Books

For a longer history, I highly recommend CGTN's historic journey video series. It's a 20 or so part series (10 hours in all) that was created to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the CPC. It spans the entire history of modern China to the present day, and touches on all the lessons learned. It's very watchable and you'll go through all the important figures, periods, and struggles.

This one isn't history but is a must read: Roland Boer's socialism with chinese characteristics, a guide for foreigners.

An extremely advanced but thorough book (i'm about 70% done with it), is Jin Huiming's - Marxism and Socialism with Chinese characteristics.

I haven't read these yet, but Edgar Snow's red star over china, and anna louise strong's the rise of the chinese people's communes document different periods while they were happening, and have interviews with many of the leaders above.

Also good to read their source material, including Liu Shaoqi's how to be a good communist, the quotations of Mao Zedong, and Deng Xiaoping's selected works. These are all remarkably readable and insightful.