The Lie That Built Communist China

July 11, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In 1972, Richard Nixon shook hands with Mao Zedong in Beijing, an image that stunned the world and launched a new era of U.S.-China relations. That handshake, born of Cold War realpolitik, planted a seed that would grow into what Ben Shapiro calls "the central lie of post-Cold War globalization": the belief that if China became wealthier, it would become freer. The episode argues that this assumption was never true, that the Chinese Communist Party never abandoned its foundational hostility to the United States, and that America spent decades building a geopolitical competitor while telling itself a comforting fairy tale.

The Maoist Foundation

The episode begins by grounding the argument in the origins of the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong. Shapiro describes Mao not as a typical authoritarian, but as "one of the greatest mass murderers in all of human history," responsible for the deaths of somewhere between 30 and 60 million people. After seizing power in 1949, Mao transformed China into a full-blown Marxist dictatorship. Private property was abolished, industry was nationalized, and political dissent was crushed. The first major catastrophe was the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), a forced industrialization campaign that triggered a man-made famine. Peasants were forced at gunpoint into giant communes and ordered to melt down their farming tools to produce usel

Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.

Read Full Summary →

Free • No credit card required

Listen to Audio Summary Open in App

Never miss an episode of The Ben Shapiro Show

Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

What you'll learn

1 (02:00) **The Central Lie of U.S.-China Policy** - Ben Shapiro introduces the episode's thesis: the U.S. was told that integrating China into the global economy would make it more democratic and free, but this was a fairy tale.
2 (03:50) **China's Pre-Communist Humiliation and Mao's Rise** - The episode goes back a century to explain how a weak, fractured China set the stage for Mao's takeover.
3 (05:50) **Mao's Mass Murder and the Great Leap Forward** - Mao is described as one of history's greatest mass murderers, responsible for 30-60 million deaths.
4 (09:32) **The Cultural Revolution and the Unchanged CCP** - Mao's Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was a decade-long campaign of ideological terror.
5 (10:27) **The Nixon-Kissinger Opening and the Seed of a Stupid Idea** - The U.S. foreign policy establishment believed hostile countries could be folded into a rules-based order through diplomacy and trade.
6 (13:48) **Deng Xiaoping's Opening and the Tiananmen Square Massacre** - After Mao, Deng Xiaoping opened China's economy but not its politics, and the U.S. ignored the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
7 (15:24) **China Joins the WTO and the Acceleration of Theft** - Bill Clinton pushed for China's entry into the WTO in 2001, believing it would liberalize the country.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Ben Shapiro

Show Notes

For decades, America’s leaders believed that making China richer would make it freer. Instead, they helped build the greatest strategic rival the United States has faced in generations. From Mao, to Nixon, to Xi and Trump, this is the history of one of the greatest geopolitical miscalculations in the modern era.

- - -

Today's Sponsor:

Supersure - Go to https://Supersure.com/shapiro. One SuperAgency. One powerful platform. All your policies in one place. Paid for by Supersure Insurance Agency, LLC, a licensed insurance agency.

- - -

DailyWire+:

Become a Daily Wire Member and watch all of our content ad-free: https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe

📲 Download the free Daily Wire app today on iPhone, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Samsung, and more.

📰 Follow me on the Daily Wire app or DailyWire.com to read my daily articles and receive my Friday newsletter.

📘 My book "Lions and Scavengers: The True Story of America (and Her Critics)" is available here:

https://dwplus.shop/LionsandScavengers

👕 Get your Ben Shapiro merch here:

https://dwplus.shop/BenShapiroMerch

- - -

Socials:

YouTube — https://youtube.com/@BenShapiro

Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/officialbenshapiro

Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/officialbenshapiro

Snapchat — https://www.snapchat.com/officialbenshapiro

TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@real.benshapiro

X — https://twitter.com/benshapiro

- - -

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices