IB History Mao: Why Did Authoritarian Rule Emerge? Key Definitions

A system of government where power is concentrated in a single leader or small group, with limited political freedoms, restricted media, and little accountability to the population. In Egypt, authoritarian rule persisted from the 1952 Free Officers' coup through Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak, and was restored under el-Sisi after 2013.

The Chinese Nationalist Party, led by Chiang Kai-shek from the late 1920s, which ruled the Republic of China and fought the CCP in the Chinese Civil War before its defeat and retreat to Taiwan in 1949.

The catastrophic collapse in the value of Guomindang currency during the Chinese Civil War era, driven by war spending and government mismanagement, which destroyed the savings of China's urban middle class and undermined public support for Chiang Kai-shek's government.

The 9,000 km retreat of the Chinese Communist Party (1934-1935) from Jiangxi to Yan'an to escape Nationalist encirclement. Of roughly 80,000 who started, only about 8,000 survived. It became a founding myth of the CCP.

A CCP policy of maintaining close contact with the broad mass of the people. Party cadres were expected to gather ideas from the masses, interpret them through Marxist theory, and return them as policy.

A 1919 student protest movement against the Treaty of Versailles and foreign imperialism in China. It promoted science, democracy, and vernacular Chinese, and influenced the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.

Mao's transitional political and economic programme of the 1940s and early 1950s, combining a multi-class coalition government, controlled capitalism, and land reform as a preparatory stage before China moved toward full socialism.

The period from 1916 to 1928 following Yuan Shikai's death, when China fragmented under rival regional military commanders, or warlords, each controlling their own territory and army with no effective central government.

The violent purge of communists and suspected sympathisers carried out by Chiang Kai-shek's Guomindang from April 1927 onward, beginning with the Shanghai Massacre and killing tens of thousands of people.