📕 Mao's Redbook

The operating manual for asymmetric competition.
5 frameworks to think, decide, and compete like the underdog who won.

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TL;DR

Not a history book. Not a political statement. A thinking toolkit.

Framework	Solve This Problem
Contradiction Analysis	Find the one tension driving everything, then resolve it
Practice Theory	Stop theorizing — investigate, act, verify, repeat
Military Strategy	You don't need more resources. Concentrate what you have
Mass Line	Your users know more than you do. Go ask them
United Front	Win the middle, isolate the extremes, keep independence

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🚀 Try It Now (30 Seconds)

Copy → paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI:

Apply Mao's contradiction analysis to my situation:
1. List all contradictions I'm facing
2. Which is the principal contradiction?
3. Which aspect dominates? What would flip it?
4. What specific method matches this specific contradiction?

→ Or open the Interactive CheatSheet for one-click prompt templates.

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📖 Real Examples

1. Startup vs. Incumbent (Military Strategy)

"We're a 10-person startup against a company with 100x our budget."

Don't fight everywhere. Pick ONE feature they neglect. Make it 10x better. That's your beachhead (集中优势兵力 — concentrate superior forces). Stage 1: survive with that feature. Stage 2: expand to adjacent features while they're slow to react. Stage 3: challenge their core. Force them to react to your shipping rhythm. "Better to cut off one finger than injure ten."

2. Product Nobody Uses (Practice + Mass Line)

"We built what we thought users wanted. Nobody's using it."

Your conference-room assumptions are worthless. Go to 20 users. Watch them work — don't demo. What do they actually do? Find the pattern behind the scattered feedback. Ship the simplest thing addressing the real need. Measure. Iterate. This loop is infinite. "If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must eat it yourself."

3. Team at War (Contradiction Analysis)

"Engineering and Sales are at each other's throats."

This is non-antagonistic — both want the company to succeed. The principal contradiction is short-term revenue vs. long-term quality. Don't force one side to submit (that's dictatorship). Use unity-criticism-unity: each team articulates the other's position first, then together find the synthesis — a roadmap with revenue features AND 30% technical foundation. "Different contradictions require different methods of resolution."

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🎯 Why Use It — with vs without

Same situation, two approaches:

❌ Without the frameworks — "Our team is at war. Engineering blames Sales, Sales blames Engineering."

Everyone needs to communicate better. Let's have a team-building offsite.

✅ With Contradiction Analysis — same situation:

This is a non-antagonistic contradiction — both sides want the company to win. The principal contradiction is short-term revenue vs. long-term quality, not the people. Method: unity-criticism-unity — each team restates the other's position first, then jointly build a roadmap with revenue features AND technical foundation. Don't force one side to submit; that's dictatorship, not resolution.

Generic LLMs give generic advice ("communicate better"). The frameworks give you: which contradiction is principal, which side dominates, what method matches this specific contradiction, and which original article to read for depth — see the Interactive CheatSheet for the one-click version.

📦 Install (one command, 10 seconds)

npx skills add Justinjchen-Cornell/Maos-Redbook

Works for Claude Code, GitHub Copilot CLI, Amp and 12+ agent hosts (auto-symlinked; restart your session after install). Verified end-to-end.

Manual install (no npx): git clone https://github.com/Justinjchen-Cornell/Maos-Redbook.git then copy the whole folder into ~/.claude/skills/maos-redbook/ (the skill references chapters/ and frameworks/, so copy the entire repo, not just SKILL.md).

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🌍 Why This Matters for Western Thinkers

Mao Zedong is one of history's most consequential strategic thinkers — yet in the West, his work is almost never studied as a thinking methodology. This is a mistake.

Five reasons to take this seriously:

Reason	Why It Matters
1. Contradiction Analysis is a Superpower	The West defaults to either/or thinking. Mao's dialectical method — find the principal contradiction, identify which side dominates, create conditions for transformation — is a more powerful tool for complex, multi-factor problems than any SWOT or 2x2 matrix.
2. Asymmetric Strategy is Universally Applicable	Mao won against superior forces for 22 years. His principles of concentration, protracted engagement, and turning weakness into strength apply directly to startups vs. incumbents, challenger brands, and underdog competition.
3. The Mass Line is Lean Methodology, 70 Years Early	"From the masses, to the masses" — investigate, concentrate, implement, verify — is the same iterative loop that modern product development calls "build-measure-learn." Just applied to revolution instead of software.
4. These Ideas Shaped Modern China	Understanding how China's leaders think requires understanding the intellectual toolkit they were trained on. The frameworks in this repo are not historical artifacts — they are live operating system for the world's second-largest economy.
5. The Frameworks Are Methodologically Neutral	You don't have to agree with Mao's politics or historical conclusions. The analytical method — investigate reality, identify contradictions, resolve the principal one — stands on its own as a thinking toolset, just as Sun Tzu's Art of War is studied by people who will never command an army.

Bottom line: This isn't about ideology. It's about expanding your strategic repertoire with frameworks that have been battle-tested across one of history's most turbulent periods.

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🧰 What's Inside

File	Content
SKILL.md	Agent skill definition — when and how to use this knowledge
CHEATSHEET.md	One-page bilingual quick reference card
frameworks/	5 core frameworks with application templates
glossary.md	Key terms and concepts explained
ARTICLE_INDEX.md	Complete article listing across all 5 volumes
_raw/	Extracted source text (for reference and verification)

The Five Frameworks

#	Framework	中文	Core Question It Answers
1	Contradiction Analysis	矛盾论	How to untangle complex, multi-factor problems?
2	Practice Theory	实践论	How to close the gap between theory and reality?
3	Military Strategy	军事战略	How to compete when outnumbered or out-resourced?
4	Mass Line	群众路线	How to stay connected to real needs and feedback?
5	United Front	统一战线	How to build coalitions while maintaining independence?

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🚀 Quick Start

As a Claude Code Skill

# Already installed? Just reference it:
"Analyze this competitive situation using Mao's contradiction analysis framework"

As a Thinking Toolkit

1. Open CHEATSHEET.md for the one-page overview
2. Dive into frameworks/ for deep application guides
3. Search ARTICLE_INDEX.md for specific articles

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📖 Essential Reading (Top 10)

#	Article	English	Why Read
1	实践论	On Practice	Foundation of how knowledge works
2	矛盾论	On Contradiction	Foundation of dialectical thinking
3	论持久战	On Protracted War	Masterclass in long-game strategy
4	反对本本主义	Oppose Book Worship	Anti-dogmatism manifesto
5	中国革命战争的战略问题	Problems of Strategy	Core military/competitive strategy
6	论十大关系	On the Ten Major Relationships	Systems thinking in practice
7	关于领导方法的若干问题	On Methods of Leadership	How to lead and make decisions
8	中国社会各阶级的分析	Analysis of Classes	How to analyze stakeholders
9	关于正确处理人民内部矛盾	On Correctly Handling Contradictions	Conflict resolution as dialectics
10	改造我们的学习	Reform Our Study	How to think clearly

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🎨 Design Philosophy

• Extract structure, not summaries — frameworks and methods over book reports
• Bilingual accessibility — all core content in Chinese + English
• Application-first — every framework includes "When to Apply" and templates
• Information-dense but scannable — tables, diagrams, checklists over prose

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⚠️ Context Note · 语境说明

These writings span China's revolutionary period (1925–1957). The frameworks are extracted for their analytical and strategic value, abstracted from their specific historical and political context.

Apply the dialectical method and strategic principles — not the historical conclusions.

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📁 Project Structure

mao-zedong-selected-works/
├── README.md              ← You are here
├── SKILL.md               ← Agent skill (maos-redbook)
├── CHEATSHEET.md          ← Bilingual quick reference
├── glossary.md            ← Key terms explained
├── ARTICLE_INDEX.md       ← Complete article listing
├── assets/logo.svg        ← Project logo
├── frameworks/
│   ├── contradiction-analysis.md
│   ├── practice-theory.md
│   ├── military-strategy.md
│   ├── mass-line.md
│   └── united-front.md
├── chapters/
│   ├── vol1/              ← 17 articles (1925–1937)
│   ├── vol2/              ← 38 articles (1937–1941)
│   ├── vol3/              ← 30 articles (1941–1945)
│   ├── vol4/              ← 58 articles (1945–1949)
│   └── vol5/              ← 71 articles (1949–1957)
└── _raw/                  ← Source extraction data

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🔗 Part of the Book-Skills Series

This project is part of a series that turns influential books into executable agent skills — series index:

• Maos-Redbook (this repo) — 5 strategic frameworks from Mao's Selected Works
• Science-Research-Writing-Skill — scientific paper writing models from Glasman-Deal's manual

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🙏 Source

Based on 《毛泽东选集》(1–5 卷), 人民出版社 edition, digitized by 草堂闲人 (2010).

Extracted and structured for educational and analytical purposes.

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⏳ Copyright Countdown

The full texts of Mao Zedong's works enter the public domain in the PRC on 31 December 2026 (50 years after the author's death). After that date:

• _raw/ (full texts, currently kept out of git) may be added to this repository
• This project can become a complete "full-text + frameworks" edition
• LICENSE section on source texts will be updated accordingly

Until then, chapters/ carries only study summaries + brief excerpts, which keeps the repo clean of bulk reproduction.