Many Western scholars have been concerned with discovering the revolutionary history of modern China according to the standpoints of Chinese themselves. In fact, since the establishment of the field of Communist China studies in the 1950s, scholars have never neglected the historical dynamics from within China. Since the 1980s, “discovering history in China” has become mainstream in the field of Communist China studies. What are its origins, characteristics, and evolution? To answer these questions, this article examines the English-language literature of the past fifty years on the history of rural revolution in Mao’s China.