these choices weakened the international communist movement and reshaped global geopolitics. Yet China later drew lessons from the collapse of the Soviet Union, concluding that economic liberalisation could proceed without political liberalisation, a principle that continues to define Beijing’s governance model.
Addressing contemporary China, Dr Rahman pointed to state control over finance, investment and technology as key reasons the Chinese economy has avoided the boom-and-bust cycles common in the West. Initiatives such as “common prosperity” and the Belt and Road reflect attempts to manage inequality while asserting strategic autonomy.
Looking ahead, he warned that China’s emergence as a rival to US-led power risks intensifying global conflict. History, he argued, suggests that major power shifts are rarely peaceful, though he expressed hope that confrontation would stop short of a devastating war.