Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong(orMao Tse-tunginWade-Giles;Simplified Chinese:Mao trạch đông;Traditional Chinese:Mao trạch đông;December 26,1893–September 9,1976) was the Chairman of theCommunist Party of Chinafrom 1943 until his death. He was also a founder of thePeople's Republic of China.

Let a hundredflowersbloom; let a hundredschoolsofthoughtscontend.

Liberalism is extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective. It is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion causes apathy and creates dissension. It robs the revolutionary ranks of compact organization and strict discipline, prevents policies from being carried through and alienates the Party organization from the masses which the Party leads. It is an extremely bad tendency.

All erroneous ideas, all poisonous weeds, all ghosts and monsters, must be subjected tocriticism;in no circumstance should they be allowed to spread unchecked. However, the criticism should be fully reasoned, analytical and convincing, and not rough, bureaucratic, metaphysical or dogmatic.

All reactionaries are paper tigers.

Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.

One cannot advance without mistakes... It is necessary to make mistakes. The party cannot be educated without learning from mistakes.

Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party.

Quotes

1920s

• Trung quốc chính phủ đích “Các nghị”, chân thị hựu mẫn tiệp hựu sảng khoái, dương đại nhân đả nhất cá thí đô thị hảo đích “Hương khí”, dương đại nhân yếu nã miên hoa khứ, các nghị tựu bả cấm miên xuất khẩu lệnh thủ tiêu; dương đại nhân yếu tống chỉ yên lai, các nghị tựu “Điện lệnh các cai tỉnh đình chỉ chinh thu chỉ yên thuế”. Tái thỉnh tứ vạn vạn đồng bào tưởng nhất tưởng, trung quốc chính phủ thị dương đại nhân đích trướng phòng giá cú thoại đáo để đối bất đối?
  • The "Cabinet meeting" of the Chinese government is really quick in yielding. Even the fart of foreigners can be taken as "fragrance." The Cabinet meeting lifts the cotton export ban becauseforeignerswantcotton;it orders "all provinces to stop collecting the cigarette tax" because foreigners want to importcigarettes.Let the 400 million compatriots again think it over: Isn't itcorrectto say that the Chinese government is the bookkeeper of foreigners?
    • "Cigarette Tax,"Hsiang-Tao Chou-Pao,no. 38, August 29, 1923, inCollected Works of Mao Tse-Tung (1917-1949),vol. 1 (United States Joint Publications Research Service, 1978), 48.

Changsha (1925)

Over crystal blue waters.
Eagles cleave the air,
Fish glide under the shallow water;
Under freezing skies a million creatures contend in freedom.

I ask, on this bondless land
Who rules over man'sdestiny?

• Độc lập hàn thu, tương giang bắc khứ, quất tử châu đầu. Khán vạn sơn hồng biến, tằng lâm tẫn nhiễm; mạn giang bích thấu, bách khả tranh lưu. Ưng kích trường không, ngư tường thiển để, vạn loại sương thiên cạnh tự do. Trướng liêu khuếch, vấn thương mang đại địa, thùy chủ trầm phù?
  • Alone I stand in theautumncold
    On the tip of Orange Island,
    Xiang flowing northward;
    I see a thousand hills crimsoned through
    By their serried woods deep-dyed,
    And a hundred barges vying
    Over crystal blue waters.
    Eaglescleave the air,
    Fish glide under the shallow water;
    Under freezing skies a million creatures contend in freedom.
    Brooding over this immensity,
    I ask, on this bondless land
    Who rules over man'sdestiny?
    • ChangshaInformal Translation
  • I stand alone in cold autumn.
    The River Xiang goes north
    around the promontory of Orange Island.
    I see the thousand mountains gone red
    and rows of stained forests.
    The great river is glassy jade
    swarming with one hundred boats.
    Eagles flash over clouds
    and fish float near the clear bottom.
    In the freezing air a million creatures compete for freedom.
    In this immensity
    I ask the huge greenblue earth,
    who is master of nature?
    • translated by Willis Barnstone

Yellow Crane Tower (1927)

I pledge my wine to the surging torrent,
The tide of my heart swells with the waves.

• Mang mang cửu phái lưu trung quốc, trầm trầm nhất tuyến xuyên nam bắc. Yên vũ mãng thương thương, quy xà tỏa đại giang. Hoàng hạc tri hà khứ? Thặng hữu du nhân xử. Bả tửu lỗi thao thao, tâm triều trục lãng cao!
  • Wide, wide flow the nine streams through the land,
    Dark, dark threads the line from south to north.
    Blurred in the thick haze of the misty rain
    Tortoise and Snake hold the great river locked.

    The yellow crane is gone, who knows whither?
    Only this tower remains a haunt for visitors.
    I pledge my wine to the surging torrent,
    The tide of my heart swells with the waves.

    • Informal Translation
  • China is vague and immense where the nine rivers pour.
    The horizon is a deep line threading north and south.
    Blue haze and rain.

    Hills like a snake or tortoise guard the river.

    The yellow crane is gone. Where?

    Now this tower and region are for the wanderer.

    1drink wine to the bubbling water - the heroes are gone.
    Like a tidal wave a wonder rises in my heart.

    • translated by Willis Barnstone

1930s

Here we can apply the old Chinese saying, “A single spark can start a prairie fire.”

The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.

Children are the masters of the new society.

Marxismcomprises many principles, but in the final analysis they can all be brought back to a single sentence: it is right to rebel.

To see real heroes, look around you.

• Nhất cửu nhị thất niên cách mệnh thất bại dĩ hậu, cách mệnh đích chủ quan lực lượng xác thật đại vi tước nhược liễu. Thặng hạ đích nhất điểm tiểu tiểu đích lực lượng, nhược cận y cư mỗ ta hiện tượng lai khán, tự nhiên yếu sử đồng chí môn ( tác giá dạng khán pháp đích đồng chí môn ) phát sinh bi quan đích niệm đầu. Đãn nhược tòng thật chất thượng khán, tiện đại đại bất nhiên. Giá lí dụng đắc trứ trung quốc đích nhất cú lão thoại: “Tinh tinh chi hỏa, khả dĩ liệu nguyên.” Giá tựu thị thuyết, hiện tại tuy chỉ hữu nhất điểm tiểu tiểu đích lực lượng, đãn thị tha đích phát triển hội thị ngận khoái đích. Tha tại trung quốc đích hoàn cảnh lí bất cận thị cụ bị liễu phát triển đích khả năng tính, giản trực thị cụ bị liễu phát triển đích tất nhiên tính, giá tại ngũ tạp vận động cập kỳ dĩ hậu đích đại cách mệnh vận động dĩ kinh đắc liễu sung phân đích chứng minh. Ngã môn khán sự tình tất tu yếu khán tha đích thật chất, nhi bả tha đích hiện tượng chỉ khán tác nhập môn đích hướng đạo, nhất tiến liễu môn tựu yếu trảo trụ tha đích thật chất, giá tài thị khả kháo đích khoa học đích phân tích phương pháp.
  • The subjective forces of therevolutionhave indeed been greatly weakened since the defeat of the revolution in 1927. The remaining forces are very small and those comrades who judge by appearances alone naturally feel pessimistic. But if we judge by essentials, it is quite another story. Here we can apply the old Chinese saying, “A single spark can start a prairie fire.” In other words, our forces, although small at present, will grow very rapidly. In the conditions prevailing in China, their growth is not only possible but indeed inevitable, as the May 30th Movement and the Great Revolution which followed have fully proved. When we look at a thing, we must examine itsessenceand treat itsappearancemerely as an usher at the threshold, and once we cross the threshold, we must grasp the essence of the thing; this is the only reliable and scientific method ofanalysis.
  • "Tinh tinh chi hỏa, khả dĩ liệu nguyên" ( "A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire" ) (January 5, 1930)

• Ngã môn tam niên lai tòng đấu tranh trung sở đắc đích chiến thuật, chân thị hòa cổ kim trung ngoại đích chiến thuật đô bất đồng. Dụng ngã môn đích chiến thuật, quần chúng đấu tranh đích phát động thị nhất thiên bỉ nhất thiên khoách đại đích, nhậm hà cường đại đích địch nhân thị nại hà ngã môn bất đắc đích. Ngã môn đích chiến thuật tựu thị du kích đích chiến thuật. Đại yếu thuyết lai thị: ‘ phân binh dĩ phát động quần chúng, tập trung dĩ ứng phó địch nhân. ’‘ địch tiến ngã thối, địch trú ngã nhiễu, địch bì ngã đả, địch thối ngã truy. ’‘ cố định khu vực đích cát cư, dụng ba lãng thức đích thôi tiến chính sách. Cường địch cân truy, dụng bàn toàn thức đích đả quyển tử chính sách. ’‘ ngận đoản đích thời gian, ngận hảo đích phương pháp, phát động ngận đại đích quần chúng. ’ giá chủng chiến thuật chính như đả võng, yếu tùy thời đả khai, hựu yếu tùy thời thu long. Đả khai dĩ tranh thủ quần chúng, thu long dĩ ứng phó địch nhân. Tam niên dĩ lai, đô thị dụng đích giá chủng chiến thuật.
  • The tactics we have derived from the struggle of the past three years are indeed different from any other tactics, ancient or modern, Chinese or foreign. With our tactics, the masses can be aroused for struggle on an ever-broadening scale, and no enemy, however powerful, can cope with us. Ours are guerrilla tactics. They consist mainly of the following points:
    “Divide our forces to arouse the masses, concentrate our forces to deal with the enemy.”
    “The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.”
    “To extend stable base areas, employ the policy of advancing in waves; when pursued by a powerful enemy, employ the policy of circling around.”
    “Arouse the largest numbers of the masses in the shortest possible time and by the best possible methods.”
    These tactics are just like casting a net; at any moment we should be able to cast it or draw it in. We cast it wide to win over the masses and draw it in to deal with the enemy. Such are the tactics we have used for the past three years.
  • "Tinh tinh chi hỏa, khả dĩ liệu nguyên" ( "A Single Spark Can Start A Prairie Fire"(January 5, 1930)

• Childrenare the masters of the newsociety.
  • Decree Regarding Marriage (January 28, 1931)

• Mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa giả khán vấn đề, bất đãn yếu khán đáo bộ phân, nhi thả yếu khán đáo toàn thể. Nhất cá hà mô tọa tại tỉnh lí thuyết: “Thiên hữu nhất cá tỉnh đại.” Giá thị bất đối đích, nhân vi thiên bất chỉ nhất cá tỉnh đại. Như quả tha thuyết: “Thiên đích mỗ nhất bộ phân hữu nhất cá tỉnh đại.” Giá thị đối đích, nhân vi hợp hồ sự thật. Ngã môn thuyết, hồng quân tại nhất cá phương diện ( bảo trì nguyên hữu trận địa đích phương diện ) thuyết lai thị thất bại liễu, tại lánh nhất cá phương diện ( hoàn thành trường chinh kế hoa đích phương diện ) thuyết lai thị thắng lợi liễu. Địch nhân tại nhất cá phương diện ( chiêm lĩnh ngã quân nguyên hữu trận địa đích phương diện ) thuyết lai thị thắng lợi liễu, tại lánh nhất cá phương diện ( thật hiện “Vi tiễu” “Truy tiễu” kế hoa đích phương diện ) thuyết lai thị thất bại liễu. Giá dạng thuyết tài thị kháp đương đích, nhân vi ngã môn hoàn thành liễu trường chinh.
  • In approaching a problem aMarxistshould see the whole as well as the parts. Afrogin a well says, "Theskyis no bigger than the mouth of the well. "That is untrue, for the sky is not just the size of the mouth of the well. If it said," A part of the sky is the size of the mouth of a well ", that would be true, for it tallies with the facts. What we say is that in one respect the Red Army has failed (i.e., failed to maintain its original positions), but in another respect it has won a victory (i.e., in executing the plan of the Long March). In one respect the enemy won a victory (i.e., in occupying our original positions), but in another respect he has failed (i.e., failed to execute his plan of “encirclement ant suppression” and of “pursuit and suppression” ). That is the only appropriate formulation, for we have completed the Long March.
  • "Quan tâm quần chúng sinh hoạt, chú ý công tác phương pháp" ( "On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism" ) (December 27, 1935)

• Tự tòng đế quốc chủ nghĩa giá cá quái vật xuất thế chi hậu, thế giới đích sự tình tựu liên thành nhất khí liễu, yếu tưởng cát khai dã bất khả năng liễu. Ngã môn trung hoa dân tộc hữu đồng tự kỷ đích địch nhân huyết chiến đáo để đích khí khái, hữu tại tự lực canh sinh đích cơ sở thượng quang phục cựu vật đích quyết tâm, hữu tự lập vu thế giới dân tộc chi lâm đích năng lực. Đãn thị giá bất thị thuyết ngã môn khả dĩ bất nhu yếu quốc tế viện trợ; bất, quốc tế viện trợ đối vu hiện đại nhất thiết quốc gia nhất thiết dân tộc đích cách mệnh đấu tranh đô thị tất yếu đích. Cổ nhân thuyết: “Xuân thu vô nghĩa chiến.” Vu kim đế quốc chủ nghĩa tắc canh gia vô nghĩa chiến, chỉ hữu bị áp bách dân tộc hòa bị áp bách giai cấp hữu nghĩa chiến. Toàn thế giới nhất thiết do nhân dân khởi lai phản đối áp bách giả đích chiến tranh, đô thị nghĩa chiến.
  • Ever since the monster of imperialism came into being, the affairs of the world have become so closely interwoven that it is impossible to separate them. We the Chinese nation have the spirit to fight the enemy to the last drop of ourblood,the determination to recover our lost territory by our own efforts, and the ability to stand on our own feet in the family of nations. But this does not mean that we can dispense with international support; no, today international support is necessary for the revolutionary struggle of any nation or country. There is the old adage, “In theSpring and Autumn Erathere were no righteous wars.” This is even truer of imperialism today, for it is only the oppressed nations and the oppressed classes that can wage just wars.
  • "Quan tâm quần chúng sinh hoạt, chú ý công tác phương pháp" ( "On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism" ) (December 27, 1935)

• Giang sơn như thử đa kiều, dẫn vô sổ anh hùng cạnh chiết yêu. Tích tần hoàng hán võ, lược thâu văn thải; đường tông tống tổ, sảo tốn phong tao. Nhất đại thiên kiêu, thành cát tư hãn, chỉ thức loan cung xạ đại điêu. Câu vãng hĩ, sổ phong lưu nhân vật, hoàn khán kim triều.
  • The country is so beautiful, where so many heroes had devoted their lives into it. Sorry that theQin Emperoror theHan Wu Emperorlacks a sense for literacy; while the founders of theTangandSong dynastiescame short in style. The great man,Genghis Khan,only knew how to shoot eagles with an arrow. The past is past. To see real heroes, look around you.
  • Qinyuanchun[ "Snow" ] ( thấm viên xuân • tuyết ) (1936; first published in late 1945). Variant translation of the last stanza: "All are past and gone! / For truly great men / Look to this age alone."

• Ngã môn nhu yếu đích thị nhiệt liệt nhi trấn định đích tình tự, khẩn trương nhi hữu trật tự đích công tác.
  • What we need is an enthusiastic but calm state of mind, and intense but orderly work.
  • "Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War",(December 1936), Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 211.

• Tích cực phòng ngự, hựu khiếu công thế phòng ngự, hựu khiếu quyết chiến phòng ngự. Tiêu cực phòng ngự, hựu khiếu chuyên thủ phòng ngự, hựu khiếu đan thuần phòng ngự. Tiêu cực phòng ngự thật tế thượng thị giả phòng ngự, chỉ hữu tích cực phòng ngự tài thị chân phòng ngự, tài thị vi liễu phản công hòa tiến công đích phòng ngự. Cư ngã sở tri, nhậm hà nhất bổn hữu giới trị đích quân sự thư, nhậm hà nhất cá bỉ giác thông minh đích quân sự gia, nhi thả vô luận cổ kim trung ngoại, vô luận chiến lược chiến thuật, một hữu bất phản đối tiêu cực phòng ngự đích. Chỉ hữu tối ngu xuẩn đích nhân, hoặc giả tối cuồng vọng đích nhân, tài phủng liễu tiêu cực phòng ngự đương pháp bảo. Nhiên nhi thế thượng thiên hữu giá dạng đích nhân, tố xuất giá dạng đích sự.
  • Active defence is also known as offensive defence, or defence through decisive engagements. Passive defence is also known as purely defensive defence or pure defence. Passive defence is actually a spurious kind of defence, and the only real defence is active defence, defence for the purpose of counter-attacking and taking the offensive. As far as I know, there is no military manual of value nor any sensible military expert, ancient or modern, Chinese or foreign, that does not oppose passive defence, whether in strategy or tactics. Only a complete fool or a madman would cherish passive defence as a talisman.
    • Problem of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War (December 1936), inSelected Works, Vol. I
  • Active defenseis also known as offensivedefense,or defense by decisive battles. Passive defense is also known as purely defensive defense or pure defense. Passive defense is actually a sham defense;active defense is the only real defense,the only defense for the purpose of counter-attacking and taking the offensive. As far as I known, there is no military manual of any value, nor is there any reasonably intelligent military expert, ancient or modern, Chinese or foreign, that does not oppose passive defense, whether strategically or tactically. Only the greatest fool or madman would hold up passive defense as a magic weapon.
    • Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War (December 1936), as quoted inMao's Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings, 1912-49: v. 5: Toward the Second United Front, January 1935-July 1937: Revolutionary Writings, 1912-49(2017), p. 861,Routledge.
  • He later wrote the similar quote "When guerrillas engage a stronger enemy, they withdraw when he advances; harass him when he stops; strike him when he is weary; pursue him when he withdraws."On Guerrilla Warfare(1937), Chapter 1 - "What Is Guerrilla Warfare?"

• Lỗ tấn tại trung quốc đích giới trị, cư ngã khán yếu toán thị trung quốc đích đệ nhất đẳng thánh nhân. Khổng phu tử thị phong kiến xã hội đích thánh nhân, lỗ tấn tắc thị hiện đại trung quốc đích thánh nhân. Ngã môn vi liễu vĩnh cửu kỷ niệm tha, tại diên an thành lập liễu lỗ tấn đồ thư quán, tại diên trường khai bạn liễu lỗ tấn sư phạm học giáo, sử hậu lai đích nhân môn khả dĩ tưởng kiến tha đích vĩ đại.
  • In my view, Lu Hsün is a great Chinese saint—the saint of modern China, just as Confucius was the saint of old China. For his immortal memory, we have established the Lu Hsün Library and the Lu Hsün Teachers’ Training School in Yan’an so that future generations may have a glimpse of his greatness.
  • "Luận lỗ tấn" ( "On Lu Hsun" ) (1937)

• I knew theClassics,but disliked them. What I enjoyed were theromancesof Old China, and especially stories ofrebellions.I read theYo FeiChuan,Shui Hu Chuan,Fan T'ang,San Kuo,andHsi Yu Chi,while still very young, and despite the vigilance of my old teacher, who hated these outlawedbooksand called them wicked. I used to read them inschool,covering them up with a Classic when the teacher walked past. So also did most of my schoolmates. We learned many of the stories almost by heart, and discussed and re-discussed them many times. We knew more of them than the old men of the village, who also loved them and used to exchange stories with us. I believe that perhaps I was much influenced by such books, read at an impressionable age.
  • In Edgar Snow'sRed Star Over China(1937)

• Hiện đại chiến tranh, phi quân đội khả đan độc thắng nhậm chi sự, vưu kỳ thị tại du kích chiến đấu trung, tất tu dân chúng đích lực lượng, tài năng hữu lợi đích bả ác. Nhân vi hữu liễu dân chúng đích bang trợ, tắc phàm quan vu vận thâu, cứu hộ, tức bất hạnh thất bại, dã hữu phương pháp đào thoát hoặc thu dung, nhân thử, dân chúng một hữu tổ chức hòa liên lạc đích địa phương, bất khả khinh dịch tác chiến. Bất yếu trinh tham, nhiễu loạn đẳng, hữu ngận đại đích tiện lợi, đồng thời khả hãm địch vu cô lập đích địa phương, tắc vu ngã chi tiện lợi đặc đa. Tức bất hạnh thất bại, dã hữu phương pháp đào thoát hoặc thu dung, nhân thử, dân chúng một hữu tổ chức hòa liên lạc đích địa phương, bất khả khinh dịch tác chiến.
  • Modern warfare is not a matter in which armies alone can determine victory or defeat. Especially in guerrilla combat, we must rely on the force of the popular masses, for it is only thus that we can have a guarantee of success. The support of the masses offers us great advantages as regards transport, assistance to wounded, intelligence, disruption of the enemy’s position, etc. At the same time, the enemy can be put into an isolated position, thus further increasing our advantages. If, by misfortune, we are defeated, it will also be possible to escape or to find concealment. Consequently, we must not lightly give battle in places where the masses are not organized and linked to us.
    • Basic Tactics (1937)

• Many people think it impossible for guerrillas to exist for long in the enemy's rear. Such a belief reveals lack of comprehension of the relationship that should exist between the people and the troops. The former may be likened to water the latter to the fish who inhabit it. How may it be said that these two cannot exist together?
  • On Guerrilla Warfare(1937), Chapter 6 - "The Political Problems of Guerilla Warfare"
  • This is usually aphorized as "The people are the sea that the revolutionary swims in," or an equivalent.

• Mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa đích đạo lý thiên điều vạn tự, quy căn kết để tựu thị nhất cú thoại: “Tạo phản hữu lý.”
  • Marxismcomprises many principles, but in the final analysis they can all be brought back to a single sentence:it is right to rebel.
  • "Tại diên an các giới khánh chúc tư đại lâm lục thập thọ thần đại hội thượng đích giảng thoại" ( "Speech marking the 60th birthday ofStalin") (20 December 1939), later revised as" It is right to rebel against reactionaries. "

On Practice (1937)

Man's social practice is not confined to activity in production, but takes many other forms--class struggle,political life, scientific and artistic pursuits; in short, as a social being, man participates in all spheres of the practical life of society.

The Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism has two outstanding characteristics. One is its class nature: it openly avows that dialectical materialism is in the service of the proletariat. The other is its practicality: it emphasizes the dependence of theory on practice, emphasizes that theory is based on practice and in turn serves practice.

Knowledge begins with practice, and theoretical knowledge is acquired through practice and must then return to practice.

If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance.

Only after man knows the particular essence of many different things can he proceed to generalization and know the common essence of things.

• Nhân đích xã hội thật tiễn, bất hạn vu sinh sản hoạt động nhất chủng hình thức, hoàn hữu đa chủng kỳ tha đích hình thức, giai cấp đấu tranh, chính trị sinh hoạt, khoa học hòa nghệ thuật đích hoạt động, tổng chi xã hội thật tế sinh hoạt đích nhất thiết lĩnh vực đô thị xã hội đích nhân sở tham gia đích. Nhân thử, nhân đích nhận thức, tại vật chất sinh hoạt dĩ ngoại, hoàn tòng chính trị sinh hoạt văn hóa sinh hoạt trung ( dữ vật chất sinh hoạt mật thiết liên hệ ), tại các chủng bất đồng trình độ thượng, tri đạo nhân hòa nhân đích các chủng quan hệ. Kỳ trung, vưu dĩ các chủng hình thức đích giai cấp đấu tranh, cấp dư nhân đích nhận thức phát triển dĩ thâm khắc đích ảnh hưởng. Tại giai cấp xã hội trung, mỗi nhất cá nhân đô tại nhất định đích giai cấp địa vị trung sinh hoạt, các chủng tư tưởng vô bất đả thượng giai cấp đích lạc ấn.
  • Man's social practice is not confined to activity in production, but takes many other forms--class struggle,political life, scientific and artistic pursuits; in short, as a social being, man participates in all spheres of the practical life of society. Thus man, in varying degrees, comes to know the different relations between man and man, not only through his material life but also through his political and cultural life (both of which are intimately bound up with material life). Of these other types of social practice, class struggle in particular, in all its various forms, exerts a profound influence on the development of man's knowledge. In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.

• Nhân môn yếu tưởng đắc đáo công tác đích thắng lợi tức đắc đáo dự tưởng đích kết quả, nhất định yếu sử tự kỷ đích tư tưởng hợp vu khách quan ngoại giới đích quy luật tính, như quả bất hợp, tựu hội tại thật tiễn trung thất bại. Nhân môn kinh quá thất bại chi hậu, dã tựu tòng thất bại thủ đắc giáo huấn, cải chính tự kỷ đích tư tưởng sử chi thích hợp vu ngoại giới đích quy luật tính, nhân môn tựu năng biến thất bại vi thắng lợi, sở vị “Thất bại giả thành công chi mẫu”, “Cật nhất tiệm trường nhất trí”, tựu thị giá cá đạo lý.
  • If a man wants to succeed in his work, that is, to achieve the anticipated results, he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in his practice. After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by "failure is the mother of success" and "a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit".

• Mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa đích triết học biện chứng duy vật luận hữu lưỡng cá tối hiển trứ đích đặc điểm: Nhất cá thị tha đích giai cấp tính, công nhiên thân minh biện chứng duy vật luận thị vi vô sản giai cấp phục vụ đích; tái nhất cá thị tha đích thật tiễn tính, cường điều lý luận đối vu thật tiễn đích y lại quan hệ, lý luận đích cơ sở thị thật tiễn, hựu chuyển quá lai vi thật tiễn phục vụ. Phán định nhận thức hoặc lý luận chi thị phủ chân lý, bất thị y chủ quan thượng giác đắc như hà nhi định, nhi thị y khách quan thượng xã hội thật tiễn đích kết quả như hà nhi định. Chân lý đích tiêu chuẩn chỉ năng thị xã hội đích thật tiễn. Thật tiễn đích quan điểm thị biện chứng duy vật luận đích nhận thức luận chi đệ nhất đích hòa cơ bổn đích quan điểm.
  • TheMarxistphilosophy ofdialectical materialismhas two outstanding characteristics. One is its class nature: it openly avows that dialectical materialism is in the service of theproletariat.The other is its practicality: it emphasizes the dependence of theory on practice, emphasizes that theory is based on practice and in turn serves practice. The truth of anyknowledgeortheoryis determined not by subjective feelings, but by objective results in social practice. Only social practice can be the criterion of truth. The standpoint of practice is the primary and basic standpoint in the dialectical materialisttheory of knowledge.

• Mã khắc tư liệt ninh chủ nghĩa nhận vi: Nhận thức quá trình trung lưỡng cá giai đoạn đích đặc tính, tại đê cấp giai đoạn, nhận thức biểu hiện vi cảm tính đích, tại cao cấp giai đoạn, nhận thức biểu hiện vi luận lý đích, đãn nhậm hà giai đoạn, đô thị thống nhất đích nhận thức quá trình trung đích giai đoạn. Cảm tính hòa lý tính nhị giả đích tính chất bất đồng, đãn hựu bất thị hỗ tương phân ly đích, tha môn tại thật tiễn đích cơ sở thượng thống nhất khởi lai liễu. Ngã môn đích thật tiễn chứng minh: Cảm giác đáo liễu đích đông tây, ngã môn bất năng lập khắc lý giải tha, chỉ hữu lý giải liễu đích đông tây tài canh thâm khắc địa cảm giác tha. Cảm giác chỉ giải quyết hiện tượng vấn đề, lý luận tài giải quyết bổn chất vấn đề. Giá ta vấn đề đích giải quyết, nhất điểm dã bất năng ly khai thật tiễn. Vô luận hà nhân yếu nhận thức thập ma sự vật, trừ liễu đồng na cá sự vật tiếp xúc, tức sinh hoạt vu ( thật tiễn vu ) na cá sự vật đích hoàn cảnh trung, thị một hữu pháp tử giải quyết đích. Bất năng tại phong kiến xã hội tựu dự tiên nhận thức tư bổn chủ nghĩa xã hội đích quy luật, nhân vi tư bổn chủ nghĩa hoàn vị xuất hiện, hoàn vô giá chủng thật tiễn. Mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa chỉ năng thị tư bổn chủ nghĩa xã hội đích sản vật. Mã khắc tư bất năng tại tự do tư bổn chủ nghĩa thời đại tựu dự tiên cụ thể địa nhận thức đế quốc chủ nghĩa thời đại đích mỗ ta đặc dị đích quy luật, nhân vi đế quốc chủ nghĩa giá cá tư bổn chủ nghĩa tối hậu giai đoạn hoàn vị đáo lai, hoàn vô giá chủng thật tiễn, chỉ hữu liệt ninh hòa tư đại lâm tài năng đam đương thử hạng nhậm vụ. Mã khắc tư, ân cách tư, liệt ninh, tư đại lâm chi sở dĩ năng cú tác xuất tha môn đích lý luận, trừ liễu tha môn đích thiên tài điều kiện chi ngoại, chủ yếu địa thị tha môn thân tự tham gia liễu đương thời đích giai cấp đấu tranh hòa khoa học thật nghiệm đích thật tiễn, một hữu giá hậu nhất cá điều kiện, nhậm hà thiên tài dã thị bất năng thành công đích.
  • Marxism-Leninismholds that each of the two stages in the process ofcognitionhas its own characteristics, with knowledge manifesting itself as perceptual at the lower stage and logical at the higher stage, but that both are stages in an integrated process of cognition. The perceptual and the rational are qualitatively different, but are not divorced from each other; they are unified on the basis of practice. Our practice proves that what is perceived cannot at once be comprehended and that only what is comprehended can be more deeply perceived.Perceptiononly solves the problem ofphenomena;theory alone can solve the problem ofessence.The solving of both these problems is not separable in the slightest degree from practice. Whoever wants to know a thing has no way of doing so except by coming into contact with it, that is, by living (practicing) in its environment. Infeudalsociety it was impossible to know the laws of capitalist society in advance becausecapitalismhad not yet emerged, the relevant practice was lacking. Marxism could be the product only of capitalist society.Marx,in the era oflaissez-faire capitalism,could not concretely know certain laws peculiar to the era ofimperialismbeforehand, because imperialism, the last stage of capitalism, had not yet emerged and the relevant practice was lacking; onlyLeninandStalincould undertake this task. Leaving aside their genius, the reason why Marx,Engels,Lenin and Stalin could work out their theories was mainly that they personally took part in the practice of the class struggle and the scientific experimentation of their time; lacking this condition, no genius could have succeeded.

• Thường thường thính đáo nhất ta đồng chí tại bất năng dũng cảm tiếp thụ công tác nhậm vụ thời thuyết xuất lai đích nhất cú thoại: Một hữu bả ác. Vi thập ma một hữu bả ác ni? Nhân vi tha đối vu giá hạng công tác đích nội dung hòa hoàn cảnh một hữu quy luật tính đích liễu giải, hoặc giả tha tòng lai tựu một hữu tiếp xúc quá giá loại công tác, hoặc giả tiếp xúc đắc bất đa, nhân nhi vô tòng đàm đáo giá loại công tác đích quy luật tính. Cập chí bả công tác đích tình huống hòa hoàn cảnh cấp dĩ tường tế phân tích chi hậu, tha tựu giác đắc bỉ giác địa hữu liễu bả ác, nguyện ý khứ tố giá hạng công tác. Như quả giá cá nhân tại giá hạng công tác trung kinh quá liễu nhất cá thời kỳ, tha hữu liễu giá hạng công tác đích kinh nghiệm liễu, nhi tha hựu thị nhất cá khẳng hư tâm thể sát tình huống đích nhân, bất thị nhất cá chủ quan địa, phiến diện địa, biểu diện địa khán vấn đề đích nhân, tha tựu năng cú tự kỷ tố xuất ứng cai chẩm dạng tiến hành công tác đích kết luận, tha đích công tác dũng khí dã tựu khả dĩ đại đại địa đề cao liễu. Chỉ hữu na ta chủ quan địa, phiến diện địa hòa biểu diện địa khán vấn đề đích nhân, bào đáo nhất cá địa phương, bất vấn hoàn cảnh đích tình huống, bất khán sự tình đích toàn thể ( sự tình đích lịch sử hòa toàn bộ hiện trạng ), dã bất xúc đáo sự tình đích bổn chất ( sự tình đích tính chất cập thử nhất sự tình hòa kỳ tha sự tình đích nội bộ liên hệ ), tựu tự dĩ vi thị địa phát hào thi lệnh khởi lai, giá dạng đích nhân thị một hữu bất điệt giao tử đích.
  • "I am not sure I can handle it." We often hear this remark when a comrade hesitates to accept an assignment. Why is he unsure of himself? Because he has no systematic understanding of the content and circumstances of the assignment, or because he has had little or no contact with such work, and so the laws governing it are beyond him. After a detailed analysis of the nature and circumstances of the assignment, he will feel more sure of himself and do it willingly. If he spends some time at the job and gains experience and if he is a person who is willing to look into matters with an open mind and not one who approaches problems subjectively, one-sidedly and superficially, then he can draw conclusions for himself as to how to go about the job and do it with much more courage. Only those who are subjective, one-sided and superficial in their approach to problems will smugly issue orders or directives the moment they arrive on the scene, without considering the circumstances, without viewing things in their totality (their history and their present state as a whole) and without getting to the essence of things (their nature and the internal relations between one thing and another). Such people are bound to trip and fall.

• Như quả hữu liễu chính xác đích lý luận, chỉ thị bả tha không đàm nhất trận, thúc chi cao các, tịnh bất thật hành, na mạt, giá chủng lý luận tái hảo dã thị một hữu ý nghĩa đích. Nhận thức tòng thật tiễn thủy, kinh quá thật tiễn đắc đáo liễu lý luận đích nhận thức, hoàn tu tái hồi đáo thật tiễn khứ. Nhận thức đích năng động tác dụng, bất đãn biểu hiện vu tòng cảm tính đích nhận thức đáo lý tính đích nhận thức chi năng động đích phi dược, canh trọng yếu đích hoàn tu biểu hiện vu tòng lý tính đích nhận thức đáo cách mệnh đích thật tiễn giá nhất cá phi dược. Trảo trứ liễu thế giới đích quy luật tính đích nhận thức, tất tu bả tha tái hồi đáo cải tạo thế giới đích thật tiễn trung khứ, tái dụng đáo sinh sản đích thật tiễn, cách mệnh đích giai cấp đấu tranh hòa dân tộc đấu tranh đích thật tiễn dĩ cập khoa học thật nghiệm đích thật tiễn trung khứ.
  • If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance.Knowledgebegins with practice, and theoretical knowledge is acquired through practice and must then return to practice. The active function of knowledge manifests itself not only in the active leap from perceptual to rational knowledge, but--and this is more important--it must manifest itself in the leap from rational knowledge to revolutionary practice. The knowledge which grasps the laws of the world, must be redirected to the practice of changing the world, must be applied anew in the practice of production, in the practice of revolutionary class struggle and revolutionary national struggle and in the practice of scientific experiment.

• Thông quá thật tiễn nhi phát hiện chân lý, hựu thông quá thật tiễn nhi chứng thật chân lý hòa phát triển chân lý. Tòng cảm tính nhận thức nhi năng động địa phát triển đáo lý tính nhận thức, hựu tòng lý tính nhận thức nhi năng động địa chỉ đạo cách mệnh thật tiễn, cải tạo chủ quan thế giới hòa khách quan thế giới. Thật tiễn, nhận thức, tái thật tiễn, tái nhận thức, giá chủng hình thức, tuần hoàn vãng phục dĩ chí vô cùng, nhi thật tiễn hòa nhận thức chi mỗi nhất tuần hoàn đích nội dung, đô bỉ giác địa tiến đáo liễu cao nhất cấp đích trình độ. Giá tựu thị biện chứng duy vật luận đích toàn bộ nhận thức luận, giá tựu thị biện chứng duy vật luận đích tri hành thống nhất quan.
  • Discover the truth through practice, and again through practice verify and develop the truth. Start from perceptual knowledge and actively develop it into rational knowledge; then start from rational knowledge and actively guide revolutionary practice to change both the subjective and the objective world. Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. This form repeats itself in endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and knowledge rises to a higher level. Such is the whole of the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge, and such is the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing.

On Contradiction (1937)

Opposition and struggle between ideas of different kinds constantly occur within the Party; this is a reflection within the Party of contradictions between classes and between the new and the old in society. If there were no contradictions in the Party and no ideological struggles to resolve them, the Party's life would come to an end.

The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence.

Qualitatively different contradictions can only be resolved by qualitatively different methods.

Every difference in men's concepts should be regarded as reflecting an objective contradiction. Objective contradictions are reflected in subjective thinking, and this process constitutes the contradictory movement of concepts, pushes forward the development of thought, and ceaselessly solves problems in man's thinking.

• Hòa hình nhi thượng học đích vũ trụ quan tương phản, duy vật biện chứng pháp đích vũ trụ quan chủ trương tòng sự vật đích nội bộ, tòng nhất sự vật đối tha sự vật đích quan hệ khứ nghiên cứu sự vật đích phát triển, tức bả sự vật đích phát triển khán tố thị sự vật nội bộ đích tất nhiên đích tự kỷ đích vận động, nhi mỗi nhất sự vật đích vận động đô hòa tha đích chu vi kỳ tha sự vật hỗ tương liên hệ trứ hòa hỗ tương ảnh hưởng trứ. Sự vật phát triển đích căn bổn nguyên nhân, bất thị tại sự vật đích ngoại bộ nhi thị tại sự vật đích nội bộ, tại vu sự vật nội bộ đích mâu thuẫn tính. Nhậm hà sự vật nội bộ đô hữu giá chủng mâu thuẫn tính, nhân thử dẫn khởi liễu sự vật đích vận động hòa phát triển. Sự vật nội bộ đích giá chủng mâu thuẫn tính thị sự vật phát triển đích căn bổn nguyên nhân, nhất sự vật hòa tha sự vật đích hỗ tương liên hệ hòa hỗ tương ảnh hưởng tắc thị sự vật phát triển đích đệ nhị vị đích nguyên nhân. Giá dạng, duy vật biện chứng pháp tựu hữu lực địa phản đối liễu hình nhi thượng học đích cơ giới duy vật luận hòa dung tục tiến hóa luận đích ngoại nhân luận hoặc bị động luận. Giá thị thanh sở đích, đan thuần đích ngoại bộ nguyên nhân chỉ năng dẫn khởi sự vật đích cơ giới đích vận động, tức phạm vi đích đại tiểu, sổ lượng đích tăng giảm, bất năng thuyết minh sự vật hà dĩ hữu tính chất thượng đích thiên soa vạn biệt cập kỳ hỗ tương biến hóa.
  • As opposed to themetaphysicalworld outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development. Contradictoriness within a thing is the fundamental cause of its development, while its interrelations and interactions with other things are secondary causes. Thus materialist dialectics effectively combats the theory of external causes, or of an external motive force, advanced by metaphysical mechanical materialism and vulgar evolutionism. It is evident that purely external causes can only give rise to mechanical motion, that is, to changes in scale or quantity, but cannot explain why things differ qualitatively in thousands of ways and why one thing changes into another.

• Án chiếu duy vật biện chứng pháp đích quan điểm, tự nhiên giới đích biến hóa, chủ yếu địa thị do vu tự nhiên giới nội bộ mâu thuẫn đích phát triển. Xã hội đích biến hóa, chủ yếu địa thị do vu xã hội nội bộ mâu thuẫn đích phát triển, tức sinh sản lực hòa sinh sản quan hệ đích mâu thuẫn, giai cấp chi gian đích mâu thuẫn, tân cựu chi gian đích mâu thuẫn, do vu giá ta mâu thuẫn đích phát triển, thôi động liễu xã hội đích tiền tiến, thôi động liễu tân cựu xã hội đích đại tạ. Duy vật biện chứng pháp thị phủ bài trừ ngoại bộ đích nguyên nhân ni? Tịnh bất bài trừ. Duy vật biện chứng pháp nhận vi ngoại nhân thị biến hóa đích điều kiện, nội nhân thị biến hóa đích căn cư, ngoại nhân thông quá nội nhân nhi khởi tác dụng. Kê đản nhân đắc thích đương đích ôn độ nhi biến hóa vi kê tử, đãn ôn độ bất năng sử thạch đầu biến vi kê tử, nhân vi nhị giả đích căn cư thị bất đồng đích. Các quốc nhân dân chi gian đích hỗ tương ảnh hưởng thị thời thường tồn tại đích. Tại tư bổn chủ nghĩa thời đại, đặc biệt thị tại đế quốc chủ nghĩa hòa vô sản giai cấp cách mệnh đích thời đại, các quốc tại chính trị thượng, kinh tế thượng hòa văn hóa thượng đích hỗ tương ảnh hưởng hòa hỗ tương kích động, thị cực kỳ cự đại đích. Thập nguyệt xã hội chủ nghĩa cách mệnh bất chỉ thị khai sang liễu nga quốc lịch sử đích tân kỷ nguyên, nhi thả khai sang liễu thế giới lịch sử đích tân kỷ nguyên, ảnh hưởng đáo thế giới các quốc nội bộ đích biến hóa, đồng dạng địa nhi thả hoàn đặc biệt thâm khắc địa ảnh hưởng đáo trung quốc nội bộ đích biến hóa, đãn thị giá chủng biến hóa thị thông quá liễu các quốc nội bộ hòa trung quốc nội bộ tự kỷ đích quy luật tính nhi khởi đích. Lưỡng quân tương tranh, nhất thắng nhất bại, sở dĩ thắng bại, giai quyết vu nội nhân.
  • According to materialistdialectics,changes in nature are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in nature. Changes in society are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in society, that is, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the contradiction between classes and the contradiction between the old and the new; it is the development of these contradictions that pushes society forward and gives the impetus for the supersession of the old society by the new. Does materialist dialectics exclude external causes? Not at all. It holds that external causes are the condition of change and internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become operative through internal causes. In a suitable temperature aneggchanges into achicken,but no temperature can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis. There is constant interaction between the peoples of different countries. In the era of capitalism, and especially in the era of imperialism andproletarian revolution,the interaction and mutual impact of different countries in the political, economic and cultural spheres are extremely great. TheOctober Socialist Revolutionushered in a new epoch in world history as well as inRussian history.It exerted influence on internal changes in the other countries in the world and, similarly and in a particularly profound way, on internal changes in China. These changes, however, were effected through the inner laws of development of these countries, China included. In battle, one army is victorious and the other is defeated, both the victory and the defeat are determined by internal causes.

• Nguyên lai mâu thuẫn trứ đích các phương diện, bất năng cô lập địa tồn tại. Giả như một hữu hòa tha tác đối đích mâu thuẫn đích nhất phương, tha tự kỷ giá nhất phương tựu thất khứ liễu tồn tại đích điều kiện.
  • The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence.

• Nhân đích khái niệm đích mỗi nhất soa dị, đô ứng bả tha khán tác thị khách quan mâu thuẫn đích phản ánh. Khách quan mâu thuẫn phản ánh nhập chủ quan đích tư tưởng, tổ thành liễu khái niệm đích mâu thuẫn vận động, thôi động liễu tư tưởng đích phát triển, bất đoạn địa giải quyết liễu nhân môn đích tư tưởng vấn đề.
  • Every difference in men's concepts should be regarded as reflecting an objective contradiction. Objective contradictions are reflected in subjective thinking, and this process constitutes the contradictory movement of concepts, pushes forward the development of thought, and ceaselessly solves problems in man's thinking.

• Đảng nội bất đồng tư tưởng đích đối lập hòa đấu tranh thị kinh thường phát sinh đích, giá thị xã hội đích giai cấp mâu thuẫn hòa tân cựu sự vật đích mâu thuẫn tại đảng nội đích phản ánh. Đảng nội như quả một hữu mâu thuẫn hòa giải quyết mâu thuẫn đích tư tưởng đấu tranh, đảng đích sinh mệnh dã tựu đình chỉ liễu.
  • Opposition and struggle between ideas of different kinds constantly occur within the Party; this is a reflection within the Party of contradictions between classes and between the new and the old in society. If there were no contradictions in the Party and no ideological struggles to resolve them, the Party's life would come to an end.

• Vi yếu bạo lộ sự vật phát triển quá trình trung đích mâu thuẫn tại kỳ tổng thể thượng, tại kỳ tương hỗ liên kết thượng đích đặc thù tính, tựu thị thuyết bạo lộ sự vật phát triển quá trình đích bổn chất, tựu tất tu bạo lộ quá trình trung mâu thuẫn các phương diện đích đặc thù tính, phủ tắc bạo lộ quá trình đích bổn chất thành vi bất khả năng, giá dã thị ngã môn tác nghiên cứu công tác thời tất tu thập phân chú ý đích.
  • It is necessary not only to study the particular contradiction and the essence determined thereby of every great system of the forms of motion of matter, but also to study the particular contradiction and the essence of each process in the long course of development of each form of motion of matter. In every form of motion, each process of development which is real (and not imaginary) is qualitatively different. Our study must emphasize and start from this point.

• Bất đồng chất đích mâu thuẫn, chỉ hữu dụng bất đồng chất đích phương pháp tài năng giải quyết.
  • Qualitatively different contradictions can only be resolved by qualitatively different methods.

• Do thử khả tri, nhậm hà quá trình như quả hữu đa sổ mâu thuẫn tồn tại đích thoại, kỳ trung tất định hữu nhất chủng thị chủ yếu đích, khởi trứ lĩnh đạo đích, quyết định đích tác dụng, kỳ tha tắc xử vu thứ yếu hòa phục tòng đích địa vị. Nhân thử, nghiên cứu nhậm hà quá trình, như quả thị tồn tại trứ lưỡng cá dĩ thượng mâu thuẫn đích phục tạp quá trình đích thoại, tựu yếu dụng toàn lực trảo xuất tha đích chủ yếu mâu thuẫn. Tróc trụ liễu giá cá chủ yếu mâu thuẫn, nhất thiết vấn đề tựu nghênh nhận nhi giải liễu. Giá thị mã khắc tư nghiên cứu tư bổn chủ nghĩa xã hội cáo tố ngã môn đích phương pháp. Liệt ninh hòa tư đại lâm nghiên cứu đế quốc chủ nghĩa hòa tư bổn chủ nghĩa tổng nguy cơ đích thời hầu, liệt ninh hòa tư đại lâm nghiên cứu tô liên kinh tế đích thời hầu, dã cáo tố liễu giá chủng phương pháp. Vạn thiên đích học vấn gia hòa thật hành gia, bất đổng đắc giá chủng phương pháp, kết quả như đọa yên hải, trảo bất đáo trung tâm, dã tựu trảo bất đáo giải quyết mâu thuẫn đích phương pháp.
  • Hence, if in any process there are a number of contradictions, one of them must be the principal contradiction playing the leading and decisive role, while the rest occupy a secondary and subordinate position. Therefore, in studying any complex process in which there are two or more contradictions, we must devote every effort to funding its principal contradiction. Once this principal contradiction is grasped, all problems can be readily solved. This is the method Marx taught us in his study of capitalist society. Likewise Lenin and Stalin taught us this method when they studied imperialism and the general crisis of capitalism and when they studied theSovieteconomy. There are thousands of scholars and men of action who do not understand it, and the result is that, lost in a fog, they are unable to get to the heart of a problem and naturally cannot find a way to resolve its contradictions.

• Bất năng bả quá trình trung sở hữu đích mâu thuẫn bình quân khán đãi, tất tu bả tha môn khu biệt vi chủ yếu đích hòa thứ yếu đích lưỡng loại, trứ trọng vu tróc trụ chủ yếu đích mâu thuẫn, dĩ như thượng thuật. Đãn thị tại các chủng mâu thuẫn chi trung, bất luận thị chủ yếu đích hoặc thứ yếu đích, mâu thuẫn trứ đích lưỡng cá phương diện, hựu thị phủ khả dĩ bình quân khán đãi ni? Dã thị bất khả dĩ đích. Vô luận thập ma mâu thuẫn, mâu thuẫn đích chư phương diện, kỳ phát triển thị bất bình hành đích. Hữu thời hầu tự hồ thế quân lực địch, nhiên nhi giá chỉ thị tạm thời đích hòa tương đối đích tình hình, cơ bổn đích hình thái tắc thị bất bình hành. Mâu thuẫn trứ đích lưỡng phương diện trung, tất hữu nhất phương diện thị chủ yếu đích, tha phương diện thị thứ yếu đích. Kỳ chủ yếu đích phương diện, tức sở vị mâu thuẫn khởi chủ đạo tác dụng đích phương diện. Sự vật đích tính chất, chủ yếu địa thị do thủ đắc chi phối địa vị đích mâu thuẫn đích chủ yếu phương diện sở quy định đích.
  • As we have said, one must not treat all the contradictions in a process as being equal but must distinguish between the principal and the secondary contradictions, and pay special attention to grasping the principal one. But, in any given contradiction, whether principal or secondary, should the two contradictory aspects be treated as equal? Again, no. In any contradiction the development of the contradictory aspects is uneven. Sometimes they seem to be in equilibrium, which is however only temporary and relative, while unevenness is basic. Of the two contradictory aspects, one must be principal and the other secondary. The principal aspect is the one playing the leading role in the contradiction. The nature of a thing is determined mainly by the principal aspect of a contradiction, the aspect which has gained the dominant position.

• Đương trứ mỗ nhất kiện sự tình ( nhậm hà sự tình đô thị nhất dạng ) yếu tố, đãn thị hoàn một hữu phương châm, phương pháp, kế hoa hoặc chính sách đích thời hầu, xác định phương châm, phương pháp, kế hoa hoặc chính sách, dã tựu thị chủ yếu đích quyết định đích đông tây. Đương trứ chính trị văn hóa đẳng đẳng thượng tằng kiến trúc trở ngại trứ kinh tế cơ sở đích phát triển đích thời hầu, đối vu chính trị thượng hòa văn hóa thượng đích cách tân tựu thành vi chủ yếu đích quyết định đích đông tây liễu. Ngã môn giá dạng thuyết, thị phủ vi phản liễu duy vật luận ni? Một hữu. Nhân vi ngã môn thừa nhận tổng đích lịch sử phát triển trung thị vật chất đích đông tây quyết định tinh thần đích đông tây, thị xã hội đích tồn tại quyết định xã hội đích ý thức; đãn thị đồng thời hựu thừa nhận nhi thả tất tu thừa nhận tinh thần đích đông tây đích phản tác dụng, xã hội ý thức đối vu xã hội tồn tại đích phản tác dụng, thượng tằng kiến trúc đối vu kinh tế cơ sở đích phản tác dụng. Giá bất thị vi phản duy vật luận, chính thị tị miễn liễu cơ giới duy vật luận, kiên trì liễu biện chứng duy vật luận.
  • When a task, no matter which, has to be performed, but there is as yet no guiding line, method, plan or policy, the principal and decisive thing is to decide on a guiding line, method, plan or policy. When the superstructure (politics, culture, etc.) obstructs the development of the economic base, political and cultural changes become principal and decisive. Are we going against materialism when we say this? No. The reason is that while we recognize that in the general development of history the material determines the mental and social being determines social consciousness, we also--and indeed must--recognize the reaction of mental on material things, of social consciousness on social being and of the superstructure on the economic base. This does not go against materialism; on the contrary, it avoids mechanical materialism and firmly upholds dialectical materialism.

• Nhất thiết mâu thuẫn trứ đích đông tây, hỗ tương liên hệ trứ, bất đãn tại nhất định điều kiện chi hạ cộng xử vu nhất cá thống nhất thể trung, nhi thả tại nhất định điều kiện chi hạ hỗ tương chuyển hóa, giá tựu thị mâu thuẫn đích đồng nhất tính đích toàn bộ ý nghĩa. Liệt ninh sở vị “Chẩm dạng thành vi đồng nhất đích ( chẩm dạng biến thành đồng nhất đích ), —— tại chẩm dạng đích điều kiện chi hạ tha môn hỗ tương chuyển hóa, thành vi đồng nhất đích”, tựu thị giá cá ý tư.
  • All contradictory things are interconnected; not only do they coexist in a single entity in given conditions, but in other given conditions, they also transform themselves into each other. This is the full meaning of the identity of opposites. This is what Lenin meant when he discussed "how they happen to be (how they become) identical--under what conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another".

• Nhận thức giá chủng tình hình, cực vi trọng yếu. Tha sử ngã môn đổng đắc, tại giai cấp xã hội trung, cách mệnh hòa cách mệnh chiến tranh thị bất khả tị miễn đích, xá thử bất năng hoàn thành xã hội phát triển đích phi dược, bất năng thôi phiên phản động đích thống trị giai cấp, nhi sử nhân dân hoạch đắc chính quyền. Cộng sản đảng nhân tất tu yết lộ phản động phái sở vị xã hội cách mệnh thị bất tất yếu đích hòa bất khả năng đích đẳng đẳng khi phiến đích tuyên truyện, kiên trì mã khắc tư liệt ninh chủ nghĩa đích xã hội cách mệnh luận, sử nhân dân đổng đắc, giá bất đãn thị hoàn toàn tất yếu đích, nhi thả thị hoàn toàn khả năng đích, chỉnh cá nhân loại đích lịch sử hòa tô liên đích thắng lợi, đô chứng minh liễu giá cá khoa học đích chân lý.
  • It is highly important to grasp this fact. It enables us to understand that revolutions and revolutionary wars are inevitable in class society and that without them, it is impossible to accomplish any leap in social development and to overthrow the reactionary ruling classes and therefore impossible for the people to win political power.Communistsmust expose the deceitful propaganda of the reactionaries, such as the assertion that social revolution is unnecessary and impossible. They must firmly uphold the Marxist-Leninist theory of social revolution and enable the people to understand that social revolution is not only entirely necessary but also entirely practicable, and that the whole history of mankind and the triumph of the Soviet Union have confirmed this scientific truth.

• Đãn thị ngã môn tất tu cụ thể địa nghiên cứu các chủng mâu thuẫn đấu tranh đích tình huống, bất ứng đương tương thượng diện sở thuyết đích công thức bất thích đương địa sáo tại nhất thiết sự vật đích thân thượng. Mâu thuẫn hòa đấu tranh thị phổ biến đích, tuyệt đối đích, đãn thị giải quyết mâu thuẫn đích phương pháp, tức đấu tranh đích hình thức, tắc nhân mâu thuẫn đích tính chất bất đồng nhi bất tương đồng. Hữu ta mâu thuẫn cụ hữu công khai đích đối kháng tính, hữu ta mâu thuẫn tắc bất thị giá dạng. Căn cư sự vật đích cụ thể phát triển, hữu ta mâu thuẫn thị do nguyên lai hoàn phi đối kháng tính đích, nhi phát triển thành vi đối kháng tính đích; dã hữu ta mâu thuẫn tắc do nguyên lai thị đối kháng tính đích, nhi phát triển thành vi phi đối kháng tính đích.
  • However, we must make a concrete study of the circumstances of each specific struggle of opposites and should not arbitrarily apply the formula discussed above to everything. Contradiction and struggle are universal and absolute, but the methods of resolving contradictions, that is, the forms of struggle, differ according to the differences in the nature of the contradictions. Some contradictions are characterized by open antagonism, others are not. In accordance with the concrete development of things, some contradictions which were originally non-antagonistic develop into antagonistic ones, while others which were originally antagonistic develop into non-antagonistic ones.

• Tựu nhân loại nhận thức vận động đích trật tự thuyết lai, tổng thị do nhận thức cá biệt đích hòa đặc thù đích sự vật, trục bộ địa khoách đại đáo nhận thức nhất bàn đích sự vật. Nhân môn tổng thị thủ tiên nhận thức liễu hứa đa bất đồng sự vật đích đặc thù đích bổn chất, nhiên hậu tài hữu khả năng canh tiến nhất bộ địa tiến hành khái quát công tác, nhận thức chư chủng sự vật đích cộng đồng đích bổn chất.
  • As regards the sequence in the movement of man's knowledge, there is always a gradual growth from the knowledge of individual and particular things to the knowledge of things in general. Only after man knows the particular essence of many different things can he proceed to generalization and know the common essence of things.

• Tạc đạn tại vị bạo tạc đích thời hầu, thị mâu thuẫn vật nhân nhất định điều kiện cộng cư vu nhất cá thống nhất thể trung đích thời hầu. Đãi chí tân đích điều kiện ( phát hỏa ) xuất hiện, tài phát sinh liễu bạo tạc. Tự nhiên giới trung nhất thiết đáo liễu tối hậu yếu thải thủ ngoại bộ trùng đột hình thức khứ giải quyết cựu mâu thuẫn sản sinh tân sự vật đích hiện tượng, đô hữu dữ thử tương phảng phật đích tình hình.
  • Before it explodes, abombis a single entity in which opposites coexist in given conditions. The explosion takes place only when a new condition, ignition, is present. An analogous situation arises in all those natural phenomena which finally assume the form of open conflict to resolve old contradictions and produce new things.

• Ngã môn thật hành quá đích thổ địa cách mệnh, dĩ kinh thị tịnh thả hoàn tương thị giá dạng đích quá trình, ủng hữu thổ địa đích địa chủ giai cấp chuyển hóa vi thất điệu thổ địa đích giai cấp, nhi tằng kinh thị thất điệu thổ địa đích nông dân khước chuyển hóa vi thủ đắc thổ địa đích tiểu tư hữu giả. Hữu vô, đắc thất chi gian, nhân nhất định điều kiện nhi hỗ tương liên kết, nhị giả cụ hữu đồng nhất tính. Tại xã hội chủ nghĩa điều kiện chi hạ, nông dân đích tư hữu chế hựu tương chuyển hóa vi xã hội chủ nghĩa nông nghiệp đích công hữu chế, tô liên dĩ kinh giá dạng tố liễu, toàn thế giới tương lai dã hội giá dạng tố. Tư sản hòa công sản chi gian hữu nhất điều do thử đạt bỉ đích kiều lương, triết học thượng danh chi viết đồng nhất tính, hoặc hỗ tương chuyển hóa, hỗ tương sấm thấu.
  • Our agrarian revolution has been a process in which the landlord class owning the land is transformed into a class that has lost its land, while the peasants who once lost their land are transformed into small holders who have acquired land, and it will be such a process once again. In given conditions having and not having, acquiring and losing, are interconnected; there is identity of the two sides. Undersocialism,private peasant ownership is transformed into the public ownership of socialistagriculture;this has already taken place in theSoviet Union,as it will take place everywhere else. There is a bridge leading fromprivate propertyto public property, which in philosophy is called identity, or transformation into each other, or interpenetration.

• Cộng sản đảng nội chính xác tư tưởng hòa thác ngộ tư tưởng đích mâu thuẫn, như tiền sở thuyết, tại giai cấp tồn tại đích thời hầu, giá thị giai cấp mâu thuẫn đối vu đảng nội đích phản ánh. Giá chủng mâu thuẫn, tại khai thủy đích thời hầu, hoặc tại cá biệt đích vấn đề thượng, tịnh bất nhất định mã thượng biểu hiện vi đối kháng tính đích. Đãn tùy trứ giai cấp đấu tranh đích phát triển, giá chủng mâu thuẫn dã tựu khả năng phát triển vi đối kháng tính đích. Tô liên cộng sản đảng đích lịch sử cáo tố ngã môn: Liệt ninh, tư đại lâm đích chính xác tư tưởng hòa thác lạc tì cơ, bố cáp lâm đẳng nhân đích thác ngộ tư tưởng đích mâu thuẫn, tại khai thủy đích thời hầu hoàn một hữu biểu hiện vi đối kháng đích hình thức, đãn tùy hậu tựu phát triển vi đối kháng đích liễu. Trung quốc cộng sản đảng đích lịch sử dã hữu quá giá dạng đích tình hình. Ngã môn đảng nội hứa đa đồng chí đích chính xác tư tưởng hòa trần độc tú, trương quốc đảo đẳng nhân đích thác ngộ tư tưởng đích mâu thuẫn, tại khai thủy đích thời hầu dã một hữu biểu hiện vi đối kháng đích hình thức, đãn tùy hậu tựu phát triển vi đối kháng đích liễu. Mục tiền ngã môn đảng nội đích chính xác tư tưởng hòa thác ngộ tư tưởng đích mâu thuẫn, một hữu biểu hiện vi đối kháng đích hình thức, như quả phạm thác ngộ đích đồng chí năng cú cải chính tự kỷ đích thác ngộ, na tựu bất hội phát triển vi đối kháng tính đích đông tây. Nhân thử, đảng nhất phương diện tất tu đối vu thác ngộ tư tưởng tiến hành nghiêm túc đích đấu tranh, lánh phương diện hựu tất tu sung phân địa cấp phạm thác ngộ đích đồng chí lưu hữu tự kỷ giác ngộ đích cơ hội. Tại giá dạng đích tình huống hạ, quá hỏa đích đấu tranh, hiển nhiên thị bất thích đương đích. Đãn như quả phạm thác ngộ đích nhân kiên trì thác ngộ, tịnh khoách đại hạ khứ, giá chủng mâu thuẫn dã tựu tồn tại trứ phát triển vi đối kháng tính đích đông tây đích khả năng tính.
  • As already mentioned, so long as classes exist, contradictions between correct and incorrect ideas in the Communist Party are reflections within the Party of class contradictions. At first, with regard to certain issues, such contradictions may not manifest themselves as antagonistic. But with the development of the class struggle, they may grow and become antagonistic. The history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union shows us that the contradictions between the correct thinking of Lenin and Stalin and the fallacious thinking of Trotsky, Bukharin and others did not at first manifest themselves in an antagonistic form, but that later they did develop into antagonism.

Combat Liberalism (1937)

All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.

• Cách mệnh đích tập thể tổ chức trung đích tự do chủ nghĩa thị thập phân hữu hại đích. Tha thị nhất chủng hủ thực tề, sử đoàn kết hoán tán, quan hệ tùng giải, công tác tiêu cực, ý kiến phân kỳ. Tha sử cách mệnh đội ngũ thất điệu nghiêm mật đích tổ chức hòa kỷ luật, chính sách bất năng quán triệt đáo để, đảng đích tổ chức hòa đảng sở lĩnh đạo đích quần chúng phát sinh cách ly. Giá thị nhất chủng nghiêm trọng đích ác liệt khuynh hướng.
  • Liberalismis extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective. It is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion causesapathyand createsdissension.It robs the revolutionary ranks of compactorganizationand strictdiscipline,prevents policies from being carried through and alienates the Party organization from the masses which the Party leads. It is an extremely bad tendency.

• Tự do chủ nghĩa giả dĩ trừu tượng đích giáo điều khán đãi mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa đích nguyên tắc. Tha môn tán thành mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa, đãn thị bất chuẩn bị thật hành chi, hoặc bất chuẩn bị hoàn toàn thật hành chi, bất chuẩn bị nã mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa đại thế tự kỷ đích tự do chủ nghĩa. Giá ta nhân, mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa thị hữu đích, tự do chủ nghĩa dã thị hữu đích: Thuyết đích thị mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa, hành đích thị tự do chủ nghĩa; đối nhân thị mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa, đối kỷ thị tự do chủ nghĩa. Lưỡng dạng hóa sắc tề bị, các hữu các đích dụng xử. Giá thị nhất bộ phân nhân đích tư tưởng phương pháp.
  • People who areliberalslook upon the principles ofMarxismas abstractdogma.They approve of Marxism, but are not prepared to practice it or to practice it in full; they are not prepared to replace theirliberalismby Marxism. These people have their Marxism, but they have their liberalism as well - they talk Marxism but practice liberalism; they apply Marxism to others but liberalism to themselves. They keep both kind of goods in stock and find a use for each. This is how the minds of certain people work.

• Nhất thiết trung thành, thản bạch, tích cực, chính trực đích cộng sản đảng viên đoàn kết khởi lai, phản đối nhất bộ phân nhân đích tự do chủ nghĩa đích khuynh hướng, sử tha môn cải biến đáo chính xác đích phương diện lai. Giá thị tư tưởng chiến tuyến đích nhậm vụ chi nhất.
  • All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.

On Protracted Warfare (1938)

Without preparedness superiority is not real superiority and there can be no initiative either. Having grasped this point, a force which is inferior but prepared can often defeat a superior enemy by surprise attack. We say an enemy on the move is easy to attack precisely because he is then off guard, that is, unprepared.

"War is the continuation of politics." In this sense war is politics and war itself is a political action; since ancient times there has never been a war that did not have a political character.

The army must become one with the people so that they see it as their own army. Such an army will be invincible, and an imperialist power like Japan will be no match for it.

The richest source of power to wage war lies in the masses of the people.

• Giá tựu thị sở vị “Duy võ khí luận”, thị chiến tranh vấn đề trung đích cơ giới luận, thị chủ quan địa hòa phiến diện địa khán vấn đề đích ý kiến. Ngã môn đích ý kiến dữ thử tương phản, bất đãn khán đáo võ khí, nhi thả khán đáo nhân lực. Võ khí thị chiến tranh đích trọng yếu đích nhân tố, đãn bất thị quyết định đích nhân tố, quyết định đích nhân tố thị nhân bất thị vật. Lực lượng đối bỉ bất đãn thị quân lực hòa kinh tế lực đích đối bỉ, nhi thả thị nhân lực hòa nhân tâm đích đối bỉ. Quân lực hòa kinh tế lực thị yếu nhân khứ chưởng ác đích.
  • This is the so-called theory that "weaponsdecide everything ", which constitutes a mechanical approach to the question of war and a subjective and one-sided view. Our view is opposed to this; we see not only weapons but also people. Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it is people, not things, that are decisive. The contest of strength is not only a contest of military and economic power, but also a contest of human power and morale. Military and economic power is necessarily wielded by people.

• Lịch sử thượng đích chiến tranh phân vi lưỡng loại, nhất loại thị chính nghĩa đích, nhất loại thị phi chính nghĩa đích. Nhất thiết tiến bộ đích chiến tranh đô thị chính nghĩa đích, nhất thiết trở ngại tiến bộ đích chiến tranh đô thị phi chính nghĩa đích. Ngã môn cộng sản đảng nhân phản đối nhất thiết trở ngại tiến bộ đích phi chính nghĩa đích chiến tranh, đãn thị bất phản đối tiến bộ đích chính nghĩa đích chiến tranh. Đối vu hậu nhất loại chiến tranh, ngã môn cộng sản đảng nhân bất đãn bất phản đối, nhi thả tích cực địa tham gia. Tiền nhất loại chiến tranh, lệ như đệ nhất thứ thế giới đại chiến, song phương đô thị vi trứ đế quốc chủ nghĩa lợi ích nhi chiến, sở dĩ toàn thế giới đích cộng sản đảng nhân kiên quyết địa phản đối na nhất thứ chiến tranh. Phản đối đích phương pháp, tại chiến tranh vị bạo phát tiền, cực lực trở chỉ kỳ bạo phát; kí bạo phát hậu, chỉ yếu hữu khả năng, tựu dụng chiến tranh phản đối chiến tranh, dụng chính nghĩa chiến tranh phản đối phi chính nghĩa chiến tranh.
  • Historyshows that wars are divided into two kinds, just and unjust. All wars that are progressive are just, and all wars that impede progress are unjust. WeCommunistsoppose all unjust wars that impede progress, but we do not oppose progressive,just wars.Not only do we Communists not oppose just wars; we actively participate in them. As for unjust wars,World War Iis an instance in which both sides fought for imperialist interests; therefore, the Communists of the whole world firmly opposed that war. The way to oppose a war of this kind is to do everything possible to prevent it before it breaks out and, once it breaks out, to oppose war with war, to oppose unjust war with just war, whenever possible.

• Chỉ đạo chiến tranh đích nhân môn bất năng siêu việt khách quan điều kiện hứa khả đích hạn độ kỳ cầu chiến tranh đích thắng lợi, nhiên nhi khả dĩ nhi thả tất tu tại khách quan điều kiện đích hạn độ chi nội, năng động địa tranh thủ chiến tranh đích thắng lợi. Chiến tranh chỉ huy viên hoạt động đích vũ đài, tất tu kiến trúc tại khách quan điều kiện đích hứa khả chi thượng, nhiên nhi tha môn bằng tá giá cá vũ đài, khước khả dĩ đạo diễn xuất ngận đa hữu thanh hữu sắc, uy võ hùng tráng đích hí kịch lai.
  • In seeking victory, those who direct a war cannot overstep the limitations imposed by the objective conditions. Within these limitations, however, they can and must play a dynamic role in striving for victory. The stage of action for commanders in a war must be built upon objective possibilities, but on that stage they can direct the performance of many a drama, full of sound and color, power and grandeur.

• Ưu thế nhi vô chuẩn bị, bất thị chân chính đích ưu thế, dã một hữu chủ động. Đổng đắc giá nhất điểm, liệt thế nhi hữu chuẩn bị chi quân, thường khả đối địch cử hành bất ý đích công thế, bả ưu thế giả đả bại. Ngã môn thuyết vận động chi địch hảo đả, tựu thị nhân vi địch tại bất ý tức vô chuẩn bị trung.
  • Without preparedness superiority is not real superiority and there can be no initiative either. Having grasped this point, a force which is inferior but prepared can often defeat a superior enemy by surprise attack. We say an enemy on the move is easy to attack precisely because he is then off guard, that is, unprepared.

• “Chiến tranh thị chính trị đích kế tục”, tại giá điểm thượng thuyết, chiến tranh tựu thị chính trị, chiến tranh bổn thân tựu thị chính trị tính chất đích hành động, tòng cổ dĩ lai một hữu bất đái chính trị tính đích chiến tranh.
  • "War is the continuation of politics." In this sense war is politics and war itself is a political action; since ancient times there has never been a war that did not have a political character.

• Nhật bổn hiện tại dụng chiến tranh lai áp bách, yếu hoàn toàn đoạn tuyệt trung quốc cách mệnh đích tiến lộ, sở dĩ bất đắc bất cử hành kháng nhật chiến tranh, quyết tâm yếu tảo trừ giá cá chướng ngại. Chướng ngại kí trừ, chính trị đích mục đích đạt đáo, chiến tranh kết thúc. Chướng ngại một hữu tảo trừ đắc càn tịnh, chiến tranh nhưng tu kế tục tiến hành, dĩ cầu quán triệt. Lệ như kháng nhật đích nhậm vụ vị hoàn, hữu tưởng cầu thỏa hiệp đích, tất bất thành công; nhân vi tức sử nhân mỗ chủng duyên cố thỏa hiệp liễu, đãn thị chiến tranh nhưng yếu khởi lai, quảng đại nhân dân tất định bất phục, tất yếu kế tục chiến tranh, quán triệt chiến tranh đích chính trị mục đích. Nhân thử khả dĩ thuyết, chính trị thị bất lưu huyết đích chiến tranh, chiến tranh thị lưu huyết đích chính trị.
  • Japanis now using war for the purpose of oppressing China and completely blocking the advance of the Chinese revolution, and therefore China is compelled to wage the War of Resistance in her determination to sweep away this obstacle. When the obstacle is removed, our political aim will be attained and the war concluded. But if the obstacle is not completely swept away, the war will have to continue till the aim is fully accomplished. Thus anyone who seeks a compromise before the task of the anti-Japanese war is fulfilled is bound to fail, because even if a compromise were to occur for one reason or another, the war would break out again, since the broad masses of the people would certainly not submit but would continue the war until its political objective was achieved. It can therefore be said thatpoliticsiswarwithout bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.

• Quân đội ứng thật hành nhất định hạn độ đích dân chủ hóa, chủ yếu địa thị phế trừ phong kiến chủ nghĩa đích đả mạ chế độ hòa quan binh sinh hoạt đồng cam khổ. Giá dạng nhất lai, quan binh nhất trí đích mục đích tựu đạt đáo liễu, quân đội tựu tăng gia liễu tuyệt đại đích chiến đấu lực, trường kỳ đích tàn khốc đích chiến tranh tựu bất hoạn bất năng chi trì.
  • A proper measure ofdemocracyshould be put into effect in the army, chiefly by abolishing the feudal practice of bullying and beating and by having officers and men share weal and woe. Once this is done, unity will be achieved between officers and men, the combat effectiveness of the army will be greatly increased, and there will be no doubt of our ability to sustain the long, cruel war.

• Quân đội tu hòa dân chúng đả thành nhất phiến, sử quân đội tại dân chúng nhãn tình trung khán thành thị tự kỷ đích quân đội, giá cá quân đội tiện vô địch vu thiên hạ, cá bả nhật bổn đế quốc chủ nghĩa thị bất cú đả đích.
  • The army must become one with the people so that they see it as their own army. Such an army will be invincible, and an imperialist power like Japan will be no match for it.

• Tiến bộ hòa tiến bộ đích hoãn mạn thị mục tiền thời cục đích lưỡng cá đặc điểm, hậu nhất cá đặc điểm hòa chiến tranh đích bách thiết yếu cầu ngận bất tương xưng, giá tựu thị sử đắc ái quốc chí sĩ môn đại vi phát sầu đích địa phương. Nhiên nhi ngã môn thị tại cách mệnh chiến tranh trung, cách mệnh chiến tranh thị nhất chủng kháng độc tố, tha bất đãn tương bài trừ địch nhân đích độc diễm, dã tương thanh tẩy tự kỷ đích ô trọc. Phàm chúc chính nghĩa đích cách mệnh đích chiến tranh, kỳ lực lượng thị ngận đại đích, tha năng cải tạo ngận đa sự vật, hoặc vi cải tạo sự vật khai tích đạo lộ. Trung nhật chiến tranh tương cải tạo trung nhật lưỡng quốc; chỉ yếu trung quốc kiên trì kháng chiến hòa kiên trì thống nhất chiến tuyến, tựu nhất định năng bả cựu nhật bổn hóa vi tân nhật bổn, bả cựu trung quốc hóa vi tân trung quốc, trung nhật lưỡng quốc đích nhân hòa vật đô tương tại giá thứ chiến tranh trung hòa chiến tranh hậu hoạch đắc cải tạo. Ngã môn bả kháng chiến hòa kiến quốc liên hệ khởi lai khán, thị chính đương đích. Thuyết nhật bổn dã năng hoạch đắc cải tạo, thị thuyết nhật bổn thống trị giả đích xâm lược chiến tranh tương tẩu đáo thất bại, hữu dẫn khởi nhật bổn nhân dân cách mệnh chi khả năng. Nhật bổn nhân dân cách mệnh thắng lợi chi nhật, tựu thị nhật bổn cải tạo chi thời. Giá hòa trung quốc đích kháng chiến mật thiết địa liên hệ trứ, giá nhất cá tiền đồ thị ứng cai khán đáo đích.
  • Progressand the slow pace of progress are two characteristics of the present situation, and the second ill accords with the urgent needs of the war, which is a source of great concern to patriots. But we are in the midst of a revolutionary war, and revolutionary war is an antitoxin which not only eliminates the enemy's poison but also purges us of our own filth. Every just, revolutionary war is endowed with tremendous power, which can transform many things or clear the way for their transformation. The Sino-Japanese war will transform both China and Japan; provided China perseveres in the War of Resistance and in the united front, the old Japan will surely be transformed into a new Japan and the old China into a new China, and people and everything else in both China and Japan will be transformed during and after the war. It is proper for us to regard the anti-Japanese war and our national reconstruction as interconnected. To say that Japan can also be transformed is to say that the war of aggression by her rulers will end in defeat and may lead to a revolution by the Japanese people. The day of triumph of the Japanese people's revolution will be the day Japan is transformed. All this is closely linked with China's War of Resistance and is a prospect we should take into account.

• Chiến tranh đích vĩ lực chi tối thâm hậu đích căn nguyên, tồn tại vu dân chúng chi trung. Nhật bổn cảm vu khi phụ ngã môn, chủ yếu đích nguyên nhân tại vu trung quốc dân chúng đích vô tổ chức trạng thái. Khắc phục liễu giá nhất khuyết điểm, tựu bả nhật bổn xâm lược giả trí vu ngã môn sổ vạn vạn trạm khởi lai liễu đích nhân dân chi tiền, sử tha tượng nhất thất dã ngưu trùng nhập hỏa trận, ngã môn nhất thanh hoán dã yếu bả tha hách nhất đại khiêu, giá thất dã ngưu tựu phi thiêu tử bất khả.
  • The richest source of power to wage war lies in the masses of the people. It is mainly because of the unorganized state of the Chinese masses that Japan dares to bully us. When this defect is remedied, the Japanese aggressor, like a mad bull crashing into a ring of flames, will be surrounded by hundreds of millions of our people standing upright, the mere sound of their voices will strike terror into him, and he will be burned to death.

Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War (October 1938)

Can a Communist, who is an internationalist, at the same time be a patriot? We hold that he not only can be but must be.

• Quốc tế chủ nghĩa giả đích cộng sản đảng viên, thị phủ khả dĩ đồng thời hựu thị nhất cá ái quốc chủ nghĩa giả ni? Ngã môn nhận vi bất đãn thị khả dĩ đích, nhi thả thị ứng cai đích.
  • Can a Communist, who is aninternationalist,at the same time be apatriot?We hold that he not only can be but must be.

• Kiên trì dân tộc thống nhất chiến tuyến tài năng khắc phục khốn nan, chiến thắng địch nhân, kiến thiết tân trung quốc, giá thị hào vô nghi nghĩa đích. Đãn thị tại đồng thời, tất tu bảo trì gia nhập thống nhất chiến tuyến trung đích nhậm hà đảng phái tại tư tưởng thượng, chính trị thượng hòa tổ chức thượng đích độc lập tính, bất luận thị quốc dân đảng dã hảo, cộng sản đảng dã hảo, kỳ tha đảng phái dã hảo, đô thị giá dạng.
  • It is only firmly maintaining the national united front that the difficulties can be overcome, the enemy defeated, and a new China built. This is beyond all doubt. At the same time, every party and group in the united front must preserve its ideological, political and organizational independence; this holds good for theKuomintang,the Communist Party, or any other party or group.

• Bất đãn yếu quan tâm đảng đích càn bộ, hoàn yếu quan tâm phi đảng đích càn bộ. Đảng ngoại tồn tại trứ ngận đa đích nhân tài, cộng sản đảng bất năng bả tha môn trí chi độ ngoại. Khứ điệu cô ngạo tập khí, thiện vu hòa phi đảng càn bộ cộng sự, chân tâm thành ý địa bang trợ tha môn, dụng nhiệt liệt đích đồng chí đích thái độ đối đãi tha môn, bả tha môn đích tích cực tính tổ chức đáo kháng nhật hòa kiến quốc đích vĩ đại sự nghiệp trung khứ, giá thị mỗi nhất cá cộng sản đảng viên đích trách nhậm.
  • Our concern should extend to non-Party cadres as well as to Party cadres. There are many capable people outside the Party whom we must not ignore. The duty of every Communist is to rid himself of aloofness and arrogance and to work well with non-Party cadres, give them sincere help, have a warm, comradely attitude towards them and enlist their initiative in the great cause of resisting Japan and reconstructing the nation.

1940s

What isknowledge?Ever since class society came into being the world has had only two kinds of knowledge, knowledge of the struggle of production and knowledge of theclass struggle.Natural scienceandsocial scienceare the crystallization of these two kinds of knowledge, and philosophy is the generalization and summation of the knowledge ofnature.

Our comrades must understand that we study Marxism-Leninism not for display, nor because there is any mystery about it, but solely because it is the science which leads the revolutionary cause of the proletariat to victory.

The people’s state protects the people. Only when the people have such a state can they educate and remould themselves by democratic methods on a country-wide scale, with everyone taking part, and shake off the influence of domestic and foreign reactionaries (which is still very strong, will survive for a long time and cannot be quickly destroyed), rid themselves of the bad habits and ideas acquired in the old society, not allow themselves to be led astray by the reactionaries, and continue to advance — to advance towards a socialist and communist society.

A revolutionary party is carrying out a policy whenever it takes any action. If it is not carrying out a correct policy; it is carrying out a wrong policy; if it is not carrying out a given policy consciously, it is doing so blindly.

Democracyis practiced within the ranks of the people, who enjoy the rights offreedom of speech,assembly,association and so on. The right to vote belongs only to the people, not to the reactionaries. The combination of these two aspects, democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, is the people's democratic dictatorship.

• Vi thập ma yếu hữu cách mệnh đảng? Nhân vi thế giới thượng hữu áp bách nhân dân đích địch nhân tồn tại, nhân dân yếu thôi phiên địch nhân đích áp bách, sở dĩ yếu hữu cách mệnh đảng. Tựu tư bổn chủ nghĩa hòa đế quốc chủ nghĩa thời đại thuyết lai, tựu nhu yếu nhất cá như cộng sản đảng giá dạng đích cách mệnh đảng. Như quả một hữu cộng sản đảng giá dạng đích cách mệnh đảng, nhân dân yếu tưởng thôi phiên địch nhân đích áp bách, giản trực thị bất khả năng đích. Ngã môn thị cộng sản đảng, ngã môn yếu lĩnh đạo nhân dân đả đảo địch nhân, ngã môn đích đội ngũ tựu yếu chỉnh tề, ngã môn đích bộ điều tựu yếu nhất trí, binh yếu tinh, võ khí yếu hảo. Như quả bất cụ bị giá ta điều kiện, na mạt, địch nhân tựu bất hội bị ngã môn đả đảo.
  • Why must there be a revolutionary party? There must be a revolutionary party because the world contains enemies who oppress the people and the people want to throw off enemy oppression. In the era ofcapitalismandimperialism,just such a revolutionary party as theCommunist Partyis needed. Without such a party it is simply impossible for the people to throw off enemy oppression. We are Communists, we want to lead the people in overthrowing the enemy, and so we must keep our ranks in good order, we must march in step, our troops must be picked troops and our weapons good weapons. Without these conditions the enemy cannot be overthrown.
  • "Chỉnh đốn đảng đích tác phong" ( "Rectify the Party's Style of Work" ) (February 1, 1942)

• Chủ quan chủ nghĩa, tông phái chủ nghĩa, đảng bát cổ, hiện tại dĩ bất thị chiêm thống trị địa vị đích tác phong liễu, giá bất quá thị nhất cổ nghịch phong, nhất cổ oai phong, thị tòng phòng không động lí bào xuất lai đích.
  • Subjectivism,sectarianismand stereotyped Party writing are no longer the dominant styles, but merely gusts of contrary wind, ill winds from the air-raid tunnels.
  • "Chỉnh đốn đảng đích tác phong" ( "Rectify the Party's Style of Work" ) (February 1, 1942)

• Thập ma thị tri thức? Tự tòng hữu giai cấp đích xã hội tồn tại dĩ lai, thế giới thượng đích tri thức chỉ hữu lưỡng môn, nhất môn khiếu tố sinh sản đấu tranh tri thức, nhất môn khiếu tố giai cấp đấu tranh tri thức. Tự nhiên khoa học, xã hội khoa học, tựu thị giá lưỡng môn tri thức đích kết tinh, triết học tắc thị quan vu tự nhiên tri thức hòa xã hội tri thức đích khái quát hòa tổng kết.
  • What isknowledge?Ever since class society came into being the world has had only two kinds of knowledge, knowledge of the struggle of production and knowledge of theclass struggle.Natural scienceandsocial scienceare the crystallization of these two kinds of knowledge, and philosophy is the generalization and summation of the knowledge ofnature.
  • "Chỉnh đốn đảng đích tác phong" ( "Rectify the Party's Style of Work" ) (February 1, 1942)

• Nhất cá nhân tòng na dạng đích tiểu học nhất trực độc đáo na dạng đích đại học, tất nghiệp liễu, toán hữu tri thức liễu. Đãn thị tha hữu đích chỉ thị thư bổn thượng đích tri thức, hoàn một hữu tham gia nhậm hà thật tế hoạt động, hoàn một hữu bả tự kỷ học đắc đích tri thức ứng dụng đáo sinh hoạt đích nhậm hà bộ môn lí khứ. Tượng giá dạng đích nhân thị phủ khả dĩ toán đắc nhất cá hoàn toàn đích tri thức phân tử ni? Ngã dĩ vi ngận nan, nhân vi tha đích tri thức hoàn bất hoàn toàn. Thập ma thị bỉ giác hoàn toàn đích tri thức ni? Nhất thiết bỉ giác hoàn toàn đích tri thức đô thị do lưỡng cá giai đoạn cấu thành đích: Đệ nhất giai đoạn thị cảm tính tri thức, đệ nhị giai đoạn thị lý tính tri thức, lý tính tri thức thị cảm tính tri thức đích cao cấp phát triển giai đoạn. Học sinh môn đích thư bổn tri thức thị thập ma tri thức ni? Giả định tha môn đích tri thức đô thị chân lý, dã thị tha môn đích tiền nhân tổng kết sinh sản đấu tranh hòa giai cấp đấu tranh đích kinh nghiệm tả thành đích lý luận, bất thị tha môn tự kỷ thân thân đắc lai đích tri thức. Tha môn tiếp thụ giá chủng tri thức thị hoàn toàn tất yếu đích, đãn thị tất tu tri đạo, tựu nhất định đích tình huống thuyết lai, giá chủng tri thức đối vu tha môn hoàn thị phiến diện tính đích, giá chủng tri thức thị nhân gia chứng minh liễu, nhi tại tha môn tắc hoàn một hữu chứng minh đích. Tối trọng yếu đích, thị thiện vu tương giá ta tri thức ứng dụng đáo sinh hoạt hòa thật tế trung khứ. Sở dĩ ngã khuyến na ta chỉ hữu thư bổn tri thức đãn hoàn một hữu tiếp xúc thật tế đích nhân, hoặc giả thật tế kinh nghiệm thượng thiếu đích nhân, ứng cai minh bạch tự kỷ đích khuyết điểm, tương tự kỷ đích thái độ phóng khiêm hư nhất ta.
  • A person goes from a primary school of this kind all the way through to a university of the same kind, graduates and is reckoned to have a stock of learning. But all he has is book-learning; he has not yet taken part in any practical activities or applied what he has learned to any field of life. Can such a person be regarded as a completely developed intellectual? Hardly so, in my opinion, because his knowledge is still incomplete. What then is relatively complete knowledge? All relatively complete knowledge is formed in two stages: the first stage is perceptual knowledge, the second is rational knowledge, the latter being the development of the former to a higher stage. What sort of knowledge is the students' book-learning? Even supposing all their knowledge is truth, it is still not knowledge acquired through their own personal experience, but consists of theories set down by their predecessors in summarizing experience of the struggle for production and of the class struggle. It is entirely necessary that students should acquire this kind of knowledge, but it must be understood that as far as they are concerned such knowledge is in a sense still one-sided, something which has been verified by others but not yet by themselves. What is most important is to be good at applying this knowledge in life and in practice. Therefore, I advise those who have only book-learning but as yet no contact with reality, and also those with little practical experience, to realize their own shortcomings and become a little more modest.
  • "Chỉnh đốn đảng đích tác phong" ( "Rectify the Party's Style of Work" ) (February 1, 1942)

• Ngã môn đích đồng chí tất tu minh bạch, ngã môn học mã khắc tư liệt ninh chủ nghĩa bất thị vi trứ hảo khán, dã bất thị nhân vi tha hữu thập ma thần bí, chỉ thị nhân vi tha thị lĩnh đạo vô sản giai cấp cách mệnh sự nghiệp tẩu hướng thắng lợi đích khoa học. Trực đáo hiện tại, hoàn hữu bất thiếu đích nhân, bả mã khắc tư liệt ninh chủ nghĩa thư bổn thượng đích mỗ ta cá biệt tự cú khán tác hiện thành đích linh đan thánh dược, tự hồ chỉ yếu đắc liễu tha, tựu khả dĩ bất phí khí lực địa bao y bách bệnh. Giá thị nhất chủng ấu trĩ giả đích mông muội, ngã môn đối giá ta nhân ứng cai tác khải mông vận động. Na ta tương mã khắc tư liệt ninh chủ nghĩa đương tông giáo giáo điều khán đãi đích nhân, tựu thị giá chủng mông muội vô tri đích nhân. Đối vu giá chủng nhân, ứng cai lão thật địa đối tha thuyết, nhĩ đích giáo điều nhất điểm thập ma dụng xử dã một hữu. Mã khắc tư, ân cách tư, liệt ninh, tư đại lâm tằng kinh phản phục địa giảng, ngã môn đích học thuyết bất thị giáo điều nhi thị hành động đích chỉ nam. Giá ta nhân thiên thiên vong ký giá cú tối trọng yếu tối trọng yếu đích thoại.
  • Our comrades must understand that we study Marxism-Leninism not for display, nor because there is any mystery about it, but solely because it is the science which leads the revolutionary cause of the proletariat to victory. Even now, there are not a few people who still regard odd quotations from Marxist-Leninist works as a readymade panacea which, once acquired, can easily cure all maladies. These people show childish ignorance, and we should enlighten them. It is precisely such ignorant people who take Marxism-Leninism as a religious dogma. To them we should say bluntly, “Your dogma is worthless.” Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin have repeatedly stated that our theory is not a dogma but a guide to action. But such people prefer to forget this statement which is of the greatest, indeed the utmost, importance.
  • "Chỉnh đốn đảng đích tác phong" ( "Rectify the Party's Style of Work" ) (February 1, 1942)

• Giá chủng nhân nháo thập ma đông tây ni? Nháo danh dự, nháo địa vị, nháo xuất phong đầu. Tại tha môn chưởng quản nhất bộ phân sự nghiệp đích thời hầu, tựu yếu nháo độc lập tính. Vi liễu giá ta, tựu yếu lạp long nhất ta nhân, bài tễ nhất ta nhân, tại đồng chí trung xuy xuy phách phách, lạp lạp xả xả, bả tư sản giai cấp chính đảng đích dung tục tác phong dã bàn tiến cộng sản đảng lí lai liễu. Giá chủng nhân đích cật khuy tại vu bất lão thật. Ngã tưởng, ngã môn ứng cai thị lão lão thật thật địa bạn sự; tại thế giới thượng yếu bạn thành kỉ kiện sự, một hữu lão thật thái độ thị căn bổn bất hành đích. Thập ma nhân thị lão thật nhân? Mã khắc tư, ân cách tư, liệt ninh, tư đại lâm thị lão thật nhân, khoa học gia thị lão thật nhân. Thập ma nhân thị bất lão thật đích nhân? Thác lạc tì cơ, bố cáp lâm, trần độc tú, trương quốc đảo thị đại bất lão thật đích nhân, vi cá nhân lợi ích vi cục bộ lợi ích nháo độc lập tính đích nhân dã thị bất lão thật đích nhân. Nhất thiết giảo hoạt đích nhân, bất chiếu khoa học thái độ bạn sự đích nhân, tự dĩ vi đắc kế, tự dĩ vi ngận thông minh, kỳ thật đô thị tối xuẩn đích, đô thị một hữu hảo kết quả đích. Ngã môn đảng giáo đích học sinh nhất định yếu chú ý giá cá vấn đề. Ngã môn nhất định yếu kiến thiết nhất cá tập trung đích thống nhất đích đảng, nhất thiết vô nguyên tắc đích phái biệt đấu tranh, đô yếu thanh trừ càn tịnh. Yếu sử ngã môn toàn đảng đích bộ điều chỉnh tề nhất trí, vi nhất cá cộng đồng mục tiêu nhi phấn đấu, ngã môn nhất định yếu phản đối cá nhân chủ nghĩa hòa tông phái chủ nghĩa.
  • What are these people after? They are after fame and position and want to be in the limelight. Whenever they are put in charge of a branch of work, they assert their “independence”. With this aim, they draw some people in, push others out and resort to boasting, flattery and touting among the comrades, thus importing the vulgar style of the bourgeois political parties into the Communist Party. It is their dishonesty that causes them to come to grief. I believe we should do things honestly, for without an honest attitude it is absolutely impossible to accomplish anything in this world. Which are the honest people?Marx,Engels,LeninandStalinare honest, men of science are honest. Which are the dishonest people?Trotsky,Bukharin,Chen Tu-hsiu,andChang Kuo-taoare extremely dishonest; and those who assert "independence" out of personal or sectional interest are dishonest too. All sly people, all those who do not have a scientific attitude in their work, fancy themselves resourceful and clever, but in fact they are most stupid and will come to no good. Students in our Party School must pay attention to this problem. We must build a centralized, unified Party and make a clean sweep of all unprincipled factional struggles. We must combat individualism and sectarianism so as to enable our whole Party to march in step and fight for one common goal.
  • "Chỉnh đốn đảng đích tác phong" ( "Rectify the Party's Style of Work" ) (February 1, 1942)

• Nhất thiết phản động phái đích xí đồ thị tưởng dụng đồ sát đích bạn pháp tiêu diệt cách mệnh, tha môn dĩ vi sát nhân việt đa cách mệnh tựu hội việt thiếu, đãn thị hòa giá chủng phản động đích chủ quan nguyện vọng tương phản, sự thật thị phản động phái sát nhân việt đa, cách mệnh đích lực lượng tựu việt đại, phản động phái tựu việt yếu diệt vong, giá thị nhất điều bất khả kháng cự đích pháp tắc, ngoại quốc đích hi đặc lặc, mặc tác lí ni hòa nhật bổn pháp tây tư, trung quốc đích mãn thanh chính phủ hòa bắc dương quân phiệt, đô chứng minh liễu giá nhất điểm. Trung quốc cách mệnh đích nhân dân, tuy nhiên bị đồ sát liễu kỉ thập vạn, kỉ bách vạn, đãn thị khước hữu canh đa đích kỉ thập vạn, kỉ bách vạn khởi lai kế tục cách mệnh, thùy tưởng khuất phục tha môn na thị bất hành đích.
  • The reactionaries attempt to quell the revolution by means of massacres. They feel that the greater the number of people killed, the smaller will be the revolution. However, it has turned out to be otherwise. Actually, the more people the reactionaries kill, the greater is the revolutionary strength and the larger the number of reactionaries who will perish. This is an irresistible principle.HitlerandMussoliniof foreign countries, thefascismofJapanand theManchurian governmentandPei-yangwarlords of China have all proved this point. Though hundreds of thousands and millions of China's revolutionary people have been slaughtered, hundreds of thousands and millions more will rise and continue the revolution, and no one can subjugate them.
    • Speech at Memorial Meeting for China's Revolutionary Martyrs (June 17, 1945)

• Theatom bombis a paper tiger which the U.S. reactionaries use to scare people. it looks terrible but in fact it isn't. Of course, the atom bomb is a weapon of mass slaughter, but the outcome of a war is decided by the people--not by one of two new types of weapon.
  • "Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong" (August 1946)

• Chính sách thị cách mệnh chính đảng nhất thiết thật tế hành động đích xuất phát điểm, tịnh thả biểu hiện vu hành động đích quá trình hòa quy túc. Nhất cá cách mệnh chính đảng đích nhậm hà hành động đô thị thật hành chính sách. Bất thị thật hành chính xác đích chính sách, tựu thị thật hành thác ngộ đích chính sách; bất thị tự giác địa, tựu thị manh mục địa thật hành mỗ chủng chính sách. Sở vị kinh nghiệm, tựu thị thật hành chính sách đích quá trình hòa quy túc. Chính sách tất tu tại nhân dân thật tiễn trung, dã tựu thị kinh nghiệm trung, tài năng chứng minh kỳ chính xác dữ phủ, tài năng xác định kỳ chính xác hòa thác ngộ đích trình độ. Đãn thị, nhân môn đích thật tiễn, đặc biệt thị cách mệnh chính đảng hòa cách mệnh quần chúng đích thật tiễn, một hữu bất đồng giá chủng hoặc na chủng chính sách tương liên hệ đích. Nhân thử, tại mỗi nhất hành động chi tiền, tất tu hướng đảng viên hòa quần chúng giảng minh ngã môn án tình huống quy định đích chính sách. Phủ tắc, đảng viên hòa quần chúng tựu hội thoát ly ngã môn chính sách đích lĩnh đạo nhi manh mục hành động, chấp hành thác ngộ đích chính sách.
  • Policy is the starting-point of all the practical actions of a revolutionary party and manifests itself in the process and the end-result of that party’s actions. A revolutionary party is carrying out a policy whenever it takes any action. If it is not carrying out a correct policy; it is carrying out a wrong policy; if it is not carrying out a given policy consciously, it is doing so blindly. What we call experience is the process and the end-result of carrying out a policy. Only through the practice of the people, that is, through experience, can we verify whether a policy is correct or wrong and determine to what extent it is correct or wrong. But people’s practice, especially the practice of a revolutionary party and the revolutionary masses, cannot but be bound up with one policy or another. Therefore, before any action is taken, we must explain the policy, which we have formulated in the light of the given circumstances, to Party members and to the masses. Otherwise, Party members and the masses will depart from the guidance of our policy, act blindly and carry out a wrong policy.
  • On the Policy concerning Industry and Commerce (February 27, 1948)

• Ngã đảng quy định liễu trung quốc cách mệnh đích tổng lộ tuyến hòa tổng chính sách, hựu quy định liễu các hạng cụ thể đích công tác lộ tuyến hòa các hạng cụ thể đích chính sách. Đãn thị, hứa đa đồng chí vãng vãng ký trụ liễu ngã đảng đích cụ thể đích cá biệt đích công tác lộ tuyến hòa chính sách, vong ký liễu ngã đảng đích tổng lộ tuyến hòa tổng chính sách. Nhi như quả chân chính vong ký liễu ngã đảng đích tổng lộ tuyến hòa tổng chính sách, ngã môn tựu tương thị nhất cá manh mục đích bất hoàn toàn đích bất thanh tỉnh đích cách mệnh giả, tại ngã môn chấp hành cụ thể công tác lộ tuyến hòa cụ thể chính sách đích thời hầu, tựu hội mê thất phương hướng, tựu hội tả hữu diêu bãi, tựu hội di ngộ ngã môn đích công tác.
  • Our Party has laid down the general line and general policy of the Chinese revolution as well as various specific lines for work and specific policies. However, while many comrades remember our Party’s specific lines for work and specific policies, they often forget its general line and general policy. If we actually forget the Party’s general line and general policy, then we shall be blind, half-baked, muddle-headed revolutionaries, and when we carry out a specific line for work and a specific policy, we shall lose our bearings and vacillate now to the left and now to the right, and the work will suffer.
  • Speech at a Conference of Cadres in the Shansi-Suiyuan Liberated Area (April 1, 1948)

On New Democracy (1940)

Communism is at once a complete system of proletarian ideology and a new social system. It is different from any other ideology or social system, and is the most complete, progressive, revolutionary and rational system in human history.

The communist ideological and social system alone is full of youth and vitality, sweeping the world with the momentum of an avalanche and the force of a thunderbolt.

• Ngã môn cộng sản đảng nhân, đa niên dĩ lai, bất đãn vi trung quốc đích chính trị cách mệnh hòa kinh tế cách mệnh nhi phấn đấu, nhi thả vi trung quốc đích văn hóa cách mệnh nhi phấn đấu; nhất thiết giá ta đích mục đích, tại vu kiến thiết nhất cá trung hoa dân tộc đích tân xã hội hòa tân quốc gia. Tại giá cá tân xã hội hòa tân quốc gia trung, bất đãn hữu tân chính trị, tân kinh tế, nhi thả hữu tân văn hóa. Giá tựu thị thuyết, ngã môn bất đãn yếu bả nhất cá chính trị thượng thụ áp bách, kinh tế thượng thụ bác tước đích trung quốc, biến vi nhất cá chính trị thượng tự do hòa kinh tế thượng phồn vinh đích trung quốc, nhi thả yếu bả nhất cá bị cựu văn hóa thống trị nhân nhi ngu muội lạc hậu đích trung quốc, biến vi nhất cá bị tân văn hóa thống trị nhân nhi văn minh tiên tiến đích trung quốc. Nhất cú thoại, ngã môn yếu kiến lập nhất cá tân trung quốc. Kiến lập trung hoa dân tộc đích tân văn hóa, giá tựu thị ngã môn tại văn hóa lĩnh vực trung đích mục đích.
  • For many years we Communists have struggled for a cultural revolution as well as for a political and economic revolution, and our aim is to build a new society and a new state for the Chinese nation. That new society and new state will have not only a newpoliticsand a neweconomybut a new culture. In other words, not only do we want to change a China that is politically oppressed and economically exploited into a China that is politically free and economically prosperous, we also want to change the China which is being kept ignorant and backward under the sway of the old culture into an enlightened and progressive China under the sway of a new culture. In short, we want to build a new China. Our aim in the cultural sphere is to build a newChinese national culture.

• Cộng sản chủ nghĩa thị vô sản giai cấp đích chỉnh cá tư tưởng thể hệ, đồng thời hựu thị nhất chủng tân đích xã hội chế độ. Giá chủng tư tưởng thể hệ hòa xã hội chế độ, thị khu biệt vu nhậm hà biệt đích tư tưởng thể hệ hòa nhậm hà biệt đích xã hội chế độ đích, thị tự hữu nhân loại lịch sử dĩ lai, tối hoàn toàn tối tiến bộ tối cách mệnh tối hợp lý đích. Phong kiến chủ nghĩa đích tư tưởng thể hệ hòa xã hội chế độ, thị tiến liễu lịch sử bác vật quán đích đông tây liễu. Tư bổn chủ nghĩa đích tư tưởng thể hệ hòa xã hội chế độ, dĩ hữu nhất bộ phân tiến liễu bác vật quán ( tại tô liên ); kỳ dư bộ phân, dã dĩ “Nhật bạc tây sơn, khí tức yểm yểm, nhân mệnh nguy thiển, triều bất lự tịch”, khoái tiến bác vật quán liễu. Duy độc cộng sản chủ nghĩa đích tư tưởng thể hệ hòa xã hội chế độ, chính dĩ bài sơn đảo hải chi thế, lôi đình vạn quân chi lực, bàng bạc vu toàn thế giới, nhi bảo kỳ mỹ diệu chi thanh xuân. Trung quốc tự hữu khoa học đích cộng sản chủ nghĩa dĩ lai, nhân môn đích nhãn giới thị đề cao liễu, trung quốc cách mệnh dã cải biến liễu diện mục. Trung quốc đích dân chủ cách mệnh, một hữu cộng sản chủ nghĩa khứ chỉ đạo thị quyết bất năng thành công đích, canh bất tất thuyết cách mệnh đích hậu nhất giai đoạn liễu. Giá dã tựu thị tư sản giai cấp ngoan cố phái vi thập ma yếu na dạng khiếu hiêu hòa yếu cầu “Thu khởi” tha đích nguyên nhân. Kỳ thật, giá thị “Thu khởi” bất đắc đích, nhất thu khởi, trung quốc tựu hội vong quốc. Hiện tại đích thế giới, y kháo cộng sản chủ nghĩa tố cứu tinh; hiện tại đích trung quốc, dã chính thị giá dạng.
  • Communism is at once a complete system of proletarianideologyand a new social system. It is different from any other ideology or social system, and is the most complete, progressive, revolutionary and rational system in human history. The ideological and social system offeudalismhas a place only in the museum of history. The ideological and social system of capitalism has also become a museum piece in one part of the world (in the Soviet Union), while in other countries it resembles "a dying person who is sinking fast, like the sun setting beyond the western hills", and will soon be relegated to the museum. The communist ideological and social system alone is full of youth and vitality, sweeping the world with the momentum of an avalanche and the force of a thunderbolt. The introduction of scientific communism into China has opened new vistas for people and has changed the face of the Chinese revolution. Without communism to guide it, China's democratic revolution cannot possibly succeed, let alone move on to the next stage. This is the reason why the bourgeois die-hards are so loudly demanding that communism be "folded up". But it must not be "folded up", for once communism is "folded up", China will be doomed. The whole world today depends on communism for its salvation, and China is no exception.

• Do vu trung quốc dân tộc tư sản giai cấp thị thực dân địa bán thực dân địa quốc gia đích tư sản giai cấp, thị thụ đế quốc chủ nghĩa áp bách đích, sở dĩ, tuy nhiên xử tại đế quốc chủ nghĩa thời đại, tha môn dã hoàn thị tại nhất định thời kỳ trung hòa nhất định trình độ thượng, bảo tồn trứ phản đối ngoại quốc đế quốc chủ nghĩa hòa phản đối bổn quốc quan liêu quân phiệt chính phủ ( giá hậu giả, lệ như tại tân hợi cách mệnh thời kỳ hòa bắc phạt chiến tranh thời kỳ ) đích cách mệnh tính, khả dĩ đồng vô sản giai cấp, tiểu tư sản giai cấp liên hợp khởi lai, phản đối tha môn sở nguyện ý phản đối đích địch nhân. Giá thị trung quốc tư sản giai cấp hòa cựu nga đế quốc đích tư sản giai cấp đích bất đồng chi điểm. Tại cựu nga đế quốc, nhân vi tha dĩ kinh thị nhất cá quân sự phong kiến đích đế quốc chủ nghĩa, thị xâm lược biệt nhân đích, sở dĩ nga quốc đích tư sản giai cấp một hữu thập ma cách mệnh tính. Tại na lí, vô sản giai cấp đích nhậm vụ, thị phản đối tư sản giai cấp, nhi bất thị liên hợp tha. Tại trung quốc, nhân vi tha thị thực dân địa bán thực dân địa, thị bị nhân xâm lược đích, sở dĩ trung quốc dân tộc tư sản giai cấp hoàn hữu tại nhất định thời kỳ trung hòa nhất định trình độ thượng đích cách mệnh tính. Tại giá lí, vô sản giai cấp đích nhậm vụ, tại vu bất hốt thị dân tộc tư sản giai cấp đích giá chủng cách mệnh tính, nhi hòa tha môn kiến lập phản đế quốc chủ nghĩa hòa phản quan liêu quân phiệt chính phủ đích thống nhất chiến tuyến.
  Đãn đồng thời, dã tức thị do vu tha môn thị thực dân địa bán thực dân địa đích tư sản giai cấp, tha môn tại kinh tế thượng hòa chính trị thượng thị dị thường nhuyễn nhược đích, tha môn hựu bảo tồn liễu lánh nhất chủng tính chất, tức đối vu cách mệnh địch nhân đích thỏa hiệp tính. Trung quốc đích dân tộc tư sản giai cấp, tức sử tại cách mệnh thời, dã bất nguyện ý đồng đế quốc chủ nghĩa hoàn toàn phân liệt, tịnh thả tha môn đồng nông thôn trung đích địa tô bác tước hữu mật thiết liên hệ, nhân thử, tha môn tựu bất nguyện hòa bất năng triệt để thôi phiên đế quốc chủ nghĩa, canh gia bất nguyện hòa canh gia bất năng triệt để thôi phiên phong kiến thế lực. Giá dạng, trung quốc tư sản giai cấp dân chủ cách mệnh đích lưỡng cá cơ bổn vấn đề, lưỡng đại cơ bổn nhậm vụ, trung quốc dân tộc tư sản giai cấp đô bất năng giải quyết. Chí vu trung quốc đích đại tư sản giai cấp, dĩ quốc dân đảng vi đại biểu, tại nhất cửu nhị thất niên chí nhất cửu tam thất niên giá nhất cá trường đích thời kỳ nội, nhất trực thị đầu nhập đế quốc chủ nghĩa đích hoài bão, tịnh hòa phong kiến thế lực kết thành đồng minh, phản đối cách mệnh nhân dân đích. Trung quốc đích dân tộc tư sản giai cấp dã tằng tại nhất cửu nhị thất niên cập kỳ dĩ hậu đích nhất cá thời kỳ nội nhất độ phụ hòa quá phản cách mệnh. Tại kháng nhật chiến tranh trung, đại tư sản giai cấp đích nhất bộ phân, dĩ uông tinh vệ vi đại biểu, hựu dĩ đầu hàng địch nhân, biểu kỳ liễu đại tư sản giai cấp đích tân đích bạn biến. Giá hựu thị trung quốc tư sản giai cấp đồng lịch sử thượng âu mỹ các quốc đích tư sản giai cấp đặc biệt thị pháp quốc đích tư sản giai cấp đích bất đồng chi điểm. Tại âu mỹ các quốc, đặc biệt tại pháp quốc, đương tha môn hoàn tại cách mệnh thời đại, na lí đích tư sản giai cấp cách mệnh thị bỉ giác triệt để đích; tại trung quốc, tư sản giai cấp tắc liên giá điểm triệt để tính đô một hữu.
  • Being abourgeoisiein a colonial and semi-colonial country and oppressed byimperialism,the Chinese national bourgeoisie retains a certain revolutionary quality at certain periods and to a certain degree--even in the era of imperialism--in its opposition to the foreign imperialists and the domestic governments of bureaucrats and warlords (instances of opposition to the latter can be found in the periods of theRevolution of 1911and theNorthern Expedition), and it may ally itself with the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie against such enemies as it is ready to oppose. In this respect the Chinese bourgeoisie differs from the bourgeoisie of oldtsarist Russia.Since tsarist Russia was a military-feudal imperialism which carried on aggression against other countries, the Russian bourgeoisie was entirely lacking in revolutionary quality. There, the task of the proletariat was to oppose the bourgeoisie, not to unite with it. But China's national bourgeoisie has a revolutionary quality at certain periods and to a certain degree, because China is a colonial and semi-colonial country which is a victim of aggression. Here, the task of the proletariat is to form a united front with the national bourgeoisie against imperialism and the bureaucrat and warlord governments without overlooking its revolutionary quality.
    At the same time, however, being a bourgeois class in a colonial and semi-colonial country and so being extremely flabby economically and politically, the Chinese national bourgeoisie also has another quality, namely, a proneness to conciliation with the enemies of the revolution. Even when it takes part in the revolution, it is unwilling to break with imperialism completely and, moreover, it is closely associated with the exploitation of the rural areas through land rent; thus it is neither willing nor able to overthrow imperialism, and much less the feudal forces, in a thorough way. So neither of the two basic problems or tasks of China's bourgeois-democratic revolution can be solved or accomplished by the national bourgeoisie. As for China's big bourgeoisie, which is represented by the Kuomintang, all through the long period from 1927 to 1937 it nestled in the arms of the imperialists and formed an alliance with the feudal forces against the revolutionary people. In 1927 and for some time afterwards, the Chinese national bourgeoisie also followed the counter-revolution. During the present anti-Japanese war, the section of the big bourgeoisie represented by Wang Ching-wei has capitulated to the enemy, which constitutes a fresh betrayal on the part of the big bourgeoisie. In this respect, then, the bourgeoisie in China differs from the earlier bourgeoisie of the European and American countries, and especially of France. When the bourgeoisie in those countries, and especially in France, was still in its revolutionary era, the bourgeois revolution was comparatively thorough, whereas the bourgeoisie in China lacks even this degree of thoroughness.

• Giá chủng tân dân chủ chủ nghĩa cộng hòa quốc, nhất phương diện hòa cựu hình thức đích, âu mỹ thức đích, tư sản giai cấp chuyên chính đích, tư bổn chủ nghĩa đích cộng hòa quốc tương khu biệt, na thị cựu dân chủ chủ nghĩa đích cộng hòa quốc, na chủng cộng hòa quốc dĩ kinh quá thời liễu; lánh nhất phương diện, dã hòa tô liên thức đích, vô sản giai cấp chuyên chính đích, xã hội chủ nghĩa đích cộng hòa quốc tương khu biệt, na chủng xã hội chủ nghĩa đích cộng hòa quốc dĩ kinh tại tô liên hưng thịnh khởi lai, tịnh thả hoàn yếu tại các tư bổn chủ nghĩa quốc gia kiến lập khởi lai, vô nghi tương thành vi nhất thiết công nghiệp tiên tiến quốc gia đích quốc gia cấu thành hòa chính quyền cấu thành đích thống trị hình thức; đãn thị na chủng cộng hòa quốc, tại nhất định đích lịch sử thời kỳ trung, hoàn bất thích dụng vu thực dân địa bán thực dân địa quốc gia đích cách mệnh. Nhân thử, nhất thiết thực dân địa bán thực dân địa quốc gia đích cách mệnh, tại nhất định lịch sử thời kỳ trung sở thải thủ đích quốc gia hình thức, chỉ năng thị đệ tam chủng hình thức, giá tựu thị sở vị tân dân chủ chủ nghĩa cộng hòa quốc. Giá thị nhất định lịch sử thời kỳ đích hình thức, nhân nhi thị quá độ đích hình thức, đãn thị bất khả di dịch đích tất yếu đích hình thức.
  • This new-democraticrepublicwill be different from the oldEuropean-Americanform of capitalist republic under bourgeoisdictatorship,which is the old democratic form and already out of date. On the other hand, it will also be different from thesocialist republic of the Soviet typeunder thedictatorship of the proletariatwhich is already flourishing in theU.S.S.R.,and which, moreover, will be established in all the capitalist countries and will undoubtedly become the dominant form of state and governmental structure in all the industrially advanced countries. However, for a certain historical period, this form is not suitable for the revolutions in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. During this period, therefore, a third form of state must be adopted in the revolutions of all colonial and semi-colonial countries, namely, the new-democratic republic. This form suits a certain historical period and is therefore transitional; nevertheless, it is a form which is necessary and cannot be dispensed with.

• Quốc thể —— các cách mệnh giai cấp liên hợp chuyên chính. Chính thể —— dân chủ tập trung chế. Giá tựu thị tân dân chủ chủ nghĩa đích chính trị, giá tựu thị tân dân chủ chủ nghĩa đích cộng hòa quốc, giá tựu thị kháng nhật thống nhất chiến tuyến đích cộng hòa quốc, giá tựu thị tam đại chính sách đích tân tam dân chủ nghĩa đích cộng hòa quốc, giá tựu thị danh phó kỳ thật đích trung hoa dân quốc. Ngã môn hiện tại tuy hữu trung hoa dân quốc chi danh, thượng vô trung hoa dân quốc chi thật, tuần danh trách thật, giá tựu thị kim thiên đích công tác.
  • The state system, a joint dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes and the system of government,democratic centralism--these constitute the politics of New Democracy, the republic of New Democracy, the republic of the anti-Japanese united front, the republic of the newThree People's Principleswith their Three Great Policies' theRepublic of Chinain reality as well as in name. Today we have a Republic of China in name but not in reality, and our present task is to create the reality that will fit the name.

• Đại ngân hành, đại công nghiệp, đại thương nghiệp, quy giá cá cộng hòa quốc đích quốc gia sở hữu. “Phàm bổn quốc nhân cập ngoại quốc nhân chi xí nghiệp, hoặc hữu độc chiêm đích tính chất, hoặc quy mô quá đại vi tư nhân chi lực sở bất năng bạn giả, như ngân hành, thiết đạo, hàng lộ chi chúc, do quốc gia kinh doanh quản lý chi, sử tư hữu tư bổn chế độ bất năng thao túng quốc dân chi sinh kế, thử tắc tiết chế tư bổn chi yếu chỉ dã.” Giá dã thị quốc cộng hợp tác đích quốc dân đảng đích đệ nhất thứ toàn quốc đại biểu đại hội tuyên ngôn trung đích trang nghiêm đích thanh minh, giá tựu thị tân dân chủ chủ nghĩa cộng hòa quốc đích kinh tế cấu thành đích chính xác đích phương châm. Tại vô sản giai cấp lĩnh đạo hạ đích tân dân chủ chủ nghĩa cộng hòa quốc đích quốc doanh kinh tế thị xã hội chủ nghĩa đích tính chất, thị chỉnh cá quốc dân kinh tế đích lĩnh đạo lực lượng, đãn giá cá cộng hòa quốc tịnh bất một thu kỳ tha tư bổn chủ nghĩa đích tư hữu tài sản, tịnh bất cấm chỉ “Bất năng thao túng quốc dân sinh kế” đích tư bổn chủ nghĩa sinh sản đích phát triển, giá thị nhân vi trung quốc kinh tế hoàn thập phân lạc hậu đích duyên cố.
  • Enterprises,such asbanks,railwaysand airlines, whether Chinese-owned or foreign-owned, which are either monopolistic in character or too big for private management, shall be operated and administered by the state, so that private capital cannot dominate the livelihood of the people: this is the main principle of the regulation of capital. This is another solemn declaration in the Manifesto of the Kuomintang's First National Congress held during the period of Kuomintang-Communist co-operation, and it is the correct policy for the economic structure of the new-democratic republic. In the new-democratic republic under the leadership of the proletariat, the state enterprises will be of a socialist character and will constitute the leading force in the whole national economy, but the republic will neither confiscate capitalist private property in general nor forbid the development of such capitalist production as does not "dominate the livelihood of the people", for China's economy is still very backward.

On Coalition Government (1945)

In a word, everything for the front, everything for the defeat of the Japanese aggressors and for the liberation of the Chinese people--this is the general slogan, the general policy for the whole army and the whole people in the Liberated Areas of China.

The culture of New Democracy should likewise be "shared by all the common people", that is, it should be a national, scientific and mass culture, and must under no circumstances be a culture "privately owned by the few".

• Ngã môn đích đại hội thị tại giá chủng tình huống chi hạ khai hội đích: Trung quốc nhân dân tại kỳ đối vu nhật bổn xâm lược giả tác liễu tương cận bát niên đích kiên quyết đích anh dũng đích bất khuất bất nạo đích phấn đấu, kinh lịch liễu vô sổ đích gian nan khốn khổ hòa tự ngã hi sinh chi hậu, xuất hiện liễu giá dạng đích tân cục diện —— chỉnh cá thế giới thượng phản đối pháp tây tư xâm lược giả đích thần thánh đích chính nghĩa đích chiến tranh, dĩ kinh thủ đắc liễu hữu quyết định ý nghĩa đích thắng lợi, trung quốc nhân dân phối hợp đồng minh quốc đả bại nhật bổn xâm lược giả đích thời cơ, dĩ kinh bách cận liễu. Đãn thị trung quốc hiện tại nhưng nhiên bất đoàn kết, trung quốc nhưng nhiên tồn tại trứ nghiêm trọng đích nguy cơ. Tại giá chủng tình huống hạ, ngã môn ứng cai chẩm dạng tố ni? Hào vô nghi nghĩa, trung quốc cấp nhu bả các đảng các phái hòa vô đảng vô phái đích đại biểu nhân vật đoàn kết tại nhất khởi, thành lập dân chủ đích lâm thời đích liên hợp chính phủ, dĩ tiện thật hành dân chủ đích cải cách, khắc phục mục tiền đích nguy cơ, động viên hòa thống nhất toàn trung quốc đích kháng nhật lực lượng, hữu lực địa hòa đồng minh quốc phối hợp tác chiến, đả bại nhật bổn xâm lược giả, sử trung quốc nhân dân tòng nhật bổn xâm lược giả thủ trung giải phóng xuất lai. Nhiên hậu, nhu yếu tại quảng phiếm đích dân chủ cơ sở chi thượng, triệu khai quốc dân đại biểu đại hội, thành lập bao quát canh quảng đại phạm vi đích các đảng các phái hòa vô đảng vô phái đại biểu nhân vật tại nội đích đồng dạng thị liên hợp tính chất đích dân chủ đích chính thức đích chính phủ, lĩnh đạo giải phóng hậu đích toàn quốc nhân dân, tương trung quốc kiến thiết thành vi nhất cá độc lập, tự do, dân chủ, thống nhất hòa phú cường đích tân quốc gia. Nhất cú thoại, tẩu đoàn kết hòa dân chủ đích lộ tuyến, đả bại xâm lược giả, kiến thiết tân trung quốc.
  • Our congress is being held in the following circumstances. A new situation has emerged after nearly eight years of resolute, heroic and indomitable struggle waged by theChinese peoplewith countless sacrifices and amid untold hardships against the Japanese aggressors; in the world as a whole, decisive victory has been gained in the just and sacred war against the fascist aggressors and the moment is near when the Japanese aggressors will be defeated by the Chinese people in co-ordination with the allied countries. But China remains disunited and is still confronted with a grave crisis. In these circumstances, what ought we to do? Beyond all doubt, the urgent need is to unite representatives of all political parties and groups and of people without any party affiliation and establish a provisional democratic coalition government for the purpose of instituting democratic reforms, surmounting the present crisis, mobilizing and unifying all the anti-Japanese forces in the country to fight in effective co-ordination with the allied countries for the defeat of the Japanese aggressors, and thus enabling the Chinese people to liberate themselves from the latter's clutches. After that it will be necessary to convene a national assembly on a broad democratic basis and set up a formally constituted democratic government, which will also be in the nature of a coalition and will have a still wider representation of people from all parties and groups or without any party affiliation, and which will lead the liberated people of the whole country in building an independent, free, democratic, united, prosperous and powerful new China. In short, we must take the line of unity and democracy, defeat the aggressors and build a new China.

• Trung quốc đích trường kỳ chiến tranh, sử trung quốc nhân dân phó xuất liễu tịnh thả hoàn tương tái phó xuất trọng đại đích hi sinh; đãn thị đồng thời, chính thị giá cá chiến tranh, đoán luyện liễu trung quốc nhân dân. Giá cá chiến tranh xúc tiến trung quốc nhân dân đích giác ngộ hòa đoàn kết đích trình độ, thị cận bách niên lai trung quốc nhân dân đích nhất thiết vĩ đại đích đấu tranh một hữu nhất thứ bỉ đắc thượng đích. Tại trung quốc nhân dân diện tiền, bất đãn tồn tại trứ cường đại đích dân tộc địch nhân, nhi thả tồn tại trứ cường đại đích thật tế thượng bang trợ dân tộc địch nhân đích quốc nội phản động thế lực, giá thị nhất phương diện. Đãn thị lánh nhất phương diện, trung quốc nhân dân bất đãn dĩ kinh hữu liễu bỉ quá khứ nhậm hà thời hầu đô cao đích giác ngộ trình độ, nhi thả hữu liễu cường đại đích trung quốc giải phóng khu hòa nhật ích cao trướng trứ đích toàn quốc tính đích dân chủ vận động. Giá thị quốc nội đích hữu lợi điều kiện. Như quả thuyết, trung quốc cận bách niên lai nhất thiết nhân dân đấu tranh đô tao đáo liễu thất bại hoặc tỏa chiết, nhi giá thị nhân vi khuyết phạp quốc tế đích hòa quốc nội đích nhược càn tất yếu đích điều kiện, na mạt, giá nhất thứ tựu bất đồng liễu, bỉ giác dĩ vãng lịch thứ, nhất thiết tất yếu đích điều kiện đô cụ bị liễu. Tị miễn thất bại hòa thủ đắc thắng lợi đích khả năng tính sung phân địa tồn tại trứ. Như quả ngã môn năng cú đoàn kết toàn quốc nhân dân, nỗ lực phấn đấu, tịnh cấp dĩ thích đương đích chỉ đạo, ngã môn tựu năng cú thắng lợi.
  • China's protracted war has exacted and will continue to exact great sacrifices from the Chinese people, but at the same time this very war has tempered them. It has awakened and united the Chinese people to a greater degree than all their great struggles in the last hundred years. The Chinese people face not only a formidable national enemy but also powerful domestic reactionary forces which are in fact helping the enemy; this is one side of the picture. But the other side is that the Chinese people are not only more politically conscious than ever before but have built powerfulLiberated Areasand a nation-wide democratic movement that is growing day by day. These constitute favourable domestic conditions. If the defeats and setbacks in the Chinese people's struggles of the last hundred years were due to the absence of certain necessary international and domestic conditions, then today the situation is different--all the necessary conditions are present. There is every possibility of avoiding defeat and winning victory. We shall be victorious if we can unite the whole people in resolute struggle and give them proper leadership.

• Tại trung quốc giải phóng khu, tại dân chủ chính phủ lĩnh đạo chi hạ, hào triệu nhất thiết kháng nhật nhân dân tổ chức tại công nhân đích, nông dân đích, thanh niên đích, phụ nữ đích, văn hóa đích hòa kỳ tha chức nghiệp hòa công tác đích đoàn thể chi trung, nhiệt liệt địa tòng sự viện trợ quân đội đích các hạng công tác. Giá ta công tác bất đãn bao quát động viên nhân dân tham gia quân đội, thế quân đội vận thâu lương thực, ưu đãi kháng nhật quân nhân gia chúc, bang trợ quân đội giải quyết vật chất khốn nan, nhi thả bao quát động viên du kích đội, dân binh hòa tự vệ quân, triển khai tập kích vận động hòa bạo tạc vận động, trinh sát địch tình, thanh trừ gian tế, vận tống thương binh hòa bảo hộ thương binh, trực tiếp bang trợ quân đội đích tác chiến. Đồng thời, toàn giải phóng khu nhân dân hựu nhiệt liệt địa tòng sự chính trị, kinh tế, văn hóa, vệ sinh các hạng kiến thiết công tác. Tại giá phương diện, tối trọng yếu đích thị động viên toàn thể nhân dân tòng sự lương thực hòa nhật dụng phẩm đích sinh sản, tịnh sử nhất thiết cơ quan, học giáo, trừ hữu đặc thù tình hình giả ngoại, nhất luật vu công tác hoặc học tập chi hạ, tòng sự sinh sản tự cấp, dĩ phối hợp nhân dân hòa quân đội đích sinh sản tự cấp, tạo thành vĩ đại đích sinh sản nhiệt triều, tá dĩ chi trì trường kỳ đích kháng nhật chiến tranh. Tại trung quốc giải phóng khu, địch nhân đích tồi tàn thị dị thường nghiêm trọng đích; thủy, hạn, trùng tai, dã thời thường phát sinh. Đãn thị, giải phóng khu dân chủ chính phủ lĩnh đạo toàn thể nhân dân, hữu tổ chức địa khắc phục liễu hòa chính tại khắc phục trứ các chủng khốn nan, diệt hoàng, trị thủy, cứu tai đích vĩ đại quần chúng vận động, thu đáo liễu sử vô tiền lệ đích hiệu quả, sử kháng nhật chiến tranh năng cú trường kỳ địa kiên trì hạ khứ. Tổng chi, nhất thiết vi trứ tiền tuyến, nhất thiết vi trứ đả đảo nhật bổn xâm lược giả hòa giải phóng trung quốc nhân dân, giá tựu thị trung quốc giải phóng khu toàn thể quân dân đích tổng khẩu hào, tổng phương châm.
  • Under the leadership of their democratic governments, all the anti-Japanese people in the Liberated Areas of China are called upon to join organizations of workers, peasants, youth and women, and cultural, professional and other organizations, which will wholeheartedly perform various tasks in support of the armed forces. Those tasks are not limited to rallying the people to join the army, transporting grain for it, caring for soldiers' families and helping the troops in meeting their material needs. They also include mobilizing the guerrilla units, militia and self-defence corps to make widespread raids and lay land mines against the enemy, gather intelligence about him, comb out traitors and spies, transport and protect the wounded and take direct part in the army's operations. At the same time, the people in all the Liberated Areas are enthusiastically taking up various kinds of political, economic, cultural and health work. The most important thing in this connection is to mobilize everybody for the production of grain and other necessities and to ensure that all government institutions and schools, except in special cases, devote their free time to production for their own support in order to supplement the self-suffidency production campaigns of the army and the people and thus help to create a great upsurge of production to sustain the protracted War of Resistance. In China's Liberated Areas, the enemy has wrought great havoc, and floods, droughts and damage by insect pests have been frequent. However, the democratic governments there have been leading the people in overcoming these difficulties in an organized way, and unprecedented results have been achieved by the great mass campaigns for pest extermination, flood control and disaster relief, thus making it possible to persevere in the protracted War of Resistance. In a word, everything for the front, everything for the defeat of the Japanese aggressors and for the liberation of the Chinese people--this is the general slogan, the general policy for the whole army and the whole people in the Liberated Areas of China.

• Trung quốc nhân dân tòng trung quốc giải phóng khu hòa quốc dân đảng thống trị khu, hoạch đắc liễu minh hiển đích bỉ giác.
  Nan đạo hoàn bất minh hiển mạ? Lưỡng điều lộ tuyến, nhân dân chiến tranh đích lộ tuyến hòa phản đối nhân dân chiến tranh đích tiêu cực kháng nhật đích lộ tuyến, kỳ kết quả: Nhất điều thị thắng lợi đích, tức sử xử tại trung quốc giải phóng khu giá chủng hoàn cảnh ác liệt hòa hào vô ngoại viện đích địa vị; lánh nhất điều thị thất bại đích, tức sử xử tại quốc dân đảng thống trị khu giá chủng cực đoan hữu lợi hòa thủ đắc ngoại quốc tiếp tế đích địa vị.
  Quốc dân đảng chính phủ bả tự kỷ đích thất bại quy cữu vu khuyết phạp võ khí. Đãn thị thí vấn: Khuyết phạp võ khí đích thị quốc dân đảng đích quân đội ni, hoàn thị giải phóng khu đích quân đội? Trung quốc giải phóng khu đích quân đội thị trung quốc quân đội trung võ khí tối khuyết phạp đích quân đội, tha môn chỉ năng tòng địch nhân thủ lí đoạt thủ võ khí hòa tại tối ác liệt điều kiện hạ tự kỷ chế tạo võ khí.
  Quốc dân đảng trung ương hệ quân đội đích võ khí, bất thị bỉ khởi địa phương hệ quân đội lai yếu hảo đắc đa mạ? Đãn thị bỉ khởi chiến đấu lực lai, trung ương hệ khước đa sổ liệt vu địa phương hệ.
  Quốc dân đảng ủng hữu quảng đại đích nhân lực tư nguyên, đãn thị tại tha đích thác ngộ đích binh dịch chính sách hạ, nhân lực bổ sung khước cực đoan khốn nan. Trung quốc giải phóng khu xử tại bị địch nhân phân cát hòa chiến đấu tần phồn đích tình huống chi hạ, nhân vi phổ biến thật thi liễu thích hợp nhân dân nhu yếu đích dân binh hòa tự vệ quân chế độ, hựu phòng chỉ liễu đối vu nhân lực tư nguyên đích lạm dụng hòa lãng phí, nhân lực động viên khước khả dĩ nguyên nguyên bất kiệt.
  Quốc dân đảng ủng hữu lương thực phong phú đích quảng đại địa khu, nhân dân mỗi niên cung cấp tha thất thiên vạn chí nhất vạn vạn thị đam đích lương thực, đãn thị đại bộ phân bị kinh thủ nhân viên trung bão liễu, trí sử quốc dân đảng đích quân đội kinh thường khuyết phạp lương thực, sĩ binh ngạ đắc diện hoàng cơ sấu. Trung quốc giải phóng khu đích chủ yếu bộ phân cách tại địch hậu, tao thụ địch nhân thiêu sát thưởng “Tam quang” chính sách đích tồi tàn, kỳ trung hữu ta thị tượng thiểm bắc giá dạng bần tích đích khu vực, đãn thị khước năng dụng tự kỷ động thủ, phát triển nông nghiệp sinh sản đích phương pháp, ngận hảo địa giải quyết liễu lương thực vấn đề.
  Quốc dân đảng khu vực kinh tế nguy cơ cực đoan nghiêm trọng, công nghiệp đại bộ phân phá sản liễu, liên bố thất giá dạng đích nhật dụng phẩm dã yếu tòng mỹ quốc vận lai. Trung quốc giải phóng khu khước năng dụng phát triển công nghiệp đích phương pháp, tự kỷ giải quyết bố thất hòa kỳ tha nhật dụng phẩm đích nhu yếu.
  Tại quốc dân đảng khu vực, công nhân, nông dân, điếm viên, công vụ nhân viên, tri thức phân tử dĩ cập văn hóa công tác giả, sinh hoạt thống khổ, đạt vu cực điểm. Trung quốc giải phóng khu đích toàn thể nhân dân đô hữu phạn cật, hữu y xuyên, hữu sự tố.
  Lợi dụng kháng chiến phát quốc nan tài, quan lại tức thương nhân, tham ô thành phong, liêm sỉ tảo địa, giá thị quốc dân đảng khu vực đích đặc sắc chi nhất. Gian khổ phấn đấu, dĩ thân tác tắc, công tác chi ngoại, hoàn yếu sinh sản, tưởng lệ liêm khiết, cấm tuyệt tham ô, giá thị trung quốc giải phóng khu đích đặc sắc chi nhất.
  Quốc dân đảng khu vực bác đoạt nhân dân đích nhất thiết tự do. Trung quốc giải phóng khu tắc cấp dư nhân dân dĩ sung phân đích tự do.
  Quốc dân đảng thống trị giả diện tiền bãi trứ giá ta phản thường đích trạng huống, quái thùy ni? Quái biệt nhân, hoàn thị quái tha môn tự kỷ ni? Quái ngoại quốc khuyết thiếu viện trợ, hoàn thị quái quốc dân đảng chính phủ đích độc tài thống trị hòa hủ bại vô năng ni? Giá nan đạo hoàn bất minh bạch mạ?
  • The Chinese people have come to see the sharp contrast between the Liberated Areas and the Kuomintang areas.
    Are not the facts clear enough? Here are two lines, the line of a people's war and the line of passive resistance, which is against a people's war; one leads to victory even in the difficult conditions in China's Liberated Areas with their total lack of outside aid, and the other leads to defeat even in the extremely favourable conditions in the Kuomintang areas with foreign aid available.
    The Kuomintang government attributes its failures to lack of arms.
    Yet one may ask, which of the two are short of arms, the Kuomintang troops or the troops of the Liberated Areas? Of all China's forces, those of the Liberated Areas lack arms most acutely, their only weapons being those they capture from the enemy or manufacture under the most adverse conditions.
    Is it not true that the forces directly under the Kuomintang central government are far better armed than the provincial troops? Yet in combat effectiveness most of the central forces are inferior to the provincial troops.
    The Kuomintang commands vast reserves of manpower, yet its wrong recruiting policy makes manpower replenishment very difficult. Though cut off from each other by the enemy and engaged in constant fighting, China's Liberated Areas are able to mobilize inexhaustible manpower because the militia and self-defence corps system, which is well-adapted to the needs of the people, is applied everywhere, and because misuse and waste of manpower are avoided.
    Although the Kuomintang controls vast areas abounding ingrainand the people supply it with 70-100 million tan annually, its army is always short of food and its soldiers are emaciated because the greater part of the grain is embezzled by those through whose hands it passes. But although most of China's Liberated Areas, which are located in the enemy rear, have been devastated by the enemy's policy of "burn all, kill all, loot all", and although some regions like northern Shensi are very arid, we have successfully solved the grain problem through our own efforts by increasingagriculturalproduction.
    The Kuomintang areas are facing a very grave economic crisis; most industries are bankrupt, and even such necessities as cloth have to be imported from the United States. But China's Liberated Areas are able to meet their own needs in cloth and other necessities through the development of industry.
    In the Kuomintang areas, theworkers,peasants,shop assistants, government employees, intellectuals and cultural workers live in extreme misery. In the Liberated Areas all the people have food, clothing and work.
    It is characteristic of the Kuomintang areas that, exploiting the national crisis for profiteering purposes, officials have concurrently become traders and habitual grafters without any sense of shame or decency. It is characteristic of China's Liberated Areas that, setting an example of plain living and hard work, the cadres take part in production in addition to their regular duties; honesty is held in high esteem while graft is strictly prohibited.
    In the Kuomintang areas the people have no freedom at all. In China's Liberated Areas the people have full freedom.
    Who is to blame for all the anomalies which confront the Kuomintang rulers? Are others to blame, or they themselves? Are foreign countries to blame for not giving them enough aid, or are the Kuomintang government's dictatorial rule, corruption and incompetence to blame? Isn't the answer obvious?

• Tân dân chủ chủ nghĩa đích văn hóa, đồng dạng ứng cai thị “Vi nhất bàn bình dân sở cộng hữu” đích, tức thị thuyết, dân tộc đích, khoa học đích, đại chúng đích văn hóa, quyết bất ứng cai thị “Thiếu sổ nhân sở đắc nhi tư” đích văn hóa.
  Thượng thuật nhất thiết, tựu thị ngã môn cộng sản đảng nhân tại hiện giai đoạn thượng, tại chỉnh cá tư sản giai cấp dân chủ cách mệnh đích giai đoạn thượng sở chủ trương đích nhất bàn cương lĩnh, hoặc cơ bổn cương lĩnh. Đối vu ngã môn đích xã hội chủ nghĩa hòa cộng sản chủ nghĩa chế độ đích tương lai cương lĩnh hoặc tối cao cương lĩnh thuyết lai, giá thị ngã môn đích tối đê cương lĩnh. Thật hành giá cá cương lĩnh, khả dĩ bả trung quốc tòng hiện tại đích quốc gia trạng huống hòa xã hội trạng huống hướng tiền thôi tiến nhất bộ, tức thị thuyết, tòng thực dân địa, bán thực dân địa hòa bán phong kiến đích quốc gia hòa xã hội trạng huống, thôi tiến đáo tân dân chủ chủ nghĩa đích quốc gia hòa xã hội.
  Giá cá cương lĩnh sở quy định đích vô sản giai cấp tại chính trị thượng đích lĩnh đạo quyền, vô sản giai cấp lĩnh đạo hạ đích quốc doanh kinh tế hòa hợp tác xã kinh tế, thị xã hội chủ nghĩa đích nhân tố. Đãn thị giá cá cương lĩnh đích thật hành, hoàn một hữu sử trung quốc thành vi xã hội chủ nghĩa xã hội.
  Ngã môn cộng sản đảng nhân tòng lai bất ẩn man tự kỷ đích chính trị chủ trương. Ngã môn đích tương lai cương lĩnh hoặc tối cao cương lĩnh, thị yếu tương trung quốc thôi tiến đáo xã hội chủ nghĩa xã hội hòa cộng sản chủ nghĩa xã hội khứ đích, giá thị xác định đích hòa hào vô nghi nghĩa đích. Ngã môn đích đảng đích danh xưng hòa ngã môn đích mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa đích vũ trụ quan, minh xác địa chỉ minh liễu giá cá tương lai đích, vô hạn quang minh đích, vô hạn mỹ diệu đích tối cao lý tưởng. Mỗi cá cộng sản đảng viên nhập đảng đích thời hầu, tâm mục trung tựu huyền trứ vi hiện tại đích tân dân chủ chủ nghĩa cách mệnh nhi phấn đấu hòa vi tương lai đích xã hội chủ nghĩa hòa cộng sản chủ nghĩa nhi phấn đấu giá dạng lưỡng cá minh xác đích mục tiêu, nhi bất cố na ta cộng sản chủ nghĩa địch nhân đích vô tri đích hòa ti liệt đích địch thị, ô miệt, mạn mạ hoặc ki tiếu; đối vu giá ta, ngã môn tất tu cấp dĩ kiên quyết đích bài kích. Đối vu na ta thiện ý đích hoài nghi giả, tắc bất thị cấp dĩ bài kích nhi thị cấp dĩ thiện ý đích hòa nại tâm đích giải thích. Sở hữu giá ta, đô thị dị thường thanh sở, dị thường xác định hòa hào bất hàm hồ đích.
  • The culture ofNew Democracyshould likewise be "shared by all the common people", that is, it should be a national, scientific and mass culture, and must under no circumstances be a culture "privately owned by the few".
    Such is the general or fundamental programme which we Communists advocate for the present stage, the entire stage of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. This is our minimum programme as against our future or maximum programme of socialism and communism. Its realization will carry the Chinese state and Chinese society a step forward, from a colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal to a new-democratic state and society.
    The political leadership of the proletariat and the proletarian-led state and co-operative sectors of the economy required by our programme are socialist factors. Yet the fulfilment of this programme will not turn China into a socialist society.
    We Communists do not conceal our political views. Definitely and beyond all doubt, our future or maximum programme is to carry China forward to socialism and communism. Both the name of our Party and our Marxist world outlook unequivocally point to this supreme ideal of the future, a future of incomparable brightness and splendour. On joining the Party, every Communist has two clearly-defined objectives at heart, the new-democratic revolution now and socialism and communism in the future, and for these he will fight despite the animosity of the enemies of communism and their vulgar and ignorant calumny, abuse and ridicule, which we must firmly combat. As for the well-meaning sceptics, we should explain things to them with goodwill and patience and not attack them. All this is very clear, definite and unequivocal.

The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains(1945)

• Trung quốc cổ đại hữu cá ngụ ngôn, khiếu tố “Ngu công di sơn”. Thuyết đích thị cổ đại hữu nhất vị lão nhân, trụ tại hoa bắc, danh khiếu bắc sơn ngu công. Tha đích gia môn nam diện hữu lưỡng tọa đại sơn đáng trụ tha gia đích xuất lộ, nhất tọa khiếu tố thái hành sơn, nhất tọa khiếu tố vương ốc sơn. Ngu công hạ quyết tâm suất lĩnh tha đích nhi tử môn yếu dụng sừ đầu oạt khứ giá lưỡng tọa đại sơn. Hữu cá lão đầu tử danh khiếu trí tẩu đích khán liễu phát tiếu, thuyết thị nhĩ môn giá dạng càn vị miễn thái ngu xuẩn liễu, nhĩ môn phụ tử sổ nhân yếu oạt điệu giá dạng lưỡng tọa đại sơn thị hoàn toàn bất khả năng đích. Ngu công hồi đáp thuyết: Ngã tử liễu dĩ hậu hữu ngã đích nhi tử, nhi tử tử liễu, hựu hữu tôn tử, tử tử tôn tôn thị một hữu cùng tẫn đích. Giá lưỡng tọa sơn tuy nhiên ngận cao, khước thị bất hội tái tăng cao liễu, oạt nhất điểm tựu hội thiếu nhất điểm, vi thập ma oạt bất bình ni? Ngu công phê bác liễu trí tẩu đích thác ngộ tư tưởng, hào bất động diêu, mỗi thiên oạt sơn bất chỉ. Giá kiện sự cảm động liễu thượng đế, tha tựu phái liễu lưỡng cá thần tiên hạ phàm, bả lưỡng tọa sơn bối tẩu liễu. Hiện tại dã hữu lưỡng tọa áp tại trung quốc nhân dân đầu thượng đích đại sơn, nhất tọa khiếu tố đế quốc chủ nghĩa, nhất tọa khiếu tố phong kiến chủ nghĩa. Trung quốc cộng sản đảng tảo tựu hạ liễu quyết tâm, yếu oạt điệu giá lưỡng tọa sơn. Ngã môn nhất định yếu kiên trì hạ khứ, nhất định yếu bất đoạn địa công tác, ngã môn dã hội cảm động thượng đế đích. Giá cá thượng đế bất thị biệt nhân, tựu thị toàn trung quốc đích nhân dân đại chúng. Toàn quốc nhân dân đại chúng nhất tề khởi lai hòa ngã môn nhất đạo oạt giá lưỡng tọa sơn, hữu thập ma oạt bất bình ni?
  • There is an ancient Chinese fable called "The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains". It tells of an old man who lived innorthern Chinalong, long ago and was known as the Foolish Old Man of North Mountain. His house faced south and beyond his doorway stood the two great peaks,TaihangandWangwu,obstructing the way. He called his sons, and hoe in hand they began to dig up these mountains with great determination. Another graybeard, known as the Wise Old Man, saw them and said derisively, "How silly of you to do this! It is quite impossible for you few to dig up those two huge mountains." The Foolish Old Man replied, "When I die, my sons will carry on; when they die, there will be my grandsons, and then their sons and grandsons, and so on to infinity. High as they are, themountainscannot grow any higher and with every bit we dig, they will be that much lower. Why can't we clear them away? "Having refuted the Wise Old Man's wrong view, he went on digging every day, unshaken in his conviction. God was moved by this, and he sent down two angels, who carried the mountains away on their backs.Today, two big mountains lie like a dead weight on the Chinese people. One is imperialism, the other is feudalism.The Chinese Communist Party has long made up its mind to dig them up. We must persevere and work unceasingly, and we, too, will touch God's heart.Our God is none other than the masses of the Chinese people.If they stand up and dig together with us, why can't these two mountains be cleared away?

On the People's Democratic Dictatorship(1949)

• “Nhĩ môn độc tài.” Khả ái đích tiên sinh môn, nhĩ môn giảng đối liễu, ngã môn chính thị giá dạng. Trung quốc nhân dân tại kỉ thập niên trung tích luy khởi lai đích nhất thiết kinh nghiệm, đô khiếu ngã môn thật hành nhân dân dân chủ chuyên chính, hoặc viết nhân dân dân chủ độc tài, tổng chi thị nhất dạng, tựu thị bác đoạt phản động phái đích phát ngôn quyền, chỉ nhượng nhân dân hữu phát ngôn quyền.
  • "You are dictatorial." My dear sirs, you are right, that is just what we are. All the experience theChinese peoplehave accumulated through several decades teaches us to enforce the people's democraticdictatorship,that is, to deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that right.

• We thankMarx,Engels,LeninandStalinfor giving us a weapon. This weapon is not a machine-gun, butMarxism-Leninism.

• Đối vu nhân dân nội bộ, tắc thật hành dân chủ chế độ, nhân dân hữu ngôn luận tập hội kết xã đẳng hạng đích tự do quyền. Tuyển cử quyền, chỉ cấp nhân dân, bất cấp phản động phái. Giá lưỡng phương diện, đối nhân dân nội bộ đích dân chủ phương diện hòa đối phản động phái đích chuyên chính phương diện, hỗ tương kết hợp khởi lai, tựu thị nhân dân dân chủ chuyên chính.
  • Democracyis practiced within the ranks of the people, who enjoy the rights offreedom of speech,assembly,association and so on. The right to vote belongs only to the people, not to the reactionaries. The combination of these two aspects, democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, is the people's democratic dictatorship.

• Nhân dân đích quốc gia thị bảo hộ nhân dân đích. Hữu liễu nhân dân đích quốc gia, nhân dân tài hữu khả năng tại toàn quốc phạm vi nội hòa toàn thể quy mô thượng, dụng dân chủ đích phương pháp, giáo dục tự kỷ hòa cải tạo tự kỷ, sử tự kỷ thoát ly nội ngoại phản động phái đích ảnh hưởng ( giá cá ảnh hưởng hiện tại hoàn thị ngận đại đích, tịnh tương tại trường thời kỳ nội tồn tại trứ, bất năng ngận khoái địa tiêu diệt ), cải tạo tự kỷ tòng cựu xã hội đắc lai đích phôi tập quán hòa phôi tư tưởng, bất sử tự kỷ tẩu nhập phản động phái chỉ dẫn đích thác ngộ lộ thượng khứ, tịnh kế tục tiền tiến, hướng trứ xã hội chủ nghĩa xã hội hòa cộng sản chủ nghĩa xã hội tiền tiến.
  • The people’s state protects the people. Only when the people have such a state can they educate and remould themselves by democratic methods on a country-wide scale, with everyone taking part, and shake off the influence of domestic and foreign reactionaries (which is still very strong, will survive for a long time and cannot be quickly destroyed), rid themselves of the bad habits and ideas acquired in the old society, not allow themselves to be led astray by the reactionaries, and continue to advance — to advance towards a socialist and communist society.

• Đối vu phản động giai cấp hòa phản động phái đích nhân môn, tại tha môn đích chính quyền bị thôi phiên dĩ hậu, chỉ yếu tha môn bất tạo phản, bất phá phôi, bất đảo loạn, dã cấp thổ địa, cấp công tác, nhượng tha môn hoạt hạ khứ, nhượng tha môn tại lao động trung cải tạo tự kỷ, thành vi tân nhân. Tha môn như quả bất nguyện ý lao động, nhân dân đích quốc gia tựu yếu cường bách tha môn lao động. Dã đối tha môn tố tuyên truyện giáo dục công tác, tịnh thả tố đắc ngận dụng tâm, ngận sung phân, tượng ngã môn đối phu lỗ quân quan môn dĩ kinh tố quá đích na dạng. Giá dã khả dĩ thuyết thị “Thi nhân chính” ba, đãn giá thị ngã môn đối vu nguyên lai thị địch đối giai cấp đích nhân môn sở cường bách địa thi hành đích, hòa ngã môn đối vu cách mệnh nhân dân nội bộ đích tự ngã giáo dục công tác, bất năng tương đề tịnh luận.
  • As for the members of the reactionary classes and individual reactionaries, so long as they do not rebel, sabotage or create trouble after their political power has been overthrown, land and work will be given to them as well in order to allow them to live and remould themselves through labour into new people. If they are not willing to work, the people's state will compel them to work. Propaganda and educational work will be done among them too and will be done, moreover, with as much care and thoroughness as among the captured army officers in the past. This, too, may be called a "policy of benevolence" if you like, but it is imposed by us on the members of the enemy classes and cannot be mentioned in the same breath with the work of self-education which we carry on within the ranks of the revolutionary people.

1950s

Even if the U.S. atom bombs were so powerful that, when dropped on China, they would make a hole right through the earth, or even blow it up, that would hardly mean anything to the universe as a whole, though it might be a major event for the solar system.

We must have faith in the masses and we must have faith in the Party. These are two cardinal principles. If we doubt these principles, we shall accomplish nothing.

We must despise the enemy with respect to the whole, but that we must take him seriously with respect to each and every concrete question.

We ask the God of Plague: "Where are you bound?"
Paper barges aflame and candle-light illuminate the sky.

Ours is a people's democratic dictatorship, led by the working class and based on the worker-peasant alliance.

We have no experience in atomic war. So, how many will be killed cannot be known. The best outcome may be that only half of the population is left and the second best may be only one-third.

Death has benefits; fertilizers created.

To sum up, we must learn to look at problems from all sides, seeing the reverse as well as the obverse side of things.

• Kim thiên, thế giới chiến tranh đích nguy hiểm hòa đối trung quốc đích uy hiếp chủ yếu lai tự mỹ quốc đích hảo chiến phân tử. Tha môn xâm chiêm trung quốc đích đài loan hòa đài loan hải hiệp, hoàn tưởng phát động nguyên tử chiến tranh. Ngã môn hữu lưỡng điều: Đệ nhất, ngã môn bất yếu chiến tranh; đệ nhị, như quả hữu nhân lai xâm lược ngã môn, ngã môn tựu dư dĩ kiên quyết hồi kích. Ngã môn đối cộng sản đảng viên hòa toàn quốc nhân dân tựu thị giá dạng tiến hành giáo dục đích. Mỹ quốc đích nguyên tử ngoa trá, hách bất đảo trung quốc nhân dân. Ngã quốc hữu lục ức nhân khẩu, hữu cửu bách lục thập vạn bình phương công lí đích thổ địa. Mỹ quốc na điểm nguyên tử đạn, tiêu diệt bất liễu trung quốc nhân. Tức sử mỹ quốc đích nguyên tử đạn uy lực tái đại, đầu đáo trung quốc lai, bả địa cầu đả xuyên liễu, bả địa cầu tạc hủy liễu, đối vu thái dương hệ thuyết lai, hoàn toán thị nhất kiện đại sự tình, đãn đối chỉnh cá vũ trụ thuyết lai, dã toán bất liễu thập ma.
  • Today, the danger of aworld warand the threats to China come mainly from the warmongers in the United States. They have occupied ourTaiwanand theTaiwan Straitsand are contemplating anatomic war.We have two principles: first, we don’t want war; second, we will strike back resolutely if anyone invades us. This is what we teach the members of the Communist Party and the whole nation. The Chinese people are not to be cowed by U.S. atomic blackmail. Our country has a population of 600 million and an area of 9,600,000 square kilometres. The United States cannot annihilate the Chinese nation with its small stack of atom bombs. Even if the U.S. atom bombs were so powerful that, when dropped on China, they would make a hole right through the earth, or even blow it up, that would hardly mean anything to the universe as a whole, though it might be a major event for the solar system.
    • Chinese People Cannot Be Cowed by the Atom Bomb (January 28, 1955)

• Ngã môn ứng đương tương tín quần chúng, ngã môn ứng đương tương tín đảng, giá thị lưỡng điều căn bổn đích nguyên lý. Như quả hoài nghi giá lưỡng điều nguyên lý, na tựu thập ma sự tình dã tố bất thành liễu.
  • We must have faith in the masses and we must have faith in the Party. These are two cardinal principles. If we doubt these principles, we shall accomplish nothing.
  • On the Question of Agricultural Co-Operation (July 31, 1955)

• Stalinmade mistakes. He made mistakes towards us, for example, in 1927. He made mistakes towards theYugoslavstoo. One cannot advance without mistakes... It is necessary to make mistakes. The party cannot be educated without learning from mistakes. This has great significance.
  • Said toEnver Hoxha,on his visit to China in 1956, as quoted in Hoxha's (1986)The Artful Albanian,(Chatto & Windus, London),ISBN 0701129700

• Tha hữu hứa đa đông tây ngã môn khả dĩ học. Đương nhiên, thị yếu học tập tiên tiến kinh nghiệm, bất thị học tập lạc hậu kinh nghiệm. Ngã môn lịch lai đề đích khẩu hào thị học tập tô liên tiên tiến kinh nghiệm, thùy yếu nhĩ khứ học tập lạc hậu kinh nghiệm nha? Hữu nhất ta nhân, bất quản tam thất nhị thập nhất, liên tô liên nhân phóng đích thí đô thị hương đích, na dã thị chủ quan chủ nghĩa. Tô liên nhân tự kỷ đô thuyết thị xú đích ma! Sở dĩ, yếu gia dĩ phân tích. Ngã môn thuyết quá, đối tư đại lâm yếu tam thất khai. Tha môn đích chủ yếu đích, đại lượng đích đông tây, thị hảo đích, hữu dụng đích; bộ phân đích đông tây thị thác ngộ đích. Ngã môn dã hữu bộ phân đích đông tây thị bất hảo đích, ngã môn tự kỷ tựu yếu đâu điệu, canh bất yếu biệt quốc lai học giá ta phôi sự. Đãn thị, phôi sự dã toán nhất chủng kinh nghiệm, dã hữu ngận đại đích tác dụng. Ngã môn tựu hữu trần độc tú, lý lập tam, vương minh, trương quốc đảo, cao cương, nhiêu sấu thạch giá ta nhân, tha môn thị ngã môn đích giáo viên. Thử ngoại, ngã môn hoàn hữu biệt đích giáo viên. Tại quốc nội lai thuyết, tối hảo đích giáo viên thị tưởng giới thạch. Ngã môn thuyết bất phục đích nhân, tưởng giới thạch nhất giáo, tựu thuyết đắc phục liễu. Tưởng giới thạch dụng thập ma bạn pháp lai giáo ni? Tha thị dụng cơ quan thương, đại pháo, phi cơ lai giáo. Hoàn hữu đế quốc chủ nghĩa giá cá giáo viên, tha giáo dục liễu ngã môn lục ức nhân dân. Nhất bách đa niên lai, kỉ cá đế quốc chủ nghĩa cường quốc áp bách ngã môn, giáo dục liễu ngã môn. Sở dĩ, phôi sự hữu cá giáo dục tác dụng, hữu cá tá giám tác dụng.
  • There are a lot of things we can learn from theSoviet Union.Naturally, we should learn from its advanced and not its backward experience. The slogan we have advocated all along is to draw on the advanced Soviet experience. Who told you to pick up its backward experience? Some people are so undiscriminating that they say a Russian fart is fragrant. That too is subjectivism. TheRussiansthemselves say it stinks. Therefore, we should be analytical. As we have indicated elsewhere, the assessment of Stalin should be 70 per cent for achievements and 30 per cent for mistakes. In the case of the Soviet Union what is good and useful makes up the essential and larger part and what is wrong only a small part. We too have things that are not good, and far from letting other countries pick them up, we should dump them. In a way, bad things are also some kind of experience and can serve a useful purpose. We have had people likeChen Tu-hsiu,Li Li-san,Wang Ming,Chang Kuo-tao,Kao KangandJao Shu-shih,who have served as our teachers. In addition, we have other teachers. Within the country the best among them has beenChiang Kai-shek.Those whom we couldn't convince were convinced right away when Chiang Kai-shek came along to give them a lesson. How did Chiang Kai-shek teach his lessons? He taught with machine-guns, cannon and planes. Imperialism is another teacher that has given our 600 million people an education. For over a century we were oppressed by severalimperialist powers,and this has been an education. Therefore, bad things can serve an educational purpose and open our eyes.
  • Strengthen Party Unity and Carry Forward Party Traditions(30 August 1956)

• Đối dân chủ nhân sĩ, ngã môn yếu nhượng tha môn xướng đối đài hí, phóng thủ nhượng tha môn phê bình. Như quả ngã môn bất giá dạng tố, tựu hữu điểm tượng quốc dân đảng liễu. Quốc dân đảng ngận phạ phê bình, mỗi thứ khai tham chính hội tựu thành hoàng thành khủng. Dân chủ nhân sĩ đích phê bình dã vô phi thị lưỡng chủng: Nhất chủng thị thác đích, nhất chủng thị bất thác đích. Bất thác đích khả dĩ bổ túc ngã môn đích đoản xử; thác đích yếu phản bác. Chí vu lương sấu minh, bành nhất hồ, chương nãi khí na nhất loại nhân, tha môn hữu thí tựu nhượng tha môn phóng, phóng xuất lai hữu lợi, nhượng đại gia văn nhất văn, thị hương đích hoàn thị xú đích, kinh quá thảo luận, tranh thủ đa sổ, sử tha môn cô lập khởi lai. Tha môn yếu nháo, tựu nhượng tha môn nháo cú.
  • We should allow democratic personages to challenge us with opposing views and give them a free hand to criticize us. Otherwise we would be a little like the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang was mortally afraid of criticism and went in fear and trepidation each time the Political Council was in session. Criticisms from democratic personages can be of only two kinds, those that are wrong and those that are not. Criticisms that are not wrong can help remedy our shortcomings while wrong ones must be refuted. As for such types as Liang Shu-ming, Peng Yi-hu and Chang Nai-chi, if they want to fart, let them. That will be to our advantage, for everybody can judge whether the smell is good or foul, and through discussion the majority can be won over and these types isolated. If they want to create trouble, let them have their fill of it.
    • Talk at a Conference of Secretaries of Provincial, Municipal and Autonomous Region Party Committees(27 January 1957)

• Yếu sử kỉ ức nhân trung đích trung quốc nhân sinh hoạt đắc hảo, yếu bả ngã môn giá cá kinh tế lạc hậu, văn hóa lạc hậu đích quốc gia, kiến thiết thành vi phú dụ đích, cường thịnh đích, cụ hữu cao độ văn hóa đích quốc gia, giá thị nhất cá ngận gian cự đích nhậm vụ. Ngã môn sở dĩ yếu chỉnh phong, hiện tại yếu chỉnh phong, tương lai hoàn yếu chỉnh phong, yếu bất đoạn bả ngã môn thân thượng đích thác ngộ đông tây chỉnh điệu, tựu thị vi liễu sử ngã môn năng cú canh hảo địa đam phụ khởi giá hạng nhậm vụ, canh hảo địa đồng đảng ngoại đích nhất thiết lập chí cải cách đích chí sĩ nhân nhân cộng đồng công tác.
  • It is an arduous task to ensure a better life for the several hundred million people of China and to build our economically and culturally backward country into a prosperous and powerful one with a high level ofculture.And it is precisely in order to be able to shoulder this task more competently and work better together with all non-Party people who are actuated by high ideals and determined to institute reforms that we must conduct rectification movements both now and in the future, and constantly rid ourselves of whatever is wrong.
  • Speech at the Chinese Communist Party’s National Conference on Propaganda Work (March 12, 1957)

• The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigour and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you. The world belongs to you. China’s future belongs to you.
  • ‘Talk at a Meeting with Chinese Students and Trainees in Moscow,’ (November 17, 1957), quoted in Sorace et al., Afterlives of Chinese Communism (2019), p. 11

• Vi liễu đồng địch nhân tác đấu tranh, ngã môn tại nhất cá trường thời gian nội hình thành liễu nhất cá khái niệm, tựu thị thuyết, tại chiến lược thượng ngã môn yếu miểu thị nhất thiết địch nhân, tại chiến thuật thượng ngã môn yếu trọng thị nhất thiết địch nhân. Dã tựu thị thuyết tại chỉnh thể thượng ngã môn nhất định yếu miểu thị tha, tại nhất cá nhất cá đích cụ thể vấn đề thượng ngã môn nhất định yếu trọng thị tha. Như quả bất thị tại chỉnh thể thượng miểu thị địch nhân, ngã môn tựu yếu phạm cơ hội chủ nghĩa đích thác ngộ. Mã khắc tư, ân cách tư chỉ hữu lưỡng cá nhân, na thời tha môn tựu thuyết toàn thế giới tư bổn chủ nghĩa yếu bị đả đảo. Đãn thị tại cụ thể vấn đề thượng, tại nhất cá nhất cá địch nhân đích vấn đề thượng, như quả ngã môn bất trọng thị tha, ngã môn tựu yếu phạm mạo hiểm chủ nghĩa đích thác ngộ. Đả trượng chỉ năng nhất trượng nhất trượng địa đả, địch nhân chỉ năng nhất bộ phân nhất bộ phân địa tiêu diệt. Công hán chỉ năng nhất cá nhất cá địa cái, nông dân lê địa chỉ năng nhất khối nhất khối đích lê, tựu thị cật phạn dã thị như thử. Ngã môn tại chiến lược thượng miểu thị cật phạn: Giá đốn phạn ngã môn năng cú cật hạ khứ. Đãn thị cụ thể địa cật, khước thị nhất khẩu khẩu địa cật đích, nhĩ bất khả năng bả nhất trác tửu tịch nhất khẩu thôn hạ khứ. Giá khiếu tố các cá giải quyết, quân sự thư thượng khiếu tố các cá kích phá.
  • Over a long period we have developed this concept for the struggle against the enemy: strategically we should despise all our enemies, but tactically we should take them all seriously. This also means that we must despise the enemy with respect to the whole, but that we must take him seriously with respect to each and every concrete question. If we do not despise the enemy with respect to the whole, we shall be committing the error of opportunism. Marx and Engels were only two individuals, and yet in those early days they already declared that capitalism would be overthrown throughout the world. But in dealing with concrete problems and particular enemies we shall be committing the error of adventurism unless we take them seriously. In war, battles can only be fought one by one and the enemy forces can only be destroyed one by one. Factories can only be built one by one. The peasants can only plow the land plot by plot. The same is even true of eating a meal. Strategically, we take the eating of a meal lightly—we know we can finish it. But actually we eat it mouthful by mouthful. It is impossible to swallow an entire banquet in one gulp. This is known as a piecemeal solution. In military parlance, it is called wiping out the enemy forces one by one.
  • Speech at the Moscow Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties (November 18, 1957)

• Chiến tranh dữ hòa bình, hòa bình đích khả năng tính đại vu chiến tranh đích khả năng tính, hiện tại tranh thủ hòa bình đích khả năng tính bỉ quá khứ đại ． xã hội chủ nghĩa trận doanh đích lực lượng bỉ quá khứ đại, hòa bình đích khả năng tính thử đệ nhị thứ thế giới đại chiến tiền đại. Tô liên cường đại, dân tộc độc lập vận động thị ngã môn cường đại đích đồng minh quân, tây phương quốc gia bất ổn định, công nhân giai cấp bất nguyện đả trượng, tư sản giai cấp nhất bộ phân nhân dã bất nguyện đả trượng, mỹ quốc nhân dã bất nguyện đả trượng, hòa bình đích khả năng tính đại vu chiến tranh đích khả năng, đãn dã hữu chiến tranh đích khả năng tính, yếu chuẩn bị hữu phong tử. Đế quốc chủ nghĩa vi liễu bãi thoát kinh tế nguy cơ hiện tại đả nguyên tử chiến, thời gian hội súc đoản, bất yếu tứ niên, chỉ tam niên tựu khả dĩ liễu. Yếu chuẩn bị, chân chính đả chẩm ma bạn? Yếu giảng giảng giá cá vấn đề, yếu đả tựu đả, bả đế quốc chủ nghĩa tảo quang, nhiên hậu tái lai kiến thiết, tòng thử tựu bất hội hữu thế giới đại chiến liễu. Kí hữu khả năng đả thế giới đại chiến, tựu yếu chuẩn bị, bất năng thụy giác. Đả khởi lai dã bất yếu đại kinh tiểu quái, đả khởi trượng lai vô phi tựu thị tử nhân. Đả trượng tử nhân ngã môn kiến quá, nhân khẩu tiêu diệt nhất bán tại trung quốc lịch sử thượng hữu quá hảo kỉ thứ, hán võ đế thời ngũ thiên vạn nhân khẩu, đáo tam quốc lưỡng tấn nam bắc triều, chỉ thặng hạ nhất thiên đa vạn, nhất đả kỉ thập niên, liên liên tục tục kỉ bách niên, tam quốc lưỡng tấn nam bắc triều, tống, tề, lương, trần. Đường triều nhân khẩu khai thủy thị lưỡng thiên vạn. Dĩ hậu đáo đường minh hoàng thời hựu đạt đáo ngũ thiên vạn, an lộc sơn phản liễu, phân vi ngũ đại thập quốc, nhất lưỡng bách niên, nhất trực đáo tống triều tài thống nhất, hựu thặng hạ thiên bả vạn. Giá cá đạo lý ngã hòa ××× giảng quá, ngã thuyết hiện đại võ khí bất như trung quốc quan vân trường đích đại đao lệ hại, tha bất tín, lưỡng thứ thế giới đại chiến tử nhân tịnh bất đa, đệ nhất thứ tử nhất thiên vạn, đệ nhị thứ tử lưỡng thiên vạn, ngã môn nhất tử tựu thị tứ thiên vạn. Nhĩ khán na ta đại đao phá phôi tính đa đại nha. Nguyên tử trượng hiện tại một kinh nghiệm bất tri yếu tử đa thiếu. Tối hảo thặng nhất bán. Thứ hảo thặng tam phân chi nhất. Nhị thập kỉ ức nhân khẩu thặng kỉ ức, kỉ cá ngũ niên kế hoa tựu phát triển khởi lai, hoán lai liễu nhất cá tư bổn chủ nghĩa toàn bộ diệt vong. Thủ đắc vĩnh cửu hòa bình, giá bất thị phôi sự.
  • Betweenwarandpeace,the possibility of peace is greater. Currently the possibility of peace is greater than in the past. The strength of the socialist camp is greater than the past and the possibility of peace is greater than at the time ofWorld War II.The Soviet Union is powerful and the national independence movement is our strong ally. The Western nations are not stable. The working class, a part of the bourgeoisie and the American people do not want war; therefore, the possibility of peace is greater than that of war. Nevertheless, there is also the possibility of war. There are the maniacs and imperialism wants to extricate itself from economic crises. The duration of atomic warfare today will be short, three instead of four years. We must be prepared. What should be done if war really comes? I want to discuss this problem. If there is war, we will fight. Let imperialism be swept clean and we will start construction again. Thereafter there will not be any more world war. Since a world war is possible, we must prepare for it. We must not spend our time napping. Do not be alarmed either if there should be war. It would merely mean getting people killed and we’ve seen people killed in war. Eliminating half of the population occurred several times in China’s history. The 50 million population in the time of Emperor Wu in theHan Dynastywas reduced to 10 million by the time of theThree Kingdoms,the two Chin Dynasties and the North and South Dynasties. The war lasted for decades and intermittently for several hundred years, from theThree Kingdomsto the North and South Dynasties. The Tang Dynasty began with a population of 20 million and did not reach 50 million untilEmperor Xuan.AndLushanstaged arevolt,and the country was divided into many states. It was not reunited until theSong Dynasty,some 100 or 200 years later, with a population of just over 10 million. I once discussed this with XX. I maintained that modern weapons were not as powerful as the big sword of China’sGuan Yunchang,but he did not agree with me. Not very many people were killed in the two World Wars, 10 million in the first and 20 million in the second, but we had 40 million killed in one war. So, how destructive were the big swords! We have no experience in atomic war. So, how many will be killed cannot be known. The best outcome may be that only half of the population is left and the second best may be only one-third. When 900 million are left out of 2.9 billion, several five-year plans can be developed for the total elimination of capitalism and for permanent peace. It is not a bad thing.
    • Speech at The Eighth Party Congress (May 17, 1958)

• Trung quốc nhân bả kết hôn khiếu hồng hỉ sự, tử nhân khiếu tố bạch hỉ sự, hợp khởi lai khiếu hồng bạch hỉ sự, ngã khán ngận hữu đạo lý. Trung quốc nhân thị đổng đắc biện chứng pháp đích. Kết hôn khả dĩ sinh tiểu hài, mẫu thân phân liệt xuất hài tử lai ． thị cá đột biến, thị hỉ sự. Nhất cá mẫu thân phân sổ xuất tam cá, lưỡng cá, nhất cá tiểu nhân xuất lai. Đa tử nữ đích phân liệt xuất lục cá, thất cá, thất cá, bát cá, thậm chí thập cá, tượng hàng không mẫu hạm nhất dạng. Ngã bất thị bất tán thành tiết dục, ngã thị giảng biện chứng pháp, thị thuyết tân sự vật đích phát sinh, nhân đích sinh sản, giá thị hỉ sự, thị biến hóa, nhất cá biến lưỡng cá, lưỡng cá biến tứ cá. Chí vu tử vong, lão bách tính dã khiếu hỉ sự. Nhất phương diện tịnh truy điệu hội, khóc tị tử, yếu tống táng, nhân chi thường tình. Lánh nhất phương diện thị hỉ sự. Dã xác thật thị hỉ sự. Nhĩ môn thiết tưởng, như quả khổng phu tử hoàn tại, dã tại hoài nhân đường khai hội, tha nhị thiên đa tuế liễu, tựu ngận bất diệu. Giảng biện chứng pháp nhi hựu bất tán thành diệt vong, thị hình nhi thượng học. Hữu tai nan, thị xã hội hiện tượng. Tai biến, thị vũ trụ căn bổn đích quy luật. Sinh thị đột biến, tử dã thị đột biến. Do sinh đáo tử kỉ thập niên đích tiệm biến. Giả như tưởng giới thạch tử liễu. Ngã môn đô hội cổ chưởng. Đỗ lặc tư tử liễu, ngã môn một hữu điệu nhãn lệ. Giá thị nhân vi cựu xã hội sự vật đích diệt vong thị hảo sự, đại gia đô hi vọng. Tân sự vật đích sản sinh thị hảo sự, tân sự vật đích diệt vong đương nhiên bất hảo. Như nhất cửu linh ngũ cử nga quốc cách mệnh đích thất bại. Nam phương ngã môn căn cư địa đích đâu thất, đẳng vu hiện tại đích miêu tử bị bạc tử hòa bạo vũ đả điệu, giá đương nhiên bất hảo, giá tựu phát sinh bổ miêu vấn đề.
  • The Chinese people consider weddings as red happy events and funerals white happy events. I find them very rational. The Chinese knowdialectics.Weddingswill producechildren.A child is split out of the body of the mother. It is a sudden change, a happy event. One individual is split into two or three, or even 10, like theaircraft carrier.
    The common people find the deaths, changes and occurrences of new matters happy events. When a person dies, a memorial meeting is held. While the bereaved weep in mourning, they feel it is also a happy event. Actually, it is. Just imagine ifConfuciuswere still living and here at this meeting in Huai-jen Hall, he would be over 2,000 years old and it wouldn’t be so good! If one subscribes to dialectics and yet disapproves ofdeath,it will be metaphysics.Disastersare social phenomena, natural phenomena. Sudden changes are the most fundamental law of theuniverse.Birthis a sudden change; so is death. In the several decades from birth to death, it is a gradual change. If Chiang Kai-shek should die, we would clap our hands in joy. IfDullesshould die, none of us would shed a tear. This is because the death of matters of the old society is a good thing, hoped for by everyone. While the birth of new things is good, their death is naturally not good. The failure of Russia’s1905 revolutionand the loss of our base in the South were equivalent to the seedlings destroyed by hailstorm and downpour. It is naturally not good. And the problem of replacing the destroyed seedlings arises.
  • Speech at The Eighth Party Congress (May 20, 1958)

• Lục thủy thanh sơn uổng tự đa, hoa đà vô nại tiểu trùng hà!
  Thiên thôn bệ lệ nhân di thỉ, vạn hộ tiêu sơ quỷ xướng ca.
  Tọa địa nhật hành bát vạn lí, tuần thiên dao khán nhất thiên hà.
  Ngưu lang dục vấn ôn thần sự, nhất dạng bi hoan trục thệ ba.
  • So many green streams and blue hills, but to what avail?
    This tiny creature left evenHua Topowerless!
    Hundreds of villages choked with weeds, men wasted away;
    Thousands of homes deserted, ghosts chanted mournfully.
    Motionless, by earth I travel eighty thousand li a day,
    Surveying the sky I see a myriad Milky Ways from afar.
    Should the Cowherd ask tidings of the God of Plague,
    Say the same griefs flow down the stream of time.
    • "Farewell to the God of Plague" (July 1, 1958)

• Xuân phong dương liễu vạn thiên điều, lục ức thần châu tẫn thuấn nghiêu.
  Hồng vũ tùy tâm phiên tác lãng, thanh sơn trứ ý hóa vi kiều.
  Thiên liên ngũ lĩnh ngân sừ lạc, địa động tam hà thiết tí diêu.
  Tá vấn ôn quân dục hà vãng, chỉ thuyền minh chúc chiếu thiên thiêu.
  • The spring wind blows amid profuse willow wands,
    Six hundred million in this land all equalYaoandShun.
    Crimson rain swirls in waves under our will,
    Green mountains turn to bridges at our wish.
    Gleaming mattocks fall on the Five Ridges heaven-high;
    Mighty arms move to rock the earth round the Triple River.
    We ask the God of Plague: "Where are you bound?"
    Paper barges aflame and candle-light illuminate the sky.
    • "Farewell to the God of Plague" (July 1, 1958)

• Tại thượng hải thời, nhất cá trung ương phân liệt vi lưỡng cá trung ương, tại trường chinh trung dữ trương quốc đảo phân liệt, cao nhiêu sự kiện thị bộ phân phân liệt. Bộ phân đích phân liệt thị kinh thường đích. Khứ niên dĩ lai. Toàn quốc hữu nhất bán đích tỉnh phân tại lĩnh đạo tập đoàn nội phát sinh liễu phân liệt. Nhân thân thượng hải thiên đô yếu thoát phát, thoát bì, giá tựu thị diệt vong nhất bộ phân tế bào. Tòng tiểu hài khởi tựu yếu diệt vong nhất bộ phân tế bào, giá tài hữu lợi vu sinh trường. Như quả một hữu diệt vong, nhân tựu bất năng sinh tồn. Tự tòng khổng phu tử dĩ lai, nhân yếu bất diệt vong na bất đắc liễu. Diệt vong hữu hảo xử, khả dĩ tố phì liêu, nhĩ thuyết bất tố, thật tế tố liễu. Tinh thần thượng yếu hữu chuẩn bị. Bộ phân đích phân liệt mỗi thiên đô tồn tại. Phân liệt diệt vong tổng hội hữu đích. Một hữu phân liệt ． bất lợi vu phát triển. Chỉnh cá đích diệt vong, dã thị lịch sử đích tất nhiên. Chỉnh cá giảng, tác vi giai cấp đấu tranh công cụ đích đảng hòa quốc gia, thị yếu diệt vong đích. Đãn tại tha đích lịch sử nhậm vụ vị hoàn thành tiền, thị yếu củng cố tha, bất hi vọng phân liệt, đãn yếu chuẩn bị phân liệt. Một hữu chuẩn bị, tựu yếu phân liệt. Hữu chuẩn bị. Tựu khả tị miễn đại phân liệt. Đại hình, trung hình đích phân liệt thị tạm thời đích. Hung nha lợi sự kiện thị đại hình đích, cao nhiêu sự kiện, mạc lạc thác thất sự kiện thị trung hình đích. Mỗi cá chi bộ đô tại khởi biến hóa, hữu ta khai trừ, hữu ta tiến lai, hữu ta công tác ngận hảo, hữu ta phạm thác ngộ. Vĩnh viễn bất khởi biến hóa thị bất khả năng đích. Liệt ninh kinh thường thuyết: Quốc gia tổng hữu lưỡng chủng khả năng. Hoặc giả thắng lợi, hoặc giả diệt vong. Ngã môn trung hoa nhân vi cộng hòa quốc dã hữu lưỡng chủng khả năng, thắng lợi hạ khứ, hoặc giả diệt vong. Liệt ninh thị bất ẩn húy diệt vong giá chủng khả năng tính đích, ngã môn nhân dân cộng hòa quốc dã hữu lưỡng chủng khả năng tính, bất yếu phủ định giá chủng khả năng tính. Ngã môn thủ lí một hữu nguyên tử đạn, đả khởi lai, tam thập lục kế, tẩu vi thượng kế, tha chiêm bắc kinh, thượng hải, võ hán, ngã môn đả du kích, đảo thối thập kỉ niên, nhị thập niên, hồi đáo diên an thời đại. Sở dĩ nhất phương diện ngã môn yếu tích cực chuẩn bị, đại cảo cương thiết, cảo cơ khí, cảo thiết lộ, tranh thủ tam tứ niên nội cảo kỉ thiên vạn đốn cương, kiến lập khởi công nghiệp cơ sở, sử ngã môn bỉ hiện tại canh củng cố.
  • InShanghai,one Central Committee split into two Central Committees; in theLong March,we split withZhang Guotao;theGao-Rao Incidentwas a partial split. Partial splits are normal. Since last year, splits occurred within the leadership group in half of the provinces in the nation. Take the human body for instance. Everyday hair and skin are coming off. It is the death of a part of the cells. From infancy on, a part of the cells will die. It benefits growth. Without such destruction, man cannot exist. It would have been impossible if men did not die since the time ofConfucius.Death has benefits; fertilizers created. You say you don’t want to become fertilizer, but actually you will. You must be mentally prepared. Partial splits occur every day. There will always be splits and destruction. The absence of splits is detrimental to development. Destruction in entirety is also a historical inevitability. As a whole, the Party and the stale, serving as the tools of the class struggle, will also perish. But before the completion of its historical mission, we must consolidate it. We do not hope for splits, but we must be prepared. Without preparation, there will be splits. With preparation, we will avoid big splits. Large and medium splits are temporary. TheHungary Incidentwas a large split; the Gao-Rao and Molotov Incidents are medium ones. Changes are occurring in each and every party branch. Some are dismissed while others join; some work successfully while others make mistakes. It is impossible for changes never to occur. Lenin constantly said: “A nation always has two possibilities: success or destruction.” Our people’s Republic of China also has two possibilities: continue to succeed, or become destroyed. Lenin did not conceal the possibility of destruction. China also has two possibilities, and we must recognize them. We are not in possession of the atom bomb. Should there be a war, running away is the best of the 36 stratagems. IfBeijing,Shanghai andWuhanare occupied, we will resort to guerrilla warfare. We will regress one or two decades and return to the Yanan era. Meanwhile, we must actively make preparations, vigorously promoting iron and steel, machinery and railways, striving for several ten million tons of steel output in three or four years, establishing an industrial foundation, and becoming more consolidated than today.
  • Speech At The Sixth Plenum Of The Eighth Central Committee (9 December 1958)

• Giả như bạn thập kiện sự, cửu kiện thị phôi đích, đô đăng tại báo thượng, nhất định diệt vong. Na ngã tựu tẩu, đáo nông thôn khứ, suất lĩnh nông dân thôi phiên chính phủ, nhĩ giải phóng quân bất cân ngã tẩu, ngã tựu trảo hồng quân khứ.
  • If we did ten things, nine were bad and got disclosed by thenewspapers,we will be over. Then I will go, to thecountryside,lead thepeasantand revolt. If theLiberation Armydo not follow me, I will get theRed Army.(July 23, 1959)
  • Speech at the Lushan Conference (23 July 1959)

• Tư đại lâm ( xã hội chủ nghĩa kinh tế vấn đề ) tại trịnh châu độc quá lưỡng biến, tựu giảng học. Hiện tại yếu thâm nhập nghiên cứu, phủ tắc sự nghiệp bất năng phát triển, bất năng củng cố. Như giảng trách nhậm, ××, ××× hữu điểm trách nhậm. Nông nghiệp bộ ××× hữu điểm trách nhậm, đệ nhất cá trách nhậm thị ngã. Kha lão, nhĩ đích phát minh quyền hữu một hữu trách nhậm? ( kha lão: Hữu ) thị phủ bỉ giác khinh? Nhĩ na thị ý thức hình thái vấn đề. Ngã thị nhất cá nhất ○ thất ○ vạn đốn cương, cửu thiên vạn nhân thượng trận, giá cá loạn tử tựu nháo đại liễu, tự kỷ phụ trách. Đồng chí môn tự kỷ đích trách nhậm đô yếu phân tích nhất hạ, hữu thỉ lạp xuất lai, hữu thí phóng xuất lai, đỗ tử tựu thư phục liễu.
  • When talking of responsibility, XX and XX both have some responsibility, as does XX of the Ministry of Agriculture. But one with the most responsibility is me. Old Ke, does any responsibility rest on you for your invention? [Old Ke said: “yes.” ] Was it lighter than mine? Yours is a question of ideology, mine of 10,700,000 tons and ninety million people going into battle. The chaos caused was on a grand scale and I take responsibility. Comrades, you must all analyze your own responsibility. If you have to shit, shit! If you have to fart, fart! You will feel much better for it.
  • Speech At The Lushan Conference (23 July 1959)

• All the rest of the world uses the word "electricity."They've borrowed the word fromEnglish.But weChinesehave our own word for it!
  • in 1959, Quoted inKhrushchev Remembers(1970), p. 474

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (1957)

The contradictions between the enemy and us are antagonistic contradictions. Within the ranks of the people, the contradictions among the working people are non-antagonistic, while those between the exploited and the exploiting classes have a non-antagonistic aspect in addition to an antagonistic aspect.

New things always have to experience difficulties and setbacks as they grow. It is sheer fantasy to imagine that the cause of socialism is all plain sailing and easy success, without difficulties and setbacks or the exertion of tremendous efforts.

Our educational policy must enable everyone who receives an education to develop morally, intellectually and physically and become a worker with both socialist consciousness and culture.

To sum up, we must learn to look at problems from all sides, seeing the reverse as well as the obverse side of things. In given conditions, a bad thing can lead to good results and a good thing to bad results. More than two thousand years ago Lao Tzu said: “Good fortune lieth within bad, bad fortune lurketh within good.”

To make China prosperous and strong needs several decades of hard struggle, which means, among other things, pursuing the policy of building up our country through diligence and thrift, that is, practicing strict economy and fighting waste.

Marxism can develop only through struggle, and this is not only true of the past and the present, it is necessarily true of the future as well.

• Quốc gia đích thống nhất, nhân dân đích đoàn kết, quốc nội các dân tộc đích đoàn kết, giá thị ngã môn đích sự nghiệp tất định yếu thắng lợi đích cơ bổn bảo chứng. Đãn thị, giá tịnh bất thị thuyết tại ngã môn đích xã hội lí dĩ kinh một hữu nhậm hà đích mâu thuẫn liễu. Một hữu mâu thuẫn đích tưởng pháp thị bất phù hợp khách quan thật tế đích thiên chân đích tưởng pháp. Tại ngã môn đích diện tiền hữu lưỡng loại xã hội mâu thuẫn, giá tựu thị địch ngã chi gian đích mâu thuẫn hòa nhân dân nội bộ đích mâu thuẫn. Giá thị tính chất hoàn toàn bất đồng đích lưỡng loại mâu thuẫn.
  • The unification of our country, the unity of our people and the unity of our various nationalities — these are the basic guarantees for the sure triumph of our cause. However, this does not mean that contradictions no longer exist in our society. To imagine that none exist is a naive idea which is at variance with objective reality. We are confronted with two types of social contradictions — those between ourselves and the enemy and those among the people. The two are totally different in nature.

• Địch ngã chi gian đích mâu thuẫn thị đối kháng tính đích mâu thuẫn. Nhân dân nội bộ đích mâu thuẫn, tại lao động nhân dân chi gian thuyết lai, thị phi đối kháng tính đích; tại bị bác tước giai cấp hòa bác tước giai cấp chi gian thuyết lai, trừ liễu đối kháng tính đích nhất diện dĩ ngoại, hoàn hữu phi đối kháng tính đích nhất diện.
  • The contradictions between the enemy and us are antagonistic contradictions. Within the ranks of the people, the contradictions among the working people are non-antagonistic, while those between the exploited and the exploiting classes have a non-antagonistic aspect in addition to an antagonistic aspect.

• Hứa đa nhân giác đắc, đề xuất thải dụng dân chủ phương pháp giải quyết nhân dân nội bộ mâu thuẫn đích vấn đề thị nhất cá tân đích vấn đề. Sự thật tịnh bất thị giá dạng. Mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa giả tòng lai tựu nhận vi vô sản giai cấp đích sự nghiệp chỉ năng y kháo nhân dân quần chúng, cộng sản đảng nhân tại lao động nhân dân trung gian tiến hành công tác đích thời hầu tất tu thải thủ dân chủ đích thuyết phục giáo dục đích phương pháp, quyết bất duẫn hứa thải thủ mệnh lệnh chủ nghĩa thái độ hòa cường chế thủ đoạn. Trung quốc cộng sản đảng trung thật địa tuân thủ mã khắc tư liệt ninh chủ nghĩa đích giá cá nguyên tắc. Ngã môn lịch lai tựu chủ trương, tại nhân dân dân chủ chuyên chính hạ diện, giải quyết địch ngã chi gian đích hòa nhân dân nội bộ đích giá lưỡng loại bất đồng tính chất đích mâu thuẫn, thải dụng chuyên chính hòa dân chủ giá dạng lưỡng chủng bất đồng đích phương pháp.
  • Many people seem to think that the use of the democratic method to resolve contradictions among the people is something new. Actually it is not. Marxists have always held that the cause of the proletariat must depend on the masses of the people and that Communists must use the democratic method of persuasion and education when working among the labouring people and must on no account resort to commandism or coercion. The Chinese Communist Party faithfully adheres to this Marxist-Leninist principle. It has been our consistent view that under the people’s democratic dictatorship two different methods, one dictatorial and the other democratic, should be used to resolve the two types of contradictions which differ in nature — those between ourselves and the enemy and those among the people.

• Dĩ mã khắc tư liệt ninh chủ nghĩa đích lý luận tư tưởng võ trang khởi lai đích trung quốc cộng sản đảng, tại trung quốc nhân dân trung sản sinh liễu tân đích công tác tác phong, giá chủ yếu đích tựu thị lý luận hòa thật tiễn tương kết hợp đích tác phong, hòa nhân dân quần chúng khẩn mật địa liên hệ tại nhất khởi đích tác phong dĩ cập tự ngã phê bình đích tác phong.
  • Armed with Marxist-Leninist theory and ideology, the Communist Party of China has brought a new style of work to the Chinese people, a style of work that essentially entails integrating theory with practice, forging close links with the masses and practicing self-criticism.

• Mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa đích triết học nhận vi, đối lập thống nhất quy luật thị vũ trụ đích căn bổn quy luật. Giá cá quy luật, bất luận tại tự nhiên giới, nhân loại xã hội hòa nhân môn đích tư tưởng trung, đô thị phổ biến tồn tại đích. Mâu thuẫn trứ đích đối lập diện hựu thống nhất, hựu đấu tranh, do thử thôi động sự vật đích vận động hòa biến hóa. Mâu thuẫn thị phổ biến tồn tại đích, bất quá án sự vật đích tính chất bất đồng, mâu thuẫn đích tính chất dã tựu bất đồng. Đối vu nhậm hà nhất cá cụ thể đích sự vật thuyết lai, đối lập đích thống nhất thị hữu điều kiện đích, tạm thời đích, quá độ đích, nhân nhi thị tương đối đích, đối lập đích đấu tranh tắc thị tuyệt đối đích.
  • Marxist philosophy holds that the law of the unity of opposites is the fundamental law of the universe. This law operates universally, whether in the natural world, in human society, or in man's thinking. Between the opposites in a contradiction there is at once unity and struggle, and it is this that impels things to move and change. Contradictions exist everywhere, but they differ in accordance with the different nature of different things. In any given phenomenon or thing, the unity of opposites is conditional, temporary and transitory, and hence relative, whereas the struggle of opposites is absolute.

• Ngã môn đích quốc gia thị công nhân giai cấp lĩnh đạo đích dĩ công nông liên minh vi cơ sở đích nhân dân dân chủ chuyên chính đích quốc gia. Giá cá chuyên chính thị càn thập ma đích ni? Chuyên chính đích đệ nhất cá tác dụng, tựu thị áp bách quốc gia nội bộ đích phản động giai cấp, phản động phái hòa phản kháng xã hội chủ nghĩa cách mệnh đích bác tước giả, áp bách na ta đối vu xã hội chủ nghĩa kiến thiết đích phá phôi giả, tựu thị vi liễu giải quyết quốc nội địch ngã chi gian đích mâu thuẫn.
  • Our state is a people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the worker-peasant alliance. What is this dictatorship for? Its first function is internal, namely, to suppress the reactionary classes and elements and those exploiters who resist the socialist revolution, to suppress those who try to wreck our socialist construction, or in other words, to resolve the contradictions between ourselves and the internal enemy.

• Ngã môn đích hiến pháp quy định: Trung hoa nhân dân cộng hòa quốc công dân hữu ngôn luận, xuất bản, tập hội, kết xã, du hành, kỳ uy, tông giáo tín ngưỡng đẳng đẳng tự do. Ngã môn đích hiến pháp hựu quy định: Quốc gia cơ quan thật hành dân chủ tập trung chế, quốc gia cơ quan tất tu y kháo nhân dân quần chúng, quốc gia cơ quan công tác nhân viên tất tu vi nhân dân phục vụ. Ngã môn đích giá cá xã hội chủ nghĩa đích dân chủ thị nhậm hà tư sản giai cấp quốc gia sở bất khả năng hữu đích tối quảng đại đích dân chủ. Ngã môn đích chuyên chính, khiếu tố công nhân giai cấp lĩnh đạo đích dĩ công nông liên minh vi cơ sở đích nhân dân dân chủ chuyên chính. Giá tựu biểu minh, tại nhân dân nội bộ thật hành dân chủ chế độ, nhi do công nhân giai cấp đoàn kết toàn thể hữu công dân quyền đích nhân dân, thủ tiên thị nông dân, hướng trứ phản động giai cấp, phản động phái hòa phản kháng xã hội chủ nghĩa cải tạo hòa xã hội chủ nghĩa kiến thiết đích phân tử thật hành chuyên chính. Sở vị hữu công dân quyền, tại chính trị phương diện, tựu thị thuyết hữu tự do hòa dân chủ đích quyền lợi.
  • OurConstitutionlays it down that citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoyfreedom of speech,the press,assembly,association, procession, demonstration, religious belief, and so on. Our Constitution also provides that the organs of state must practisedemocratic centralism,that they must rely on the masses and that their personnel must serve the people. Our socialist democracy is the broadest kind of democracy, such as is not to be found in any bourgeois state. Our dictatorship is the people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the worker-peasant alliance. That is to say, democracy operates within the ranks of the people, while the working class, uniting with all others enjoyingcivil rights,and in the first place with thepeasantry,enforces dictatorship over the reactionary classes and elements and all those who resist socialist transformation and oppose socialist construction. By civil rights, we mean, politically, the rights of freedom and democracy.

• Dân chủ tự do đô thị tương đối đích, bất thị tuyệt đối đích, đô thị tại lịch sử thượng phát sinh hòa phát triển đích. Tại nhân dân nội bộ, dân chủ thị đối tập trung nhi ngôn, tự do thị đối kỷ luật nhi ngôn. Giá ta đô thị nhất cá thống nhất thể đích lưỡng cá mâu thuẫn trứ đích trắc diện, tha môn thị mâu thuẫn đích, hựu thị thống nhất đích, ngã môn bất ứng đương phiến diện địa cường điều mỗ nhất cá trắc diện nhi phủ định lánh nhất cá trắc diện. Tại nhân dân nội bộ, bất khả dĩ một hữu tự do, dã bất khả dĩ một hữu kỷ luật; bất khả dĩ một hữu dân chủ, dã bất khả dĩ một hữu tập trung. Giá chủng dân chủ hòa tập trung đích thống nhất, tự do hòa kỷ luật đích thống nhất, tựu thị ngã môn đích dân chủ tập trung chế. Tại giá cá chế độ hạ, nhân dân hưởng thụ trứ quảng phiếm đích dân chủ hòa tự do; đồng thời hựu tất tu dụng xã hội chủ nghĩa đích kỷ luật ước thúc tự kỷ. Giá ta đạo lý, quảng đại nhân dân quần chúng thị đổng đắc đích.
  • Bothdemocracyandfreedomare relative, not absolute, and they come into being and develop in specific historical conditions. Within the ranks of the people, democracy is correlative with centralism and freedom with discipline. They are the two opposites of a single entity, contradictory as well as united, and we should not one-sidedly emphasize one to the exclusion of the other. Within the ranks of the people, we cannot do without freedom, nor can we do without discipline; we cannot do without democracy, nor can we do without centralism. This unity of democracy andcentralism,of freedom and discipline, constitutes our democratic centralism. Under this system, the people enjoy broad democracy and freedom, but at the same time they have to keep within the bounds of socialist discipline. All this is well understood by the masses.

• Tại nhất cửu tứ nhị niên, ngã môn tằng kinh bả giải quyết nhân dân nội bộ mâu thuẫn đích giá chủng dân chủ đích phương pháp, cụ thể hóa vi nhất cá công thức, khiếu tố “Đoàn kết —— phê bình —— đoàn kết”. Giảng tường tế nhất điểm, tựu thị tòng đoàn kết đích nguyện vọng xuất phát, kinh quá phê bình hoặc giả đấu tranh sử mâu thuẫn đắc đáo giải quyết, tòng nhi tại tân đích cơ sở thượng đạt đáo tân đích đoàn kết. Án chiếu ngã môn đích kinh nghiệm, giá thị giải quyết nhân dân nội bộ mâu thuẫn đích nhất cá chính xác đích phương pháp.
  • This democratic method of resolving contradictions among the people was epitomized in 1942 in the formula "unity,criticism,unity ". To elaborate, it means starting from the desire for unity, resolving contradictions through criticism or struggle and arriving at a new unity on a new basis. In our experience this is the correct method of resolving contradictions among the people.

• Tại nhất bàn tình huống hạ, nhân dân nội bộ đích mâu thuẫn bất thị đối kháng tính đích. Đãn thị như quả xử lý đắc bất thích đương, hoặc giả thất khứ cảnh giác, ma tý đại ý, dã khả năng phát sinh đối kháng. Giá chủng tình huống, tại xã hội chủ nghĩa quốc gia thông thường chỉ thị cục bộ đích tạm thời đích hiện tượng. Giá thị nhân vi xã hội chủ nghĩa quốc gia tiêu diệt liễu nhân bác tước nhân đích chế độ, nhân dân đích lợi ích tại căn bổn thượng thị nhất trí đích.
  • In ordinary circumstances, contradictions among the people are not antagonistic. However, if they are not handled properly, or if we relax our vigilance and lower our guard, antagonism may arise. In a socialist country, a development of this kind is usually only a localized and temporary phenomenon. The reason is that the system of exploitation of man by man has been abolished and the interests of the people are the same.

• Nhậm hà tân sinh sự vật đích thành trường đô thị yếu kinh quá gian nan khúc chiết đích. Tại xã hội chủ nghĩa sự nghiệp trung, yếu tưởng bất kinh quá gian nan khúc chiết, bất phó xuất cực đại nỗ lực, tổng thị nhất phàm phong thuận, dung dịch đắc đáo thành công, giá chủng tưởng pháp, chỉ thị huyễn tưởng.
  • New things always have to experience difficulties and setbacks as they grow. It is sheer fantasy to imagine that the cause of socialism is all plain sailing and easy success, without difficulties and setbacks or the exertion of tremendous efforts.

• Ngã môn đích giáo dục phương châm, ứng cai sử thụ giáo dục giả tại đức dục, trí dục, thể dục kỉ phương diện đô đắc đáo phát triển, thành vi hữu xã hội chủ nghĩa giác ngộ đích hữu văn hóa đích lao động giả. Yếu đề xướng cần kiệm kiến quốc. Yếu sử toàn thể thanh niên môn đổng đắc, ngã môn đích quốc gia hiện tại hoàn thị nhất cá ngận cùng đích quốc gia, tịnh thả bất khả năng tại đoản thời gian nội căn bổn cải biến giá chủng trạng thái, toàn kháo thanh niên hòa toàn thể nhân dân tại kỉ thập niên thời gian nội, đoàn kết phấn đấu, dụng tự kỷ đích song thủ sang tạo xuất nhất cá phú cường đích quốc gia.
  • Our educational policy must enable everyone who receives an education to develop morally, intellectually and physically and become a worker with both socialist consciousness and culture. We must spread the idea of building our country through diligence and thrift. We must help all our young people to understand that ours is still a very poor country, that we cannot change this situation radically in a short time, and that only through decades of united effort by our younger generation and all our people, working with their own hands, can China be made prosperous and strong.

• Ngã quốc thiếu sổ dân tộc hữu tam thiên đa vạn nhân, tuy nhiên chỉ chiêm toàn quốc tổng nhân khẩu đích bách phân chi lục, đãn thị cư trụ địa khu quảng đại, ước chiêm toàn quốc tổng diện tích đích bách phân chi ngũ thập chí lục thập. Sở dĩ hán tộc hòa thiếu sổ dân tộc đích quan hệ nhất định yếu cảo hảo. Giá cá vấn đề đích quan kiện thị khắc phục đại hán tộc chủ nghĩa. Tại tồn tại hữu địa phương dân tộc chủ nghĩa đích thiếu sổ dân tộc trung gian, tắc ứng đương đồng thời khắc phục địa phương dân tộc chủ nghĩa. Vô luận thị đại hán tộc chủ nghĩa hoặc giả địa phương dân tộc chủ nghĩa, đô bất lợi vu các tộc nhân dân đích đoàn kết, giá thị ứng đương khắc phục đích nhất chủng nhân dân nội bộ đích mâu thuẫn.
  • The minority nationalities in our country number more than thirty million. Although they constitute only 6 per cent of the total population, they inhabit extensive regions which comprise 50 to 60 per cent of China's total area. It is thus imperative to foster good relation between the Han people and the minority nationalities. The key to this question lies in overcoming Han chauvinism. At the same time, efforts should also be made to overcome local-nationality chauvinism, wherever it exists among the minority nationalities. Both Han chauvinism and local-nationality chauvinism are harmful to the unity of the nationalities; they represent one kind of contradiction among the people which should be resolved.

• Bách hoa tề phóng, bách gia tranh minh, trường kỳ cộng tồn, hỗ tương giam đốc, giá kỉ cá khẩu hào thị chẩm dạng đề xuất lai đích ni? Tha thị căn cư trung quốc đích cụ thể tình huống đề xuất lai đích, thị tại thừa nhận xã hội chủ nghĩa xã hội nhưng nhiên tồn tại trứ các chủng mâu thuẫn đích cơ sở thượng đề xuất lai đích, thị tại quốc gia nhu yếu tấn tốc phát triển kinh tế hòa văn hóa đích bách thiết yếu cầu thượng đề xuất lai đích. Bách hoa tề phóng, bách gia tranh minh đích phương châm, thị xúc tiến nghệ thuật phát triển hòa khoa học tiến bộ đích phương châm, thị xúc tiến ngã quốc đích xã hội chủ nghĩa văn hóa phồn vinh đích phương châm. Nghệ thuật thượng bất đồng đích hình thức hòa phong cách khả dĩ tự do phát triển, khoa học thượng bất đồng đích học phái khả dĩ tự do tranh luận. Lợi dụng hành chính lực lượng, cường chế thôi hành nhất chủng phong cách, nhất chủng học phái, cấm chỉ lánh nhất chủng phong cách, lánh nhất chủng học phái, ngã môn nhận vi hội hữu hại vu nghệ thuật hòa khoa học đích phát triển. Nghệ thuật hòa khoa học trung đích thị phi vấn đề, ứng đương thông quá nghệ thuật giới khoa học giới đích tự do thảo luận khứ giải quyết, thông quá nghệ thuật hòa khoa học đích thật tiễn khứ giải quyết, nhi bất ứng đương thải thủ giản đan đích phương pháp khứ giải quyết. Vi liễu phán đoạn chính xác đích đông tây hòa thác ngộ đích đông tây, thường thường nhu yếu hữu khảo nghiệm đích thời gian. Lịch sử thượng tân đích chính xác đích đông tây, tại khai thủy đích thời hầu thường thường đắc bất đáo đa sổ nhân thừa nhận, chỉ năng tại đấu tranh trung khúc chiết địa phát triển. Chính xác đích đông tây, hảo đích đông tây, nhân môn nhất khai thủy thường thường bất thừa nhận tha môn thị hương hoa, phản nhi bả tha môn khán tác độc thảo.
  • “Let a hundred flowers blossom, let a hundred schools of thought contend” and “long-term coexistence and mutual supervision” — how did these slogans come to be put forward? They were put forward in the light of China’s specific conditions, in recognition of the continued existence of various kinds of contradictions in socialist society and in response to the country’s urgent need to speed up its economic and cultural development. Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land. Different forms and styles in art should develop freely and different schools in science should contend freely. We think that it is harmful to the growth of art and science if administrative measures are used to impose one particular style of art or school of thought and to ban another. Questions of right and wrong in the arts and sciences should be settled through free discussion in artistic and scientific circles and through practical work in these fields. They should not be settled in an over-simple manner. A period of trial is often needed to determine whether something is right or wrong. Throughout history, at the outset new and correct things often failed to win recognition from the majority of people and had to develop by twists and turns through struggle. Often, correct and good things were first regarded not as fragrant flowers but as poisonous weeds.

• Vô luận tại toàn nhân khẩu trung gian, hoặc giả tại tri thức phân tử trung gian, mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa giả nhưng nhiên thị thiếu sổ. Nhân thử, mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa nhưng nhiên tất tu tại đấu tranh trung phát triển. Mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa tất tu tại đấu tranh trung tài năng phát triển, bất đãn quá khứ thị giá dạng, hiện tại thị giá dạng, tương lai dã tất nhiên hoàn thị giá dạng. Chính xác đích đông tây tổng thị tại đồng thác ngộ đích đông tây tác đấu tranh đích quá trình trung phát triển khởi lai đích. Chân đích, thiện đích, mỹ đích đông tây tổng thị tại đồng giả đích, ác đích, sửu đích đông tây tương bỉ giác nhi tồn tại, tương đấu tranh nhi phát triển đích. Đương trứ mỗ nhất chủng thác ngộ đích đông tây bị nhân loại phổ biến địa phao khí, mỗ nhất chủng chân lý bị nhân loại phổ biến địa tiếp thụ đích thời hầu, canh gia tân đích chân lý hựu tại đồng tân đích thác ngộ ý kiến tác đấu tranh. Giá chủng đấu tranh vĩnh viễn bất hội hoàn kết. Giá thị chân lý phát triển đích quy luật, đương nhiên dã thị mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa phát triển đích quy luật.
  • Marxists remain a minority among the entire population as well as among theintellectuals.Therefore, Marxism must continue to develop through struggle. Marxism can develop only through struggle, and this is not only true of the past and the present, it is necessarily true of the future as well. What is correct invariably develops in the course of struggle with what is wrong. The true, the good and the beautiful always exist by contrast with the false, the evil and the ugly, and grow in struggle with them. As soon as something erroneous is rejected and a particular truth accepted by mankind, new truths begin to struggle with new errors. Such struggles will never end. This is the law of development of truth and, naturally, of Marxism.

• Mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa giả bất ứng cai hại phạ nhậm hà nhân phê bình. Tương phản, mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa giả tựu thị yếu tại nhân môn đích phê bình trung gian, tựu thị yếu tại đấu tranh đích phong vũ trung gian, đoán luyện tự kỷ, phát triển tự kỷ, khoách đại tự kỷ đích trận địa. Đồng thác ngộ tư tưởng tác đấu tranh, hảo bỉ chủng ngưu đậu, kinh quá liễu ngưu đậu dịch miêu đích tác dụng, nhân thân thượng tựu tăng cường miễn dịch lực. Tại ôn thất lí bồi dưỡng xuất lai đích đông tây, bất hội hữu cường đại đích sinh mệnh lực. Thật hành bách hoa tề phóng, bách gia tranh minh đích phương châm, tịnh bất hội tước nhược mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa tại tư tưởng giới đích lĩnh đạo địa vị, tương phản địa chính thị hội gia cường tha đích giá chủng địa vị.
  • Marxists should not be afraid of criticism from any quarter. Quite the contrary, they need to temper and develop themselves and win new positions in the teeth of criticism and in the storm and stress of struggle. Fighting against wrong ideas is like being vaccinated -- a man develops greater immunity from disease as a result of vaccination. Plants raised in hothouses are unlikely to be hardy. Carrying out the policy of letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend will not weaken, but strengthen, the leading position of Marxism in the ideological field.

• Đối vu phi mã khắc tư chủ nghĩa đích tư tưởng, ứng cai thải thủ thập ma phương châm ni? Đối vu minh hiển đích phản cách mệnh phân tử, phá phôi xã hội chủ nghĩa sự nghiệp đích phân tử, sự tình hảo bạn, bác đoạt tha môn đích ngôn luận tự do tựu hành liễu. Đối vu nhân dân nội bộ đích thác ngộ tư tưởng, tình hình tựu bất tương đồng. Cấm chỉ giá ta tư tưởng, bất duẫn hứa giá ta tư tưởng hữu nhậm hà phát biểu đích cơ hội, hành bất hành ni? Đương nhiên bất hành. Đối đãi nhân dân nội bộ đích tư tưởng vấn đề, đối đãi tinh thần thế giới đích vấn đề, dụng giản đan đích phương pháp khứ xử lý, bất đãn bất hội thu hiệu, nhi thả phi thường hữu hại. Bất nhượng phát biểu thác ngộ ý kiến, kết quả thác ngộ ý kiến hoàn thị tồn tại trứ. Nhi chính xác đích ý kiến như quả thị tại ôn thất lí bồi dưỡng xuất lai đích, như quả một hữu kiến quá phong vũ, một hữu thủ đắc miễn dịch lực, ngộ đáo thác ngộ ý kiến tựu bất năng đả thắng trượng. Nhân thử, chỉ hữu thải thủ thảo luận đích phương pháp, phê bình đích phương pháp, thuyết lý đích phương pháp, tài năng chân chính phát triển chính xác đích ý kiến, khắc phục thác ngộ đích ý kiến, tài năng chân chính giải quyết vấn đề.
  • What should our policy be towards non-Marxist ideas? As far as unmistakable counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs of the socialist cause are concerned, the matter is easy,we simply deprive them of their freedom of speech.But incorrect ideas among the people are quite a different matter. Will it do to ban such ideas and deny them any opportunity for expression? Certainly not. It is not only futile but very harmful to use crude methods in dealing with ideological questions among the people, with questions about man's mental world. You may ban the expression of wrong ideas, but the ideas will still be there. On the other hand, if correct ideas are pampered in hothouses and never exposed to the elements and immunized against disease, they will not win out against erroneous ones. Therefore, it is only by employing the method of discussion, criticism and reasoning that we can really foster correct ideas and overcome wrong ones, and that we can really settle issues.

• Hào vô nghi vấn, ngã môn ứng đương phê bình các chủng các dạng đích thác ngộ tư tưởng. Bất gia phê bình, khán trứ thác ngộ tư tưởng đáo xử phiếm lạm, nhậm bằng tha môn khứ chiêm lĩnh thị tràng, đương nhiên bất hành. Hữu thác ngộ tựu đắc phê phán, hữu độc thảo tựu đắc tiến hành đấu tranh. Đãn thị giá chủng phê bình bất ứng đương thị giáo điều chủ nghĩa đích, bất ứng đương dụng hình nhi thượng học phương pháp, ứng đương lực cầu dụng biện chứng phương pháp. Yếu hữu khoa học đích phân tích, yếu hữu sung phân đích thuyết phục lực. Giáo điều chủ nghĩa đích phê bình bất năng giải quyết vấn đề. Ngã môn thị phản đối nhất thiết độc thảo đích, đãn thị ngã môn tất tu cẩn thận địa biện biệt thập ma thị chân đích độc thảo, thập ma thị chân đích hương hoa. Ngã môn yếu đồng quần chúng nhất khởi lai học hội cẩn thận địa biện biệt hương hoa hòa độc thảo, tịnh thả nhất khởi lai dụng chính xác đích phương pháp đồng độc thảo tác đấu tranh.
  • Undoubtedly, we must criticize wrong ideas of every description. It certainly would not be right to refrain from criticism, look on while wrong ideas spread unchecked and allow them to dominate the field. Mistakes must be criticized and poisonous weeds fought wherever they crop up. However, such criticism should not be dogmatic, and the metaphysical method should not be used, but instead the effort should be made to apply the dialectical method. What is needed is scientific analysis and convincing argument. Dogmatic criticism settles nothing. We are against poisonous weeds of whatever kind, but we must carefully distinguish between what is really a poisonous weed and what is really a fragrant flower. Together with the masses of the people, we must learn to differentiate carefully between the two and use correct methods to fight the poisonous weeds.

• Bách hoa tề phóng, bách gia tranh minh giá lưỡng cá khẩu hào, tựu tự diện khán, thị một hữu giai cấp tính đích, vô sản giai cấp khả dĩ lợi dụng tha môn, tư sản giai cấp dã khả dĩ lợi dụng tha môn, kỳ tha đích nhân môn dã khả dĩ lợi dụng tha môn. Sở vị hương hoa hòa độc thảo, các cá giai cấp, giai tằng hòa xã hội tập đoàn dã hữu các tự đích khán pháp. Na mạt, tòng quảng đại nhân dân quần chúng đích quan điểm khán lai, cứu cánh thập ma thị ngã môn kim thiên biện biệt hương hoa hòa độc thảo đích tiêu chuẩn ni? Tại ngã quốc nhân dân đích chính trị sinh hoạt trung, ứng đương chẩm dạng lai phán đoạn ngã môn đích ngôn luận hòa hành động đích thị phi ni? Ngã môn dĩ vi, căn cư ngã quốc đích hiến pháp đích nguyên tắc, căn cư ngã quốc tối đại đa sổ nhân dân đích ý chí hòa ngã quốc các đảng phái lịch thứ tuyên bố đích cộng đồng đích chính trị chủ trương, giá chủng tiêu chuẩn khả dĩ đại trí quy định như hạ: ( nhất ) hữu lợi vu đoàn kết toàn quốc các tộc nhân dân, nhi bất thị phân liệt nhân dân; ( nhị ) hữu lợi vu xã hội chủ nghĩa cải tạo hòa xã hội chủ nghĩa kiến thiết, nhi bất thị bất lợi vu xã hội chủ nghĩa cải tạo hòa xã hội chủ nghĩa kiến thiết; ( tam ) hữu lợi vu củng cố nhân dân dân chủ chuyên chính, nhi bất thị phá phôi hoặc giả tước nhược giá cá chuyên chính; ( tứ ) hữu lợi vu củng cố dân chủ tập trung chế, nhi bất thị phá phôi hoặc giả tước nhược giá cá chế độ; ( ngũ ) hữu lợi vu củng cố cộng sản đảng đích lĩnh đạo, nhi bất thị bãi thoát hoặc giả tước nhược giá chủng lĩnh đạo; ( lục ) hữu lợi vu xã hội chủ nghĩa đích quốc tế đoàn kết hòa toàn thế giới ái hảo hòa bình nhân dân đích quốc tế đoàn kết, nhi bất thị hữu tổn vu giá ta đoàn kết.
  • Literally the two slogans -- let a hundred flowers blossom and let a hundred schools of thought contend -- have no class character; the proletariat can turn them to account, and so can the bourgeoisie or others. Different classes, strata and social groups each have their own views on what are fragrant flowers and what are poisonous weeds. Then, from the point of view of the masses, what should be the criteria today for distinguishing fragrant flowers from poisonous weeds? In their political activities, how should our people judge whether a person's words and deeds are right or wrong? On the basis of the principles of our Constitution, the will of the overwhelming majority of our people and the common political positions which have been proclaimed on various occasions by our political parties, we consider that, broadly speaking, the criteria should be as follows:
    (1) Words and deeds should help to unite, and not divide, the people of all our nationalities.
    (2) They should be beneficial, and not harmful, to socialist transformation and socialist construction.
    (3) They should help to consolidate, and not undermine or weaken, the people's democratic dictatorship.
    (4) They should help to consolidate, and not undermine or weaken, democratic centralism.
    (5) They should help to strengthen, and not shake off or weaken, the leadership of the Communist Party.
    (6) They should be beneficial, and not harmful, to international socialist unity and the unity of the peace-loving people of the world.

• Tổng chi, ngã môn tất tu học hội toàn diện địa khán vấn đề, bất đãn yếu khán đáo sự vật đích chính diện, dã yếu khán đáo tha đích phản diện. Tại nhất định đích điều kiện hạ, phôi đích đông tây khả dĩ dẫn xuất hảo đích kết quả, hảo đích đông tây dã khả dĩ dẫn xuất phôi đích kết quả. Lão tử tại nhị thiên đa niên dĩ tiền tựu thuyết quá: “Họa hề phúc sở ỷ, phúc hề họa sở phục.”
  • To sum up, we must learn to look at problems from all sides, seeing the reverse as well as the obverse side of things. In given conditions, a bad thing can lead to good results and a good thing to bad results. More than two thousand years ago Lao Tzu said: “Good fortune lieth within bad, bad fortune lurketh within good.”

• Tại ngã môn đích hứa đa công tác nhân viên trung gian, hiện tại tư trường trứ nhất chủng bất nguyện ý hòa quần chúng đồng cam khổ, hỉ hoan kế giác cá nhân danh lợi đích nguy hiểm khuynh hướng, giá thị ngận bất hảo đích. Ngã môn tại tăng sản tiết ước vận động trung yếu cầu tinh giản cơ quan, hạ phóng càn bộ, sử tương đương đại đích nhất phê càn bộ hồi đáo sinh sản trung khứ, tựu thị khắc phục giá chủng nguy hiểm khuynh hướng đích nhất cá phương pháp. Yếu sử toàn thể càn bộ hòa toàn thể nhân dân kinh thường tưởng đáo ngã quốc thị nhất cá xã hội chủ nghĩa đích đại quốc, đãn hựu thị nhất cá kinh tế lạc hậu đích cùng quốc, giá thị nhất cá ngận đại đích mâu thuẫn. Yếu sử ngã quốc phú cường khởi lai, nhu yếu kỉ thập niên gian khổ phấn đấu đích thời gian, kỳ trung bao quát chấp hành lệ hành tiết ước, phản đối lãng phí giá dạng nhất cá cần kiệm kiến quốc đích phương châm.
  • A dangerous tendency has shown itself of late among many of our personnel -- an unwillingness to share weal and woe with the masses, a concern for personal fame and gain. This is very bad. One way of overcoming it is to streamline our organizations in the course of our campaign to increase production and practice economy, and to transfer cadres to lower levels so that a considerable number will return to productive work. We must see to it that all our cadres and all our people constantly bear in mind that ours is a large socialist country but an economically backward and poor one, and that this is a very big contradiction. To make China prosperous and strong needs several decades of hard struggle, which means, among other things, pursuing the policy of building up our country through diligence and thrift, that is, practicing strict economy and fighting waste.

• Học tập hữu lưỡng chủng thái độ. Nhất chủng thị giáo điều chủ nghĩa đích thái độ, bất quản ngã quốc tình huống, thích dụng đích hòa bất thích dụng đích, nhất khởi bàn lai. Giá chủng thái độ bất hảo. Lánh nhất chủng thái độ, học tập đích thời hầu dụng não cân tưởng nhất hạ, học na ta hòa ngã quốc tình huống tương thích hợp đích đông tây, tức hấp thủ đối ngã môn hữu ích đích kinh nghiệm, ngã môn nhu yếu đích thị giá dạng nhất chủng thái độ.
  • Now there are two different attitudes towards learning from others. One is the dogmatic attitude of transplanting everything, whether or not it is suited to our conditions. This is no good. The other attitude is to use our heads and learn those things that suit our conditions, that is, to absorb whatever experience is useful to us. That is the attitude we should adopt.

1960s

Criticism and self-criticism is a kind of method. It is a method of resolving contradictions among the people and it is the only method.

Maybe you're afraid of sinking. Don't think about it. If you don't think about it, you won't sink. If you do, you will.

Withoutdemocracythere cannot be any correct centralism because people’s ideas differ, and if their understanding of things lacks unity then centralism cannot be established.

• Khuất tử đương niên phú sở tao,
  Thủ trung ác hữu sát nhân đao.
  Ngải tiêu thái thịnh tiêu lan thiếu,
  Nhất dược trùng hướng vạn lí đào.
  • Master Quin that year presented theSao of Chu;
    In his hand he grasped a killing blade.
    Mugwort and wormwood were flourishing in excess, [fragrant] pepper and orchid were scarce;
    With a single leap he plunged into limitless waves.
  • "Thất tuyệt · khuất nguyên" (1961)

• Phê bình hòa tự ngã phê bình thị nhất chủng phương pháp, thị giải quyết nhân dân nội bộ mâu thuẫn đích phương pháp, nhi thả thị duy nhất đích phương pháp.
  • Criticism and self-criticism is a kind of method. It is a method of resolving contradictions among the people and it is the only method.
  • Talk at an Enlarged Central Work Conference (30 January 1962)

• Một hữu dân chủ, bất khả năng hữu chính xác đích tập trung, nhân vi đại gia ý kiến phân kỳ, một hữu thống nhất đích nhận thức, tập trung chế tựu kiến lập bất khởi lai. Thập ma khiếu tập trung? Thủ tiên thị yếu tập trung chính xác đích ý kiến. Tại tập trung chính xác ý kiến đích cơ sở thượng, tố đáo thống nhất nhận thức, thống nhất chính sách, thống nhất kế hoa, thống nhất chỉ huy, thống nhất hành động, khiếu tố tập trung thống nhất. Như quả đại gia đối vấn đề hoàn bất liễu giải, hữu ý kiến hoàn một hữu phát biểu, hữu khí hoàn một hữu xuất, nhĩ giá cá tập trung thống nhất chẩm ma kiến lập đắc khởi lai ni? Một hữu dân chủ, tựu bất khả năng chính xác địa tổng kết kinh nghiệm. Một hữu dân chủ, ý kiến bất thị tòng quần chúng trung lai, tựu bất khả năng chế định xuất hảo đích lộ tuyến, phương châm, chính sách hòa bạn pháp. Ngã môn đích lĩnh đạo cơ quan, tựu chế định lộ tuyến, phương châm, chính sách hòa bạn pháp giá nhất phương diện thuyết lai, chỉ thị nhất cá gia công công hán. Đại gia tri đạo, công hán một hữu nguyên liêu tựu bất khả năng tiến hành gia công. Một hữu sổ lượng thượng sung phân đích hòa chất lượng thượng thích đương đích nguyên liêu, tựu bất khả năng chế tạo xuất hảo đích thành phẩm lai. Như quả một hữu dân chủ, bất liễu giải hạ tình, tình huống bất minh, bất sung phân sưu tập các phương diện đích ý kiến, bất sử thượng hạ thông khí, chỉ do thượng cấp lĩnh đạo cơ quan bằng trứ phiến diện đích hoặc giả bất chân thật đích tài liêu quyết định vấn đề, na tựu nan miễn bất thị chủ quan chủ nghĩa đích, dã tựu bất khả năng đạt đáo thống nhất nhận thức, thống nhất hành động, bất khả năng thật hiện chân chính đích tập trung. Ngã môn giá thứ hội nghị đích chủ yếu nghị đề, bất thị yếu phản đối phân tán chủ nghĩa, gia cường tập trung thống nhất mạ? Như quả ly khai sung phân phát dương dân chủ, giá chủng tập trung, giá chủng thống nhất, thị chân đích hoàn thị giả đích? Thị thật đích hoàn thị không đích? Thị chính xác đích hoàn thị thác ngộ đích? Đương nhiên chỉ năng thị giả đích, không đích, thác ngộ đích.
  • Withoutdemocracythere cannot be any correct centralism because people’s ideas differ, and if their understanding of things lacks unity then centralism cannot be established. What is centralism? First of all it is a centralization of correct ideas, on the basis of which unity of understanding, policy, planning, command and action are achieved. This is called centralized unification. If people still do not understand problems, if they have ideas but have not expressed them, or are angry but still have not vented their anger, how can centralized unification be established? If there is no democracy we cannot possibly summarize experience correctly. If there is no democracy, if ideas are not coming from the masses, it is impossible to establish a good line, good general and specific policies and methods. Our leading organs merely play the role of a processing plant in the establishment of a good line and good general and specific policies and methods. Everyone knows that if a factory has no raw material it cannot do any processing. If the raw material is not adequate in quantity and quality it cannot produce good finished products. Without democracy, you have no understanding of what is happening down below; the situation will be unclear; you will be unable to collect sufficient opinions from all sides; there can be no communication between top and bottom; top-level organs of leadership will depend on one-sided and incorrect material to decide issues, thus you will find it difficult to avoid being subjectivist; it will be impossible to achieve unity of understanding and unity of action, and impossible to achieve true centralism. Is not the main item for discussion at this session of our conference opposition to dispersionism and the strengthening of centralized unification? If we fail to promote democracy in full measure, then will this centralism and this unification be true or false? Will it be real or empty? Will it be correct or incorrect? Of course it must be false, empty and incorrect.
  • Talk at an Enlarged Central Work Conference (30 January 1962)

• Y học giáo dục yếu cải cách, căn bổn dụng bất trứ độc na ma đa thư, hoa đà độc đích thị kỉ niên chế? Minh triều lý thời trân độc đích thị kỉ niên chế? Y học giáo dục dụng bất trứ thu thập ma cao trung sinh, sơ trung sinh, cao tiểu tất nghiệp sinh học tam niên tựu cú liễu. Chủ yếu tại thật tiễn trung học tập đề cao, giá dạng đích y sinh phóng đáo nông thôn khứ, tựu toán bổn sự bất đại, tổng bỉ phiến nhân đích y sinh dữ vu y đích yếu hảo, nhi thả nông thôn dã dưỡng đắc khởi. Thư độc đắc việt đa việt xuẩn. Hiện tại na sáo kiểm tra trị liệu phương pháp căn bổn bất thích hợp nông thôn, bồi dưỡng y sinh đích phương pháp, dã thị vi liễu thành thị, khả thị trung quốc hữu ngũ ức đa nông dân.
  • Medical education should be reformed. There’s no need to read so many books. How many years did Hua Tuo spend at college? How many years’ education didLi Shizhenof the Ming dynasty receive? In medical education there is no need to accept only higher middle school graduates or lower middle school graduates. It will be enough to give three years to graduates from higher primary schools. They would then study and raise their standards, mainly through practice. If this kind of doctor is sent down to the countryside, even if they haven’t much talent, they would be better than quacks and witch doctors and the villages would be better able to afford to keep them. The more books one reads, the more stupid one gets. The methods of medical examination and treatment used by hospitals nowadays are not at all appropriate for the countryside, and the way doctors are trained is only for the benefit of the cities. And yet in China over 500 million of our population are peasants.
  • Directive on Public Health (June 26, 1965)

• Maybe you're afraid of sinking. Don't think about it. If you don't think about it, you won't sink. If you do, you will.
  • Swimming advice to physician Zhisui Li (1966), quoted inThe TIME 100(13 April 1998)

• Toàn quốc đệ nhất trương mã liệt chủ nghĩa đích đại tự báo hòa nhân dân nhật báo bình luận viên đích bình luận, tả đắc hà đẳng hảo a! Thỉnh đồng chí môn trọng độc giá nhất trương đại tự báo hòa giá cá bình luận. Khả thị tại 50 đa thiên lí, tòng trung ương đáo địa phương đích mỗ ta lĩnh đạo đồng chí, khước phản kỳ đạo nhi hành chi, trạm tại phản động đích tư sản giai cấp lập tràng thượng, thật hành tư sản giai cấp chuyên chính, tương vô sản giai cấp oanh oanh liệt liệt đích văn hóa đại cách mệnh vận động đả hạ khứ, điên đảo thị phi, hỗn hào hắc bạch, vi tiễu cách mệnh phái, áp chế bất đồng ý kiến, thật hành bạch sắc khủng phố, tự dĩ vi đắc ý, trường tư sản giai cấp đích uy phong, diệt vô sản giai cấp đích chí khí, hựu hà kỳ độc dã! Liên tưởng đáo 1962 niên đích hữu khuynh hòa 1964 niên hình “Tả” thật hữu đích thác ngộ khuynh hướng, khởi bất thị khả dĩ phát nhân thâm tỉnh đích mạ?
  • China’s first Marxist-Leninist big-character poster and Commentator’s article on it inRenmin Ribao(People’s Daily) are indeed superbly written! Comrades, please read them again. But in the last fifty days or so some leading comrades from the central down to the local levels have acted in a diametrically opposite way. Adopting the reactionary stand of the bourgeoisie, they have enforced a bourgeois dictatorship and struck down the surging movement of thegreat cultural revolution of the proletariat.They have stood facts on their head and juggled black and white, encircled and suppressed revolutionaries, stifled opinions differing from their own, imposed a white terror, and felt very pleased with themselves. They have puffed up the arrogance of the bourgeoisie and deflated the morale of the proletariat. How poisonous! Viewed in connection with the Right deviation in 1962 and the wrong tendency of 1964 which was “Left” in form but Right in essence, shouldn’t this make one wide awake?
  • Bombard the Headquarters—My First Big-Character Poster (August 5, 1966)

• ( luận quốc dân đảng ) hữu ngận đa đích ngoan cố phân tử, tha môn thị ngoan cố chuyên môn học giáo tất nghiệp đích. Tha môn kim thiên ngoan cố, minh thiên ngoan cố, hậu thiên hoàn thị ngoan cố. Thập ma khiếu ngoan cố? Cố giả ngạnh dã, ngoan giả, kim thiên, minh thiên, hậu thiên đô bất tiến bộ chi vị dã. Giá dạng đích nhân, tựu khiếu tố ngoan cố phân tử. Yếu sử giá dạng đích ngoan cố phân tử thính ngã môn đích thoại, bất thị nhất kiện dung dịch đích sự tình.
  • (Referring to theKuomintang) There are many stubborn elements, graduates in the speciality schools of stubbornness. They are stubborn today, they will be stubborn tomorrow, and they will be stubborn the day after tomorrow. What is stubbornness (wan gu)? "Gu" is to be stiff. "Wan" is to not progress: not today, nor tomorrow, nor the day after tomorrow. People like that are called the "stubborn elements". It is not an easy thing to make the stubborn elements listen to our words.
  • Mao, 1967, as quoted by Jing Huang inThe Role of Government Propaganda in the Educational System during the Cultural Revolution in China.

• Racial discriminationin theUnited Statesis a product of thecolonialistandimperialistsystem. The contradiction between theBlack massesin the United States and the U.S. ruling circles is a class contradiction. Only by overthrowing the reactionary rule of the U.S.monopolycapitalist class and destroying the colonialist and imperialist system can the Black people in the United States win completeemancipation.The Black masses and the masses ofwhiteworking peoplein the United States have common interests and common objectives to struggle for. Therefore, theAfro-American struggleis winning sympathy and support from increasing numbers of white working people andprogressivesin the United States. The struggle of the Black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American workers' movement, and this will eventually end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class.
  • "A New Storm Against Imperialism"(1968)

1970s

How will you deal with this? Only Heaven knows.

• Ngã hoan nghênh ni khắc tùng thượng đài. Vi thập ma ni? Tha đích khi phiến tính dã hữu, đãn bỉ giác địa thiếu nhất điểm, nhĩ tín bất tín? Tha cân nhĩ lai ngạnh đích đa, lai nhuyễn đích dã hữu. Tha như quả tưởng đáo bắc kinh lai, nhĩ tựu sao cá tín, khiếu tha thâu thâu địa, bất yếu công khai, tọa thượng nhất giá phi cơ tựu khả dĩ lai ma. Đàm bất thành dã khả dĩ, đàm đắc thành dã khả dĩ ma. Hà tất na ma cương trứ? Đãn thị nhĩ môn mỹ quốc thị một hữu bí mật đích, nhất cá tổng thống xuất quốc thị bất khả năng bí mật đích. Tha yếu đáo trung quốc lai, nhất định hội đại xuy đại lôi, tựu hội thuyết kỳ mục đích tựu thị yếu lạp trung quốc chỉnh tô liên, sở dĩ tha hiện tại hoàn bất cảm giá dạng tố. Chỉnh tô liên, hiện tại đối mỹ quốc bất lợi; chỉnh trung quốc, đối vu mỹ quốc dã bất lợi.
  • I welcomeNixon's winningthe election.Why? There is a deceptive side of him as well, but there is less of it. Do you believe it? He is accustomed to use hard tactics, but sometimes also soft ones. If he wishes to come to Beijing, please tell him he should do it secretly, not openly-just get on a plane and come. It doesn't matter whether negotiations succeed or fail. Why should we maintain such a deadlock? However, there is no secret in the United States. If the president goes abroad, it is impossible to keep it secret. In coming to China, he is sure to declare his aim is to draw in China in order to make things difficult for the Soviet Union. Hence he does not dare to act this way at present. To punish the Soviet Union is disadvantageous to the U.S., and to punish China is equally disadvantageous.
  • "If Nixon Is Willing to Come, I Am Ready to Hold Talks with Him" (December 18, 1970)

• Those writings of mine aren't anything. There is nothing instructive in what I wrote.
  • Excerpt of meeting with Nixon 1972, quoted inThe Road to War: Presidential Commitments Honored and Betrayed(May 9, 2013) byMarvin Kalb

• I like rightists... I am comparatively happy when these people on the right come into power.
  • Excerpt of meeting with Nixon 1972, quoted inThe Road to War: Presidential Commitments Honored and Betrayed(May 9, 2013) byMarvin Kalb.Also quoted inDeclassified transcript of Mao Zedong meets Richard Nixon, February 21, 1972

• I said, now that I’m collaborating with the rightists, my reputation isn’t good. I said, in your [the Americans'] country there are two parties and it’s been said that theDemocratsare more enlightened. As for theRepublicans,they lean more to the right. I said there is nothing great about the Democrats. I neither admire nor am interested in them. I said, when you [Nixon] were running forPresident,I gave you my vote. You are still not aware of that. [...] This time round, we also gave you our vote [Tanaka]. It’s exactly like you said. If the main player, which is theLiberal Democratic Party[of Japan], doesn’t come here, how can we resolve the issue? [...] I said, that communist party of yours inJapan,I’m not interested in them.
  • Excerpt of Mao Zedong's conversation with Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka(September 27, 1972)

• “Nhân sinh thất thập cổ lai hi”, ngã bát thập đa liễu, nhân lão tổng tưởng hậu sự. Trung quốc hữu cú cổ thoại khiếu “Cái quan định luận”, ngã tuy vị “Cái quan” dã khoái liễu, tổng khả dĩ định luận ba! Ngã nhất sinh càn liễu lưỡng kiện sự: Nhất thị dữ tưởng giới thạch đấu liễu na ma kỉ thập niên, bả tha cản đáo na ma kỉ cá hải đảo thượng khứ liễu; kháng chiến bát niên, bả nhật bổn nhân thỉnh hồi lão gia khứ liễu. Đối giá ta sự trì dị nghị đích nhân bất đa, chỉ hữu na ma kỉ cá nhân, tại ngã nhĩ biên kỉ kỉ tra tra, vô phi thị nhượng ngã cập tảo thu hồi na kỉ cá hải đảo bãi liễu. Lánh nhất kiện sự nhĩ môn đô tri đạo, tựu thị phát động văn hóa đại cách mệnh. Giá sự ủng hộ đích nhân bất đa, phản đối đích nhân bất thiếu. Giá lưỡng kiện sự một hữu hoàn, giá bút “Di sản” đắc giao cấp hạ nhất đại. Chẩm ma giao? Hòa bình giao bất thành tựu động đãng trung giao, cảo bất hảo tựu đắc “Huyết vũ tinh phong” liễu. Nhĩ môn chẩm ma bạn? Chỉ hữu thiên tri đạo.
  • Sinceancient times,it has been rare for a man to live to seventy. I am now more than eighty. In my old age I have thought often of death. In China it is said, “You can judge a man only after they close the lid of his coffin.” Although my “coffin lid” is not yet closed, it will happen soon, so it is a time to sum up. During my life I have accomplished two things. First, over the course of several decades, I fought against Chiang Kai-shek and chased him to the islands. During eight years of the war against Japan, I requested that the Japanese soldiers return home. We conquered Beijing and ultimately seized theForbidden City.There are few people who do not acknowledge this. And there are only a few people who buzz into my ears that I should retake these islands quickly. The second thing you all know about. This is the launching of the Great Cultural Revolution. There are not many who support it, and not a few who oppose it. Both of these tasks are unfinished. This “legacy” must be handed down to the next generation. How should that be done? If it can’t be done peacefully, then it must be done via shock tactics. If we really do not engage in this, then “the wind and rain will turn red with blood.” How will you deal with this? Only Heaven knows.
    • June 15, 1976. Quoted inMao: The Real Story(2012) by Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine

Undated

Where there is oppression, there is revolt.

• My closest friend and brother – this world is lucky to have a great personality asKim Il Sung.This causes my boundless happiness. The fate of theworld revolutionand the international communist movement are on your shoulders, Comrade Kim Il Sung. I wish you long life and good health.
  • As quoted by theAssociation for the Study of Songun Politics UK

• Ngã giá cá nhân thị bị hứa đa nhân hận đích, đặc biệt thị bành đức hoài đồng chí, tha thị hận tử liễu ngã đích; bất hận tử liễu, dã hữu nhược càn hận. Ngã cân bành đức hoài đồng chí đích chính sách thị giá dạng đích: 『 nhân bất phạm ngã, ngã bất phạm nhân; nhân nhược phạm ngã, ngã tất phạm nhân. 』 quá khứ cân ngã huynh đệ dã thị giá dạng.
  • Lư sơn hội nghị thật lục
  • I am hated by many, especially comradePeng Dehuai,his hatred is so intense that he wished me dead. My policy with Peng Dehuai is such: You don't touch me, I don't touch you; You touch me, I touch you. Even though we were once like brothers, it doesn't change a thing.

• Na lí hữu áp bách, na lí tựu hữu phản kháng.
  • Where there is oppression, there is revolt.

Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong(The Little Red Book)

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

If the U.S. monopoly capitalist groups persist in pushing their policies of aggression and war, the day is bound to come when they will be hanged by the people of the whole world. The same fate awaits the accomplices of the United States.

The revolutionary war is a war of the masses; it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them.

Without a People's army, the people have nothing.

Be resolute, fear no sacrifice and surmount every difficulty to win victory.

• Phàm thị địch nhân phản đối đích, ngã môn tựu yếu ủng hộ; phàm thị địch nhân ủng hộ đích, ngã môn tựu yếu phản đối. (Fánshì dírén fǎnduì de, wǒmen jiù yào yǒnghù; fánshì dírén yǒnghù de, wǒmen jiù yào fǎnduì.)
  • We should support whatever our enemies oppose and oppose whatever our enemies support.
  • If the enemy opposes, we must support it; if the enemy supports it, we must oppose it.
  • Chapter 2,originally published inInterview with Three Correspondents from the Central News Agency, the Sao Tang Pao and the Hsin Min Pao(September 16, 1939), Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 272.

• Thùy thị ngã môn đích địch nhân? Thùy thị ngã môn đích bằng hữu? Giá cá vấn đề thị cách mệnh đích thủ yếu vấn đề. (Shéi shì wǒmen de dírén? Shéi shì wǒmen de péngyǒu? Zhège wèntí shì gémìng de shǒuyào wèntí.)
  • Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution.
  • Chapter 2,originally published inAnalysis of the Classes in Chinese Society(March 1926), Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 1.

• Cách mệnh bất thị thỉnh khách cật phạn, bất thị tố văn chương, bất thị hội họa tú hoa, bất năng na dạng nhã trí, na dạng tòng dung bất bách, văn chất bân bân, na dạng ôn lương cung kiệm nhượng. Cách mệnh thị bạo động, thị nhất cá giai cấp thôi phiên nhất cá giai cấp đích bạo liệt đích hành động.
• A revolution is not a dinner party,or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous.A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.
  • Chapter 2,originally published inReport on an investigation of the peasant movement in Hunan(March 1927), Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 28.
  • [1].Hồ nam nông dân vận động khảo sát báo cáo

• Thương can tử lí diện xuất chính quyền
  • Every Communist must grasp the truth:Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
  • Chapter 5,originally published inProblems of War and Strategy(November 6, 1938), Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 224.

• Nhất thiết phản động phái đô thị chỉ lão hổ. Khán khởi lai phản động phái đích dạng tử thị khả phạ đích, đãn thị thật tế thượng tịnh một hữu thập ma liễu bất khởi đích lực lượng. Tòng trường viễn đích quan điểm khán vấn đề, chân chính cường đại đích lực lượng bất thị chúc vu phản động phái, nhi thị chúc vu nhân dân.
  • All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful. From a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are really powerful.
  • Chapter 6,originally published inTalk with the American CorrespondentAnna Louise Strong(August 1946),Selected Works,Vol. IV, p. 100.

• Mỹ quốc lũng đoạn tư bổn tập đoàn như quả kiên trì thôi hành tha đích xâm lược chính sách hòa chiến tranh chính sách, thế tất hữu nhất thiên yếu bị toàn thế giới nhân dân xử dĩ hình. Kỳ tha mỹ quốc bang hung dã tương thị giá dạng.
  • If the U.S. monopoly capitalist groups persist in pushing their policies of aggression and war, the day is bound to come when they will be hanged by the people of the whole world. The same fate awaits the accomplices of the United States.
  • Chapter 6,originally published inSpeech at the Supreme State Conference(September 8, 1958).

• Cách mệnh chiến tranh thị quần chúng đích chiến tranh, chỉ hữu động viên quần chúng tài năng tiến hành chiến tranh, chỉ hữu y kháo quần chúng tài năng tiến hành chiến tranh. (Gémìng zhànzhēng shì qúnzhòng de zhànzhēng, zhǐyǒu dòngyuán qúnzhòng cáinéng jìnxíng zhànzhēng, zhǐyǒu yīkào qúnzhòng cáinéng jìnxíng zhànzhēng.)
  • The revolutionary war is a war of the masses; it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them.
  • Chapter 8,originally published inBe Concerned with the Well-Being of the Masses, Pay Attention to Methods of Work(January 27, 1934), Selected Works, Vol. I. p. 147.

• Một hữu nhất cá nhân dân đích quân đội, tiện một hữu nhân dân đích nhất thiết.
  • Without a People's army, the people have nothing.
  • Chapter 9,originally published inOn Coalition Government(April 24, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III, pp. 296-97.

• Ngã môn đích nguyên tắc thị đảng chỉ huy thương, nhi quyết bất dung hứa thương chỉ huy đảng.
  • Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party.
  • Chapter 9,originally published in theProblems of War and Strategy(November 6, 1938), Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 224.

• Recently there has been a falling off in ideological and political work among students and intellectuals, and some unhealthy tendencies have appeared. Some people seem to think that there is no longer any need to concern oneself with politics or with the future of the motherland and the ideals of mankind. It seems as if Marxism was once all the rage but is currently not so much in fashion. To counter these tendencies, we must strengthen our ideological and political work. Both students and intellectuals should study hard. In addition to the study of their specialized subjects, they must make progress both ideologically and politically, which means that they should study Marxism, current events and politics. Not to have a correct political point of view is like having no soul [...] All departments and organizations should shoulder their responsibilities in ideological and political work. This applies to the Communist Party, the Youth League, government departments in charge of this work, and especially to heads of educational institutions and teachers.
  • Chapter 12;originally published in "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People" (27 February 1957), 1st pocket ed., pp. 43-44

• Hạ định quyết tâm, bất phạ hi sinh, bài trừ vạn nan, khứ tranh thủ thắng lợi.
  • Be resolute, fear no sacrifice and surmount every difficulty to win victory.
  • Chapter 19;originally published inThe Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains(June 11, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 321.

• Cách mệnh đích tập thể tổ chức trung đích tự do chủ nghĩa thị thập phân hữu hại đích. Tha thị nhất chủng hủ thực tề, sử đoàn kết hoán tán, quan hệ tùng giải, công tác tiêu cực, ý kiến phân kỳ. Tha sử cách mệnh đội ngũ thất điệu nghiêm mật đích tổ chức hòa kỷ luật, chính sách bất năng quán triệt đáo để, đảng đích tổ chức hòa đảng sở lĩnh đạo đích quần chúng phát sinh cách ly. Giá thị nhất chủng nghiêm trọng đích ác liệt khuynh hướng.
  • Liberalism is extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective. It is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension. It robs the revolutionary ranks of compact organization and strict discipline, prevents policies from being carried through and alienates the Party organizations from the masses which the Party leads. It is an extremely bad tendency.
  • Chapter 24,originally published in"Combat Liberalism" (7 September 1937), Selected Works, Vol. II, pp. 31-32

• Yếu sử văn nghệ ngận hảo địa thành vi chỉnh cá cách mệnh cơ khí đích nhất cá tổ thành bộ phân, tác vi đoàn kết nhân dân, giáo dục nhân dân, đả kích địch nhân, tiêu diệt địch nhân đích hữu lực đích võ khí, bang trợ nhân dân đồng tâm đồng đức địa hòa địch nhân tác đấu tranh.
  • [Our purpose is] to ensure that literature and art fit well into the whole revolutionary machine as a component part, that they operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy, and that they help the people fight the enemy with one heart and one mind.
  • Chapter 32,originally published inTalks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art(May 1942), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 84.

• In the ideological field, the question of who will win in the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has not been really settled yet. We still have to wage a protracted struggle against bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology. It is wrong not to understand this and to give up ideological struggle. All erroneous ideas, all poisonous weeds, all ghosts and monsters, must be subjected to criticism; in no circumstance should they be allowed to spread unchecked. However, the criticism should be fully reasoned, analytical and convincing, and not rough, bureaucratic, metaphysical or dogmatic.
  • Speech at the Chinese Communist Party's National Conference on Propaganda Work (March 12, 1957), 1st pocket edition, pp. 26-27

• Anyone should be allowed to speak out, whoever he may be, so long as he is not a hostile element and does not make malicious attacks, and it does not matter if he says something wrong. Leaders at all levels have the duty to listen to others. Two principles must be observed: (1) Say all you know and say it without reserve; (2) don't blame the speaker but take his words as a warning.Unless the principle of "Don't blame the speaker" is observed genuinely and not falsely, the result will not be "Say all you know and say it without reserve".
  • The Tasks for 1945 (December 15, 1944).

Directives Regarding the Cultural Revolution (1966-1972)

The masses, the army, and the cadres are the three pillars on which we rely.

It is difficult to avoid mistakes, the point is to correct them honestly. Too many people have been arrested in Szechwan and many mass organizations are branded as reactionary. All these are wrong, but they have been quickly rectified.

Guard against revisionism, particularly the emergence of revisionism at the party Centre.

• The masses, the army, and the cadres are the three pillars on which we rely.
  • 1967
• It is difficult to avoid mistakes, the point is to correct them honestly. Too many people have been arrested in Szechwan and many mass organizations are branded as reactionary. All these are wrong, but they have been quickly rectified.
  • 1967
• Trust and rely on the masses; trust and rely on thePLA;trust and rely on the majority of the cadres.
  • 1967
• The victory or defeat of the revolution can be determined only over a long period of time. If it is badly handled, there is always the danger of a capitalist restoration. All members of the party and all the people of our country must not think that after one, two, three, or four great cultural revolutions there will be peace and quiet. They must always be on the alert and must never relax their vigilance.
  • 1967
• Guard against revisionism, particularly the emergence of revisionism at the party Centre.
  • 1967
• Who are our enemies and who are our friends? This is the first and foremost question of a revolution and it is also the first and foremost question of the greatCultural Revolution.
  • 1967
• Protect theleft-wing;support the left-wing, form and enlarge left wing units.
• Do not stop half way and do not ever go backward. There is no way behind you.
• Trust the majority of the cadres and the masses. This is essential.
• We, the communists, do not want official positions; we want revolution. We must have a thoroughly revolutionary spirit and must be with the masses every hour, every minute. As long as we are with the masses, we shall always be victorious.

Directives on the Cultural Revolution (1966-1972)

No need to be afraid of tidal waves; human society has been evolved out of 'tidal waves'.

A communist must never stay aloof from or above the masses like a bureaucrat. He ought to be like an ordinary worker in the presence of the masses, join them, and become one of them.

• It is to the advantage of despots to keep people ignorant; it is to our advantage to make them intelligent. We must lead all of them gradually away from ignorance.
• Wind will not cease even if trees want to rest.
• Without destruction there can be no construction; without blockage there can be no flow; without stoppage there can be no movement.
• No need to be afraid of tidal waves; human society has been evolved out of 'tidal waves'.
• You should pay attention to state affairs and carry the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution through to the end!
• This is a movement on a vast scale. It has indeed mobilized the masses. It is of very great significance to the revolutionization of the thinking of the people throughout the country.
• A communist must never stay aloof from or above the masses like a bureaucrat. He ought to be like an ordinary worker in the presence of the masses, join them, and become one of them.
• In any revolution, its internal causes are fundamental and its external ones are supplementary.
• A revolution depends on an inner core. This, the bourgeois faction in authority and the faction in authority which has committed mistakes know best; [their] peripheral organizations merely add fuel to the fire.
• Young people should be permitted to make mistakes. As long as their general orientation is correct, let them make minor mistakes. I believe that they can correct themselves in practical work.
• The basic contradiction the great proletarian Cultural Revolution is trying to resolve is the one between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between the proletarian and bourgeois roads. The main point of the movement is to struggle against the capitalist roaders in authority in the party.
• The peoples of the world must have courage, dare to fight, and fear no hardships. When the ones in front fall, the others behind must follow up. In this way, the world will belong to the people and all the demons will be eliminated.
• Democracy sometimes looks like an end in itself, but in fact it is merely a means to an end.
• The revolutionary red guards and revolutionary student organizations must form a grand alliance. As long as they are revolutionary mass organizations, they must form a great alliance according to revolutionary principles.
• The basic ideological programme of the great proletarian Cultural Revolution is 'to combat selfishness and criticize revisionism.'
• The Cultural Revolution can only be the emancipation of the masses by the masses.
  • Nov. 11, 1967
• Except in the deserts, at every place of human habitation there is the left, the centre, and the right. This will continue to be so 10,000 years hence.
  • April 22, 1968
• It is absolutely necessary for educated young people to go to the countryside to be re-educated by the poor and lower-middle peasants. Cadres and other city people should be persuaded to send their sons and daughters who have finished junior or senior middle school, college, or university to the countryside. Let us mobilize. Comrades throughout the countryside should welcome them.
  • Dec. 22, 1968

Attributed

• Thiên hạ đại loạn, hình thế đại hảo.
  • There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent.
  • See e.g. Nigel Holden, Snejina Michailova, Susanne Tietze (editors).The Routledge Companion to Cross-Cultural Management.Routledge 2015.
• "The food of the true revolutionary is the red pepper, And he who cannot endure red peppers is also unable to fight." - Otto Braun memoirs

• People who try to commit suicide — don't attempt to save them!...China is such a populous nation, it is not as if we cannot do without a few people.
  • Attributed byWang Li,"Lịch sử tương tuyên cáo ngã vô tội" (History Will Pronounce Me Innocent), manuscript, Beijing, 1993, p. 7. This source is a privately printed collection of letters and documents concerning Wang Li's expulsion from the CCP. Cited inMao's Last Revolution(2006) byRoderick MacFarquharandMichael Schoenhal,ISBN 0674023323

Misattributed

• It's always darkest before it's totally black.
  • This is a humorous misattribution that US SenatorJohn McCainhas sometimes used since at least January 2000, but there is no indication that Mao actually ever made such a comment, which is a joke referencing the common English proverb "It's always darkest before the dawn." It has also been humorously misattributed toFranklin D. Roosevelt.The quote may be derived from the US television showThe A-Team,in which it was uttered in a 1983 episode ( "The Rabbit Who Ate Las Vegas" ) by protagonist John "Hannibal" Smith. A similar quotation is attributed to actorPaul Newmanin 2003.
• The real war is within us.History is a symptom of our disease.
  • This is a line from the 1995 filmNixonwritten byOliver Stone,Christopher Wilkinson,and Stephen J. Rivele. The line is spoken by Mao (portrayed byRic Young) through an interpreter during a fictionalized version of his meeting with Richard Nixon.

Quotes about Mao Zedong

I sduppose some people will say on balance Mao did more good than harm. ~Diane Abbott

Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say? ~Chen Yun

The consequences of Mao’s actions were inevitably in proportion to the prodigious power he exercised, and the enormous population he ruled over. As a unifier and modernizer his achievements were immense, but his errors caused appalling suffering on a scale that is difficult to grasp. ~Delia Davin

For Mao Zedong was both theLeninand theStalinof the Chinese Revolution, both the revolutionary founder and the post-revolutionary tyrant. ~ Maurice Meisner

Future historians may conclude that Mao’s role was to try to destroy the age-old bifurcation of China between a small educated ruling stratum and the vast mass of common people. We do not yet know how far he succeeded. The economy was developing, but it was left to his successors to create a new political structure. ~w:John King FairbankandMerle Goldman

[Mao] has played politics with Asian cunning.... [and] has always been a master at concealing his true intention.... I was always on my guard with him. ~Nikita Khrushchev

A

• China, despite many imperfections in its economic and political system, has been the most rapidly growing nation of the past three decades.Chinese povertyuntil Mao Zedong’s death had nothing to do with Chinese culture; it was due to the disastrous way Mao organized the economy and conductedpolitics.In the 1950s, he promoted theGreat Leap Forward,a drasticindustrializationpolicy that led to massstarvationandfamine.In the 1960s, he propagated the Cultural Revolution, which led to the mass persecution of intellectuals and educated people—anyone whose party loyalty might be doubted. This again led to terror and a huge waste of the society’s talent and resources. In the same way, current Chinese growth has nothing to do with Chinese values or changes in Chinese culture; it results from a process of economic transformation unleashed by the reforms implemented byDeng Xiaopingand his allies, who, after Mao Zedong’s death, gradually abandonedsocialisteconomic policies and institutions, first inagricultureand then inindustry.
  • Daron AcemogluandJames A. Robinson,Why Nations Fail(2012), Chap. 2: Theories that Don't Work

• The students caught between the two superpowers and equally disillusioned by East and West, "inevitably pursue some third ideology, from Mao's China orCastro'sCuba."(Spender, op. cit., p. 92.) Their calls for Mao, Castro,Che Guevara,andHo Chi Minhare like pseudo-religious incantations for saviors from another world; they would also call forTitoif onlyYugoslaviawere farther away and less approachable.
  • Hannah ArendtCrises of the Republic(1972)

B

• TheYoung Lords Partyunderstood themselves to be a revolutionary nationalist party with an internationalist vision. According to Melendez, three texts formed the core of the Young Lords' political education program:Franz Fanon'sThe Wretched of the Earth,Mao Tse-tung'sLittle Red Book,andChe Guevara'sMan and Socialism: Transformation of the Individual.Grounded in Mao's critique of nationalism and Fanon's analysis of colonialism, as well asVladimir Lenin's writings on imperialism and the national question, the nationalism of the Young Lords was much more ideologically explicit than that of most Chicano leaders...Inspired by Che Guevara, theYoung Lords Partysought to engage the internal struggle of the individual "to manifest change within himself in order to create a revolution in society."
  • Cristina Beltrán,The trouble with unity: Latino politics and the creation of identity(2010)

• Mao’s impact on China must also be assessed in terms of economic and social changes in China after 1949. Despite the setbacks of the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution, overall China’s economy made decided advances during theMaoistperiod. China’s industrial sector grew rapidly and agricultural output was once again showing increases by the time of Mao’s death. China’s infrastructure expanded with the addition of newrailwaysand improvedroads.Electricitybecame available in all but the most remote villages. Life expectancy reached 65 years by the time of Mao’s death, a remarkable increase over the 1949 figure. Under the new laws of the PRC, women held equal status with men and, as a result of the commune movement, worked outside the home. Although efforts to expand education stumbled repeatedly because of political campaigns, the number of literate men and women climbed as schools and colleges grew in number throughout the period. These accomplishments are part of the legacy of the first generation of revolutionary leadership.
  At the same time, Maoist policies exacted an enormous human cost. Misguided policy decisions of the Great Leap Forward claimed millions of lives. Whether this cost was levied unintentionally or not, Mao himself chose the policies that led to human disaster and he cannot be absolved of responsibility for the outcomes. When the records of the CCP are someday made available for objective examination, both the Chinese people and the world community will be able to assess more clearly the circumstances that led to the greatest tragedies of the Maoist period and how that experience influenced China’s current economic reforms and its political direction.
  • Linda Benson,China Since 1949(3rd ed., 2016), Chap. 4: The radical Maoist phase, 1958–76

• Is Mao dead? That we even feel the need to ask the question betrays part of the answer. Yes he’s dead, but more importantly, his legacy still exerts a profound influence on China, both in his continuing grassroots popularity and in the instruments of governance that the C.C.P. still uses—most of which have Mao’s fingerprints all over them.
  • Jude Blanchette, in "Is Mao Still Dead?: A ChinaFile Conversation"(February 12, 2015)

• The very fact that Mao is a paradoxical figure means that thinking about him is a useful way in understanding some of the other paradoxes that now constitute the PRC. The combination of artificiality, make-believe and sheer downright lies in what has gone into creating the image of Mao and reflects much on the place that has produced this mythos. Mao himself celebrated conflict, contradiction and tension. He famously opined that 'without destruction there can be no construction', an idea that was enshrined in the CR, and became the justification for many of the acts of violence then.
  • Kerry Brown,Struggling Giant: China in the 21st Century(2007)

• Had he been purely an economic thinker, then Mao would have been consigned to the dustbin of history the day he died in September 1976. Evidence of the failure of his economic ideas is manifold. But of course, economics is more often than not intimately linked to emotions and ideas of status. It is here that the other two strands of Maoism come to the fore – Mao as a nationalist and Mao as a tactician. In areas that can be broadly described as geopolitics and politics, Mao still retains impact in China.
  • Kerry Brownand Simone van Nieuwenhuizen,China and the New Maoists(2016), p. 45

• At best, Marx equipped Mao with a dynamic vision of reality, but one which was fundamentally posited on contradictions. Once more, the real ballast was supplied byDaoism,a body of ideas reaching back to the earliest recorded dynasty, theShang,and set down in oracular form. The Way or Dao celebrated counterpoised forces, the struggle for the achievement of balance in society constantly undermined by the rise of new forces and situations. Flux was the god of this view of the world, and it was to flux and dynamism that Mao himself appealed in perhaps the only one of his works that claims to have made a distinctive and original contribution to the corpus of Marxist theoretical works: ‘On contradiction’.
  • Kerry Brownand Simone van Nieuwenhuizen,China and the New Maoists(2016), p. 51

C

• Historians have long noted that Mao Zedong, the man, was not only deeply flawed but also was not the all-powerful creator of the People’s Republic of China or even of the CCP; that real history is, naturally, much more complex than the leadership of one man. Yet he was, and remains, the most charismatic and significant leader of twentieth-century China and both the official source of legitimacy for the CCP and a powerful model of rebellion for generations of Chinese. The key point to keep in mind about the power of Mao today is this contradictory legacy.
  This enduring contradiction in Maoism can be summed up in two phrases: ‘leave it up to the Party’ and ‘it’s right to rebel.’ The first reflects the considerable prestige of the CCP associated with its role in China’s turbulenttwentieth-centuryhistory. Even though various people in China today dismiss the extreme claims of revolutionary correctness or question the gaps in official Party histories, the CCP is broadly credited with saving China from imperialism, warlords, and poverty. For many in China, the greatest achievement of the CCP, for which Mao is the embodiment, is the establishment of the Chinese nation-state and the restoration of order in 1949. The many sins committed by Mao and the CCP since then have not – yet – utterly overshadowed this singular achievement.
  • Timothy Cheek,Living With Reform: China Since 1989(2007), Chap. 2: Living History: What was Maoism?

• This is the contradictory legacy of Mao: while Mao wrote the norms and rules of CCP leadership and represents its successes, he is also the voice of rebellion and the mirror that shows up the faults and failures of the Party. The social results of this contradiction, and this history of Mao’s three campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s, are profoundly important for China today. The most famous slogan of the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, ‘it’s right to rebel’ (zaofan youli), trained a generation of Chinese youth. When those former Red Guards returned to urban China from their rustication after two, three, and sometimes ten years, they had learned from Mao, though not perhaps what Mao and the Party wanted them to learn. They learned of the profound corruptibility of the Party and of leaders everywhere, they learned it was possible – and that Mao agreed – to rebel against corrupt leadership, and they learned that rural China was still very poor. Not only poor, but also superstitious. Rural China has been identified with the excesses of faith in Mao that these self-same ‘educated youth’ also displayed during the 1960s and during at least some of their time in the countryside.
  • Timothy Cheek,Living With Reform: China Since 1989(2007), Chap. 2: Living History: What was Maoism?

• In all, Mao’s memory in China today is a two-edged sword of legitimacy for the CCP: an ambivalent symbol of national pride for educated Chinese, a cool brand for middle-class youth, and a talisman of selfworth for China’s disposed who have suffered under reform andglobalization.Behind these meanings reside wider historical meanings of hope and despair analyzed by scholars in Western countries, as well as the inspiration Mao provided for rural revolutions inAsia,Africa,andLatin America.
  • Timothy Cheek,"Mao, Revolution, and Memory", inA Critical Introduction to Mao(2010) edited by Timothy Cheek

• Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?
  • Chen Yun,a leading Communist Party official under Mao andDeng Xiaoping

• When Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China and Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party since 1943, died on September 9th, 1976, China was in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, which Mao had initiated a decade earlier. This was meant to be the first of a series of revolutions to rejuvenate socialism, ridding it of capitalist corruption and bureaucratic rigidity. The Cultural Revolution had been preceded by a series of social and political campaigns relentlessly prosecuted by Mao to push China toward the promised paradise of socialism. Mao believed that China could shrug off poverty and jump on to the “golden highway” to socialism if, and only if, the Chinese people, united in thought and action, threw all their talents and energy behind the collective cause. Unselfish and property-less, the Chinese people would be reborn. Having shed the burden of history and Chinese feudalism on the one hand, and without the distraction of material interests and western capitalism on the other, the Chinese people would respond to nothing but the call of socialism. However, instead of paradise, Mao’s deeply flawed ideology and ill-thought-out revolutions not only brought to the Chinese people the most lethal famine in human history, but also cut them off from their cultural roots and the progress of modern times. An enterprising people were quickly reduced to lifeless cogs in the socialist machine.
  It can be a hard truth to accept, but the disaster Mao inflicted on the Chinese people was matched only by his ineradicable accomplishments. “In the final reckoning,” wroteThe Economist,“Mao must be accepted as one of history’s great achievers: for devising a peasant-centered revolutionary strategy which enabled China’s Communist Party to seize power, against Marx’s prescriptions, from bases in the countryside; for directing the transformation of China from a feudal society, wracked by war and bled bycorruption,into a unified, egalitarian state where nobody starves; and for reviving national pride and confidence so that China could, in Mao’s words, ‘stand up’ among the great powers.” WhileThe Economistwas seriously mistaken about the absence of starvation in Mao’s China, few could deny the inspiration and influence of Mao’s revolution on both China and the rest of the world. Richard Nixon, who reopeneddiplomatic relations between China and the United Statesin 1972, called Mao “a unique man in a generation of great revolutionary leaders.”PakistaniPremierZulfikar Ali Bhutto,the last foreign statesman to see him before his death, called Mao “the son of revolution, its very essence, indeed, its rhythm and romance, the supreme architect of a brilliant new order shaking the world,” adding, “Men like Mao come once in a century.”
  • Ronald Coaseand Ning Wang,How China Became Capitalist(2012), Chap. 1: China at the Death of Mao

• It is worthwhile pointing out that even though Mao was directly responsible for the decentralization of the Chinese political and economic system, other forces, more elusive but no less decisive, were also at work. The size of the Chinese continent would make life difficult for anycentral planner.As an age-oldChinese axiomputs it, “Heavenis high and theemperorfar away.” Some local autonomy was therefore inevitable. Historically, the tension between administrativecentralization(or what is calledjunxianinChinese literature) and decentralization (or what is calledfengjian) has been an absorbing issue for China’s rulers ever since theFirst Emperor of Qinunified China in 221 BC. Even though Imperial China is remembered for its administrative innovation, a centralizedbureaucracystaffed by civilians who were selected through thecivil service examination,centralizationcoexisted withdecentralization.Centralization may be the best-known aspect of traditional Chinese politics, but the political system was kept in order by balancing the competing forces of centralization and decentralization, like the Yin and Yang in Tai Chi.
  Even though China under Mao had built up, mostly from scratch, an impressive nationwide industrial base, its economic performance was an agonizing disappointment. But while Mao left behind poverty and a poorly functioning economic system, he also created much discontent among a large number of people, most of whom were desperate for change. At the end of Mao’s rule, China was left with a fractured society, a fragmented economy, and a confused and disoriented politics, crawling along what was once believed the golden highway to socialism. With the end of Mao’s era, China was bound to open a new chapter.
  • Ronald Coaseand Ning Wang,How China Became Capitalist(2012), Chap. 1: China at the Death of Mao

D

• Mao’s life and his character are difficult to sum up because he was a complex man who behaved in contradictory ways. He embraced an imported modernizing ideology yet remained profoundly Chinese in his outlook. He was an idealist who produced inspirational writings but was prepared to accept suffering and death on an unimaginable scale to achieve his aims. He was a despot who proclaimed that ‘it is right to rebel’. He was an ideologue who wrote poetry. Mao recognized the contradictory nature of his own character when he wrote he combined a ‘kingly’ disposition demanding to dominate and suborn, with a ‘monkey spirit’ that urged him to run riot and throw all into disorder.Henry Kissingersaw the kingly Mao, observing that he ‘distilled raw concentrated willpower’ and ‘exuded in almost tangible form the overwhelming drive to prevail’. These qualities contributed to the survival of the communist forces during the period of armed struggle and their remarkable victory. Once China was united, however, they were often harmful. Mao used his immense prestige to intimidate his colleagues and get his own way. He became increasingly autocratic, refused to listen to those who disagreed with him, and stubbornly enforced bad decisions. He bears responsibility for the horrors of the famine brought about by the Great Leap Forward, and for the tardy response to it which produced a death toll of tens of millions. His increasing tendency to interpret any criticism as a challenge to his leadership so intimidated his colleagues that in his last years many feared to express opinions at all. His Cultural Revolution caused immense suffering and social and economic disruption, yet until his death all leaders had to pay tribute to its achievements.
  • Delia Davin,Mao: A Very Short Introduction(2013)

• The consequences of Mao’s actions were inevitably in proportion to the prodigious power he exercised, and the enormous population he ruled over. As a unifier and modernizer his achievements were immense, but his errors caused appalling suffering on a scale that is difficult to grasp. Hisutopiandreams, his periodic refusal to engage with reality, his ruthlessness, and his determination to win imposed terrible suffering on the Chinese people and cost millions of them their lives. He was ready to accept huge costs because he believed that suffering and death were inevitable in the pursuit of his cause. Mao’s revolution improved life for those who survived it, bringing the economic development, education, and modernization on which subsequent progress was built. It also reunified China and made the country a force to be reckoned with in the world. He left an indelible mark on history.
  • Delia Davin,Mao: A Very Short Introduction(2013)

• I should remind you that Chairman Mao dedicated most of his life to China, that he saved the party and the revolution in their most critical moments, that, in short, his contribution was so great that, without him, the Chinese people would have had a much harder time finding the right path out of the darkness. We also shouldn't forget that it was Chairman Mao who combined the teachings of Marx and Lenin with the realities of Chinese history—that it was he who applied those principles, creatively, not only to politics but to philosophy, art, literature, and military strategy. Yes, before the1960s—or, better, up until the late 1950s—some of Chairman Mao's ideas were, for the most part, correct. Furthermore, many of his principles brought us victory and allowed us to gain power. Then, unfortunately, in the last few years of his life, he committed many grave errors—the Cultural Revolution, above all. And much disgrace was brought upon the party, the country, the people.
  • Deng Xiaoping,interview withOriana Fallaci,August 1980

• We know that Mao was the key architect of the Great Leap Forward, and thus bears the main responsibility for the catastrophe that followed. He had to work hard to push through his vision, bargaining, cajoling, goading, occasionally tormenting or persecuting his colleagues. Unlike Stalin, he did not drag his rivals into a dungeon to have them executed, but he did have the power to remove them from office, terminating their careers – and the many privileges which came with a top position in the party. The campaign to overtakeBritainstarted with Chairman Mao, and it ended when he grudgingly allowed his colleagues to return to a more gradual approach in economic planning a few years later. But he would never have been able to prevail ifLiu ShaoqiandZhou Enlai,the next two most powerful party leaders, had acted against him. They, in turn, whipped up support from other senior colleagues, as chains of interests and alliances extended all the way down to the village – as is documented here for the first time. Ferocious purges were carried out, as lacklustre cadres were replaced with hard, unscrupulous men who trimmed their sails to benefit from the radical winds blowing from Beijing.
  • Frank Dikotter,Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962(2011), Preface

• Mao set about ensnaring his enemies with the precision of a trapper. But once the stage was set and the Cultural Revolution erupted in the summer of 1966, it took on a life of its own, with unintended consequences that even the most consummate strategist could not have anticipated. Mao wished to purge the higher echelons of power, so he could hardly rely on the party machine to get the job done. He turned to young, radical students instead, some of them no older than fourteen, giving them licence to denounce all authority and ‘bombard the headquarters’. But party officials had honed their survival skills during decades of political infighting, and few were about to be outflanked by a group of screaming, self-righteousRed Guards.Many deflected the violence away from themselves by encouraging the youngsters to raid the homes of class enemies, stigmatised as social outcasts. Some cadres even managed to organise their own Red Guards, all in the name of Mao Zedong Thought and the Cultural Revolution. In the parlance of the time, they ‘raised the red flag in order to fight the red flag’. The Red Guards started fighting each other, divided over who the true ‘capitalist roaders’ inside the party were. In some places, party activists and factory workers rallied in support of their besieged leaders.
  In response, the Chairman urged the population at large to join the revolution, calling on all to ‘seize power’ and overthrow the ‘bourgeois power holders’. The result was a social explosion on an unprecedented scale, as every pent-up frustration caused by years of communist rule was released. There was no lack of people who harboured grievances against party officials. But the ‘revolutionary masses’, instead of neatly sweeping away all followers of the ‘bourgeois reactionary line’, also became divided, as different factions jostled for power and started fighting each other. Mao used the people during the Cultural Revolution; but, equally, many people manipulated the campaign to pursue their own goals.
  By January 1967 the chaos was such that the army intervened, seeking to push through the revolution and bring the situation under control by supporting the ‘true proletarian left’. As different military leaders supported different factions, all of them equally certain they represented the true voice of Mao Zedong, the country slid into civil war.
  Still, the Chairman prevailed. He was cold and calculating, but also erratic, whimsical and fitful, thriving in willed chaos. He improvised, bending and breaking millions along the way. He may not have been in control, but he was always in charge, relishing a game in which he could constantly rewrite the rules. Periodically he stepped in to rescue a loyal follower or, contrariwise, to throw a close colleague to the wolves. A mere utterance of his decided the fates of countless people, as he declared one or another faction to be ‘counter-revolutionary’. His verdict could change overnight, feeding a seemingly endless cycle of violence in which people scrambled to prove their loyalty to the Chairman.
  • Frank Dikotter,The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962-1976(2016), Preface

• Mao's impact on Chinese politics will probably be reinterpreted for as long as that impact is politically significant - and it remains considerable ten years after his death, both among reformers who have redacted their own 'new text' and among the 'leftists' who resist this construal. To Deng Xiaoping and his 'practice faction', the 'living soul' of Mao Zedong Thought consists of the mass line, 'seeking truth from facts', and independence - ofclass struggle,Mao's 'key link', the less said the better. Mao's notions of a regenerativebourgeoisie,of 'struggle between the two lines' within the Party, of 'continuing therevolutionunder thedictatorship of the proletariat', have been essentially repudiated, thereby removing this source of theoretical embarrassment and politicalanarchism.Mao's deep concern with distributive justice, as translated into economicegalitarianismand a smothering ideologicalconformity,has likewise gone by the board. The posthumous interpretation of what Mao was wont to call 'self-reliance' (zili gengsheng) thoroughly discounts the old economic indices therefore (eschewal ofloans,investment,or very muchtrade) in favour of 'opening to the outside world', compensating with a more heavy-handed appeal to Chinese nationalism. The post-Mao leadership has thus in effect sought to preserve only those aspects of Mao's legacy which are utterly flexible, while dismissing those to which he attributed immortal importance.
  • Lowell Dittmer, "Mao Zedong: Ten Years After",The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs,No. 16 (Jul., 1986)

• In his enhanced identification with revolutionary youth, Mao no longer found the Party's standard "from the top down" approach to mass mobilization acceptable, and in spontaneously rebuking Liu and Deng and ordering the work teams withdrawn, he authorized a momentous departure from previous traditions of Party-mass linkage. Having ventured this innovation, however, he found it impossible either to allow the rebels to consummate their victory or to permit the entire experiment in spontaneous mobilization to be negated. Instead, from 1968 through 1976 he vacillated, sometimes permitting repression of the "revolutionary masses," sometimes kicking over the traces and permitting the masses to rise in relatively untrammeledanarchy(up to a point); as a result, mass mobilization became devalued either as a mechanism for elite implementation of policy or for the purpose of popular monitoring of deviant elites. Similarly, it was his prescient recognition of the problem of his own aging and debility that led Mao to attempt to designate his own heir apparent well in advance and to encourage the rise of revolutionary successors in a generational sense, but having undertaken such preparations he found them in direct conflict with his own fierce will to live, and thus repeatedly reversed them. On the issues of both mobilization and succession, we have argued that although part of the reason for Mao's oscillatory tendencies has to do with the constraints of a complex political reality, basically he was afflicted by his own crippling ambivalence. The result was an unusually protracted and debilitating crisis of succession.
  • Lowell Dittmer, "Mao and the Politics of Revolutionary Mortality",Asian Survey,Vol. 27, No. 3 (Mar., 1987)

• I suppose some people will say on balance Mao did more good than harm.
  • Diane Abbott,onBBC One'sThis Weekduring a debate over who was the history's worst dictator.[2](27/11/2015)

• One never left a meeting with him feeling indifferent... He spoke slowly and quietly, weighing each word. He never said anything foolish. There was something sad in him, and he often behaved strangely. Once he arrived unexpect­edly and he told me thatBuddhismwas a good religion; that though he was a prince,Buddhahad done much to improve the lot of the poor. Then, as suddenly as he had arrived, he left. He was always very affectionate with me. [Oriana Fallaci:You're unable to see him as an enemy, isn't that true, Holiness?] Yes. Speaking as a Buddhist, I cannot accept the word enemy.... Mao Tse-tung is neither cunning nor diplomatic. I told him what his generals were doing inTibet,and he understood. Perhaps he couldn't stop them. Or perhaps he has changed. I am unable to reconcile the Mao Tse-tung I knew with the Mao Tse-tung of today. He must be in the grip of some madness or some infirmity. The cultural revolution, for example. The name is lovely, but there is no substance: it's the dementia of an old man. I cannot see him in this dementia.
  • Dalai Lama, quoted in:Oriana Fallaci.(2011). Interview with the Dalai Lama, in: Interviews with history and conversations with power. New York: Rizzoli.

• We shall presently argue that there is indeed a great deal to learn from China. For that to happen, however, it is crucial to have a clear view of the roots of Chinese triumphs and successes, and also of the sources of its troubles and failures. It is, of course, first of all necessary to distinguish between - and contrast - the different phases of the Chinese experience, in particular, before and after theeconomic reforms initiated in 1979.But going beyond that, it is also important to take note of the interdependence between the achievements in the different periods. We argue, in particular, that the accomplishments relating to education, health care, land reforms, and social change in the pre-reform period made significantly positive contributions to the achievements of the post-reform period. This is so in terms of their role not only in sustained highlife expectancyand related achievements, but also in providing firm support for economic expansion based on market reforms.
  It may have been very far from Mao's own intentions to develop literacy and basic health care in ways that would help to promote market-based, internationally-oriented enterprises (though that dialectical contrariness must have some interest for a Marxist theorist). But these structural achievements in the pre-reform period have certainly served as direct and valuable inputs in fostering economic performance in post-reform China. In drawing lessons from China, these apparently contrary interconnections can be particularly important.
  • Jean DrèzeandAmartya Sen,India: Development and Participation(2nd ed., 2002), Chap. 4: India and China

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• The simple facts of Mao's career seem incredible: in a vast land of 400 million people, at age 28 with a dozen others to found a party and in the next fifty years to win power, organize, and remold the people and reshape the land—history records no greater achievement.Alexander,Caesar,Charlemagne,all thekingsofEurope,Napoleon,Bismarck,Lenin—no predecessor can equal Mao Tse-tung's scope of accomplishment, for no other country was ever so ancient and so big as China.
  Indeed Mao's achievement is almost beyond our comprehension, unless we note the trends which culminated in his career: first, the new growth ofChinese mass nationalismin response to Western and then Japanese invasion; second, the movement of upper-class literati to lead the peasant masses toward a better life; third, Soviet Russia's transmission of its theory and practice of revolution, including united front tactics, through theCommunist International (Comintern).Sun Yat-sengot Comintern help only at the end of his career in 1923, two years before his death. Mao and his colleagues began with it. They got started also with Kuomintang help.
  • John King Fairbank,The United States and China(1983), Chap. 11: The Rise of Communist Party

• On the verbal level Mao's homely exhortations are studded withChinese proverbandmetaphor,both classical and colloquial. He castigates neutralists who would "sit on top of a mountain to watch the tigers fight" as well as supercilious cadres who think arguing with peasants is like "playing music to a cow." No one who has skirted a pit of nightsoil covered with maggots can fail to understand Mao's abhorrence of what he calls "the deep, stinking cesspool of Chinese reaction." To quote Confucius' sage advice, "think twice," does not necessarily promote Confucianism, but it helps to fit communism into the Chinese landscape.
  On the level of theory, Mao continued to warp and bend Communist doctrine to fit it to local needs. Stalin had asserted that the Soviet experience which reached socialism through the "dictatorship of the proletariat" offered the only path to socialism, which must be followed by the people's democracies of eastern Europe and presumably by all others. But the CCP after 1949 set up a "people's democratic dictatorship" and claimed that a mere "hegemony of the proletariat" at the head of a united front and a coalition government representing the whole "people," a combination of all "revolutionary classes," could lead China to socialism and moreover could do it by a gradual, persuasive, nonviolent transformation, quite unlike the abrupt and violent change postulated by Lenin and Stalin.
  • John King Fairbank,The United States and China(1983), Chap. 16: The Second Revolution

• Mao Tse-tung in his turn unified the country as a hero risen from the people, like the founders of theHanandMing.He went them one better and swam the Yangtze to encourage his people to use and overcome nature. Mao's armies in the 1940s were not a scourge upon the peasantry but avenged their wrongs. He "won the hearts of the people" sufficiently to secure food and soldiers from territorial bases. He attracted college students to staff his administration. His ideology claimed the Mandate of History, if not of Heaven. Once in power, his regime surveyed, classified, and redistributed both the land and the populace. Rising to power with barbarian help, he yet patronized Chinese culture and employed scholars to document the record of the previous regime and point the lesson of its fall. He celebrated the revolution in classical poetry, and his calligraphy adorned public places. His example mightily affected the peripheral states. InPekingin front of the great palace built by the Ming Emperors of the fifteenth century he built a great square, whither came delegations from Southeast Asia and the Western Regions to watch the great processions. Today Mao's body lies embalmed in the center of the square.
  • John King Fairbank,The United States and China(1983), Chap. 17: Perspectives: China and Ourselves

• The secret of Mao’s success at Yan’an was his flexibility at combining short-term and long-term goals. In the short term he espoused in 1940 the New Democracy as a united-front doctrine that would embrace all the Chinese people who would subscribe to CCP leadership. For the long term, he steadily developed the party organization, including its control over intellectuals.The Yan’an rectification movementof 1942–1944 (more fully described below) established the campaign style of mobilization, including individual isolation, terror, struggle, confession, humiliation, and subservience. Party members would come to know it well and, in time, so would the public. It was one of Mao’s achievements, with roots both in Leninism–Stalinism and in Imperial Confucianism.
  • John King Fairbankand Merle Goldman,China: A New History(2006), Chap. 16: China’s War of Resistance

• Mao’s sinification of Marxism may fruitfully be compared with the failure ofTaiping Christianity.In the 1850sHong’s claim to be the younger brother ofJesussoon made him anathema to the foreign source of his vision, the Western missionaries, whom he did not even deal with in his profoundarrogance.In short order he made himself both aChristianhereticand within China a foreign subversive, achieving the worst of both worlds. By contrast, Mao, though eventually anathematized by Moscow, succeeded for some time in cooperating with the Comintern, and when he sinified his Marxism, he masked it in a coating of orthodox terminology. Both Hong and Mao started out with only a rudimentary grasp of the foreign doctrine, and both broke free of the domination offoreigners—Hong of themissionaries,Mao of the Comintern. But of course the differences between them far outweigh such similarities.
  • John King Fairbankand Merle Goldman,China: A New History(2006), Chap. 16: China’s War of Resistance

• An outsider’s understanding of Mao requires a feat ofimagination,first to recognize the nature of his supremacy. Mao had two careers, one as rebel leader, one as an updatedemperor.He had gained the power of the latter but evidently retained the self-image of the former. Because authority in China came from the top down, as was recognized even in the mass line, once the CCP had taken power its leader became sacrosanct, above all the rest of mankind, not only the object of a cult of veneration but also the acknowledged superior of everyone in the organization. So much of the CCP had been put together by Mao that it could be regarded as his creation, and if he wanted to reform it, that was his privilege. Only if we regard him as a monarch in succession to scores of emperors can we imagine why the leadership of the CCP, trained to be loyal, went along with his piecemeal assault on and destruction of them.
  • John King Fairbankand Merle Goldman,China: A New History(2006), Chap. 20: The Cultural Revolution 1966–1976

• Future historians may conclude that Mao’s role was to try to destroy the age-old bifurcation of China between a small educated ruling stratum and the vast mass of common people. We do not yet know how far he succeeded. The economy was developing, but it was left to his successors to create a new political structure.
  • John King Fairbankand Merle Goldman,China: A New History(2006), Chap. 20: The Cultural Revolution 1966–1976

• That was also the case for the whole experience since the foundation of the PRC, when Mao had been Stalin, Lenin, Marx and the First Emperor rolled into one, a figure from the past who was set on being a resolutely modern revolutionary with Chinese characteristics. Though unable to regainTaiwan,he had enjoyed great successes, reunifying the mainland and making it into a major, nuclear-armed global player, which punched above its real weight as it inspired would-be emulators round the world and allowed the leaders of the greatest superpower to come to pay court.
  Backed by the immense cult of his personality, the charismatic, narcissistic Son of Heaven, who thought himself capable of changinghuman naturethrough his mass campaigns, could demand complete loyalty to the cause of revolution as he chose to define it. Nobody and nothing could be excused from utter dedication and readiness to contribute whatever was demanded. Private life meant nothing. People were a blank sheet of paper, mere numbers to be used as the leader saw fit. Maoist autocracy reached heights oftotalitarianismunparalleled byHitleror Stalin, accompanied by massive hypocrisy as the leader who preached simplicity, morality and proletarian values had his favourite fish flown up from Wuhan, dallied with a succession of young ladies, had rarely used villas built for him at great cost, and raked in the royalties from hisLittle Red Book.A potent terror organization ensured obedience, a huge gulag swallowed up real or imagined opponents, and a massive propaganda machine fed the myths. Yet it is hard to argue that Mao did not inspire adulation. He was a monster, but a monster whom people revered as the symbol of a new China that would wipe away all the suffering and weakness of the hundred years before 1949 and who offered at least a promise of an ‘iron rice bowl’ of food and welfare, however much it was contradicted by his actions.
  • Jonathan Fenby,The Penguin History of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present(2019), Chap. 25: Only Heaven Knows

• M ao Zedong had more power over more people for a longer time than anyone in history. He was also a mass murderer, responsible for more deaths than any leader in history. Mao developed a new form of Communism, founding his revolution on the rural poor. He established a Soviet state in a remote corner of China, then finally united the country through a devastating civil war. From the beginning, he massacred millions of opponents, but the greatest destruction followed his path to build China by making steel in its backyards, tens of millions starved in the aftermath. His Cultural Revolution followed, destroying much of China's heritage. The subject of supreme adulation, Mao died peacefully of old age.
  • Clive Foss,The Tyrants: 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption,London: Quercus Publishing, 2006,ISBN 1905204965,p. 151

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• To find positive elements in Mao Zedong's thought and action is not to deny that he was a dictator. Although he constantly warned against indiscriminate resort toimprisonmentandexecution,he was ruthless when he believed he had to be; the revolutionary consensus was to be protected at all costs from its enemies. Yet to assume because most dictators areparanoicsorkleptocratsor closetfascistsdoes not mean that all are. I do not see Mao as another Stalin or another Hitler. I see him more as I seeOliver Cromwell- a man of profoundlydemocraticinstincts forced by circumstances to play the tyrant in defence of his democratic values and ill-served by his major generals.
  • Jack Gray, "Mao in Perspective",The China Quarterly(2006)

• As late as 1947, Mao insisted that his program corresponded to that ofSun.Until December of that year, Mao insisted that his 'new democracy' would protect the 'bourgeoisie' and 'their industry and commerce.' Because of China's backwardness, he would continue to supportcapitalistdevelopment and ensure that both public and private, capital and labor, interests would benefit from the revolution.
  • A. James Gregor,Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time,New Brunswick: NJ, Transaction Publishers, 2001, p. 191, footnote 19

• The leaders of the Chinese Soviets are Mao Tse-tung and Chu Teh. They are associated so closely that for a long time people thought they were the same man; one heard of the famous "Red general" Mao-Chu, or Chu-Mao. Mao Tse-tung (pronounced roughly "Mow Tzuh-doong" ), the chairman of the Central Executive Committee, is political chief. General Chu Teh ( "Joo Duh" ) is military leader. An odd point is that "Chu Teh" literally means- Red Virtue!
  The two are intimately close friends, but differ widely in character and attributes. They complement each other nicely. Mao is a philosopher, an intellectual; Chu Teh is an executive, a soldier. Mao, I heard it said, is the Red brain, Chu Teh the Red heart. A calm man, of peasant stock, Mao is a builder, a dreamer, a creator; he has never been outside China. Chu Teh, much warmer in temperament, less aloof, has traveled widely; he has great human quality, and people talk of him as they might talk of Lincoln. Mao could hold his own anywhere among Chinese intellectuals; Chu Teh talks little. Both have a considerable sense of humor, though Mao's is more sardonic; both have highly modern minds. Mao, perhaps, is the greater man; but he would not be where he is had not Chu Teh developed and led his unique army. I have heard Mao described as equal intellectually to Lenin.
  • John Gunther,Inside Asia(1939), 31st edition, New York: Harper & Brothers, hardcover, p. 216

• Mao Tse-tung was born in 1893 in a village in Hunan. His father was a peasant, and he began to work at the age of six on the small family farm. His mother was a considerate woman, his father exceptionally severe; Mao records that he was never allowed eggs or meat, though the other farm boys had these luxuries occasionally. He had remarkable strength of character and ambition, and a fierce urgency for education; he struggled to go to school, and at seventeen tramped alone to the near-by city of Changsha where there was an academy. Came a tremendous event: where he saw for the first time a map of the world. He pored over it gluttonously. He writes, "I went to the library in the morning when it opened. At noon I paused only long enough to buy and consume two rice cakes, which were my daily lunch. I stayed in the library every day reading until it closed." He studiedAdam Smith,Darwin,Spencer,Mill.One book that influenced him wasGreat Heroes of the World,which contained biographies ofNapoleon,Peter the Great,Rousseau.He read about theAmerican Revolutionand came across a pregnant sentence: "After eight years of difficult war,Washingtonwon a victory and built up his nation. "
  • John Gunther,Inside Asia(1939), 31st edition, New York: Harper & Brothers, hardcover, p. 216-217

• Mao began to write, turned to journalism, and found himself on the threshold of politics. With his Chinese practicality, he put an advertisement in the Changsha newspaper, asking that "hardened and determined" young men interested in patriotism and politics get in touch with him. Changsha became too small for him. He had seven dollars. He bought shoes and an umbrella, and set out to see the world. His instincts were predominantly nationalist at first; he wanted to free China from foreign domination. Imperialism, he proceeded to see, was inextricably associated with capitalism, and he became a socialist. His revolutionary career began in 1927, when he was appointed president of the first Chinese Peasants Union; his rise was rapid, and by 1930 he was chairman of the Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Committee. Then came the Long March; the great years began. Chiang Kai-shek offered a reward of $250,000 (Chinese) for him, dead or alive; his first wife and sister were caught and executed. His present wife- a typical enough touch- learned many details of his life for the first time when, in her company, he dictated his autobiography to Edgar Snow. She was severely wounded during the Long March, when he walked 6,000 miles.
  • John Gunther,Inside Asia(1939), 31st edition, New York: Harper & Brothers, hardcover, p. 217

• Mao Zedong! Amazing man! Imagine him and his followers wandering through China day and night, fighting for their goal. What an effort. He has also written beautiful prose and excellent poems.
  • Carl XVI Gustaf of Swedenin Damernas Värld 34/1972 answering the question "which man has made the most influence on you?" Translated from Swedish.

• He [Chairman Mao] appears to me as a father and he himself considered me as a son. [We had] very good relations. The only problem was that on many occasions, when official dinners were held, Chairman Mao always used to bring me to his side. So, then as Chinese tradition, Chairman Mao himself would use his chopsticks to put some food in my plate. So, in a way it was a great honour, but in a way I feel little fear...he coughing too much, a chain smoker, so I might get some germs [laughing].
  • Tenzin Gyatso,14th Dalai Lama in"Mao was like a father to me, says the Dalai Lama"by Hasan Suroor,The Hindu.com,(June 2012)]

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• InLos Angelesthey [theBlack Pantherswould run classes every Saturday in "political education" in which their members had to memorize sections of Mao's little red book. If they failed to memorize their assignment, they were beaten up. The same thing would happen if they failed to sell their weekly quota of their party newspaper. The Panthers picked up the Maoist slogan "All power grows out of the barrel of a gun" and made an ideological fetish out of it. That phrase has to be one of the stupidest things Mao ever said, because what power really grows out of is the organized consciousness of millions of people. At some point guns may become important tactically in the revolutionary process in some countries, but that isn't where power comes from-and a good thing, too, because revolutionaries are always going to be outgunned by the forces defending the old order.
  • Dorothy Ray HealeyCalifornia Red: A Life in the American Communist Party(1993)

• Even Mao's casual remark, "Sweet potatotastes good, I like it, "became a slogan seen everywhere in the countryside.
  • Shaorong Huang, "Political Slogans as Leverage in Conflict and Conflict Management during China's Cultural Revolution Movement," inChinese Conflict Management and Resolution,ed. Guo-Ming Chen and Ringo Ma (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002), 242.

• Mao’s China has contradictory legacies. Mao’s party-state copied a lot of techniques of power from Stalin’s Soviet Union, heavily relying on the repressive and bureaucratic apparatus to silenceintellectualsand destroy careers and lives. But Mao’sparty-statealso departed from Stalin’s one in significant way. Besides top-down repression, Mao also resorted over and over again to mass mobilization to achieve social control, letting the zealous and even hysterical masses to help the Party exterminate its enemies. While the kulaks in the Soviet Union were taken care of by firing squads, China’s “landlords” and “rich peasants” were humiliated in public trials, many of which led to mob violence and death.
  Mao’s preference for mass mobilization, added to his suspicion of a state bureaucracy over which had lost personal control, ignited the Cultural Revolution that created an unintended legacy yet to be fully understood. The experience of underprivileged kids, including those previously persecuted as bad elements, being encouraged to assault cadres and seize power from local party organs, must have generated a lasting impact and formed collective memories in Chinese society. Cadres' and their chindren's experience of being attacked by rebellious Red Guard factions must have planted the seed for a long-lasting nightmare of the party-state elite.
  • Ho-fung Hung, in "Is Mao Still Dead?: A ChinaFile Conversation"(February 12, 2015)

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• Mao is dead. Very dead. The indicator of how dead he is happens to be how much he is now cited as an “authority” for the most un-Maoist of endeavors. China is not undergoing a Maoist or even a Mao revival. It is undergoing a tragedy-to-farce progression (Marx, yes): Mao’s first coming was in many ways a tragedy, insofar as he tried to build socialism in China. He failed so miserably that he now can be called upon as an incantation to build a variety of viciously undemocratic capitalism that is so far from his own life endeavor that it would be farcically laughable if it weren’t so depressingly crass.
  • Rebecca E. Karl, in "Is Mao Still Dead?: A ChinaFile Conversation"(February 12, 2015)

• Today's mic-hogging, fast-talking, contentious young (and old) lefties continue to hawk little books and pamphlets on revolution, always with choice words or documents fromMarx,Mao,evenMalcolm.But I've never seen a broadside with "A Black Feminist Statement or even the writings ofAngela DavisorJune JordanorBarbara OmoladeorFlo KennedyorAudre Lordeorbell hooksorMichelle Wallace,at least not from the groups who call themselves leftist. These women's collective wisdom has provided the richest insights into American radicalism's most fundamental questions: How can we build a multiracial movement? Who are the working class and what do they desire? How do we resolve the Negro Question and the Woman Question? What is freedom?
  • Robin KelleyFreedom Dreams(2002)

• A ninety-year-oldDu Boiswas hopeful, too, in another way. "Today, the United States is fighting world progress, progress which must be toward socialism and against colonialism," he said, speaking to seven hundred students and faculty atHoward Universityin April 1958. Later in the year, having gotten hispassportback, Du Bois touredEastern Europe,the Soviet Union, and Communist China, where he happily met Chairman Mao Tse-tung. When Mao started musing about the "diseased psychology" ofAfrican Americans,showing that he was attuned to the latest racist social science, Du Bois interjected. Blacks were not diseased psychologically; they lacked incomes, Du Bois explained, inciting a debate and a fusillade of questions from Mao. When Du Bois expressed some of his failures as an activist, Mao interjected. Activists only failed when they stopped struggling. "This, I gather," Mao said, "you have never done."
  • Ibram X. Kendi,Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America(2016), New York: Bold Type Books, p. 368

• Mao was wrong about the unique nature of his tactics. In their emphasis on isolating towns by dominating the surrounding countryside, they derived directly from the methods of the horse peoples who had been such persistent enemies of China for nearly two thousand years. But there were novel features in Mao’s methods: first, his belief in the ‘classless’ – ‘soldiers,bandits,robbers,beggars,andprostitutes’ –were grist to the revolution’s mill, ‘people capable of fighting very bravely and, if properly fed, a revolutionary force’; second, his perception that in the face of a more powerful enemy a war could nonetheless be won if one had the patience to avoid seeking a decision until the enemy’s frustration and exhaustion robbed him of the chance of victory. This theory of ‘protracted war’ will be remembered as Mao’s principal contribution to military theory. After his triumph over Chiang Kai-shek in China, it was adopted by theVietnamesein their wars, firstagainst the French,and thenagainst the Americans.
  • John Keegan,A History of Warfare(1994), p. 51

• [Mao] has played politics with Asian cunning.... [and] has always been a master at concealing his true intention.... I was always on my guard with him.
  • Nikita Khrushchev,as quoted in A. Doak Barnett (1977)China and the major powers in East Asia,page 352

• Mao’s study, a medium-sized room, was across the hallway. Manuscripts lined bookshelves along every wall; books covered the table and the floor; it looked more the retreat of a scholar than the audience room of the all-powerful leader of the world’s most populous nation. On my first few visits a simple wood-frame bed stood in one corner; later it disappeared. Our first sight was of a semicircle of easy chairs, all with brownish slipcovers as if a thrifty middle-class family wanted to protect upholstery too expensive to replace. Between each pair of chairs stood a V-shaped coffee table, covered with a white napkin, fitting into the angle made by adjoining arm rests. The tables next to Mao, being generally piled with books, had just enough room for the ever-present cup of jasmine tea. Two standing lamps with unusually large circular shades stood behind the chairs; in front of Mao, to his right, was a spittoon. When one entered the room, Mao rose from one of the easy chairs; on the last couple of visits he required two assistants’ help, but he never failed so to greet his visitors. One usually cannot tell when meeting a famous and powerful leader to what extent one is impressed by his personality or awed by his status and repute. In Mao’s case there could be no doubt. Except for the suddenness of the summons there was no ceremony. The interior appointments were as modest as the exterior. Mao just stood there, surrounded by books, tall and powerfully built for a Chinese. He fixed the visitor with a smile both penetrating and slightly mocking, warning by his bearing that there was no point in seeking to deceive this specialist in the foibles and duplicity of man. I have met no one, with the possible exception ofCharles de Gaulle,who so distilled raw, concentrated willpower. He was planted there with a female attendant close by to help steady him (and on my last visits to hold him up); he dominated the room—not by the pomp that in most states confers a degree of majesty on the leaders, but by exuding in almost tangible form the overwhelming drive to prevail.
  • Henry Kissinger,White House Years(1979)

• On September 9, 1976, Mao succumbed to his illness, leaving his successors with his achievements and premonitions, with the legacy of his grandiosity and brutality, of great vision distorted by self-absorption. He left behind a China unified as it had not been for centuries, with most vestiges of the original regime eliminated, clearing away the underbrush for reforms never intended by the Chairman. If China remains united and emerges as a twenty-first-century superpower, Mao may hold, for many Chinese, the same ambiguous yet respected role in Chinese history as Qin Shihuang, the Emperor he personally revered: the dynasty-founding autocrat who dragged China into the next era by conscripting its population for a massive national exertion, and whose excesses were later acknowledged by some as a necessary evil. For others, the tremendous suffering Mao inflicted on his people will dwarf his achievements.
  Two strands of policy had been competing with each other through the turbulences of Mao’s rule. There was the revolutionary thrust that saw China as a moral and political force, insisting on dispensing its unique precepts by example to an awestruck world. There was the geopolitical China coolly assessing trends and manipulating them to its own advantage. There was a China seeking coalitions for the first time in its history but also the one defiantly challenging the entire world. Mao had taken a war-wracked country and maneuvered it between competing domestic factions, hostilesuperpowers,an ambivalentThird World,and suspicious neighbors. He managed to have China participate in each overlapping concentric circle but commit itself to none. China had survived wars, tensions, and doubts while its influence grew, and in the end, it became anemerging superpowerwhose Communist form of government survived the collapse of theCommunist world.Mao achieved this at horrendous cost by relying on the tenacity and perseverance of the Chinese people, using their endurance and cohesion, which so often exasperated him, as the bedrock of his edifice.
  • Henry Kissinger,On China(2011), Chap. 11: The End of the Mao Era

• Mao Zedong openly declared that "man must conquer nature," setting loose a devastating onslaught on the natural world that transitioned seamlessly from clear-cuts under communism to mega-dams under capitalism.
  • Naomi KleinThis Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate(2014)

• Mao’s understanding of the Marxist theory of social change has frequently been misrepresented. It is often suggested that Mao turned his back on the materialist philosophy of Marxism, glorifying rather the capacity of ideas to transform society. He is thus depicted as an “idealist” or “voluntarist,” one who regarded the ideological-political superstructure of society and struggles within it as the primary source ofsocial change;the economic base, which Marx had attributed with this role, became in Mao’s mind pliantly malleable to pressures for change from the superstructure. Yet, a careful exploration of this dimension of his thought does not bear out this interpretation. While his views on the capacity ofpolitics,ideology,andcultureto contribute to social change did go beyond that of a mechanical and reductionistmaterialismand did vary, his general perspective remained aneconomistsone; he continued to regard the economic foundation of society—forces and relations of production—as the ultimately determining factor in history.
  • Nick Knight,Rethinking Mao: Explorations in Mao Zedong's Thought(2007), Introduction

• Mao was thus not content to lead a purely rural revolution, and he strove where possible to alter the sociological composition of the Party and military in favor of the working class and during the period of the Jiangxi Soviet to construct its embryonic state institutions in ways that expressed the power of the working class. While he put great store in the peasants as the “main force" of the Chinese Revolution, he was adamant that it would not be their consciousness which dictated the long-term direction of the revolution, for this could only serve to reinforce economic, political, and cultural impediments to the modernist transformation of China's society. Mao’s frequent references from the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s to the necessity of working class leadership of the Chinese Revolution are therefore signposts indicating not only his conception of the future course and strategy of the revolution but the future of China itself. These signposts are more than sufficient to problematize the conventional accounts of Mao’s approach to China’s revolution and the orthodoxy of that approach. It remains to be seen, however, whether those who have constructed the spurious image of Mao as peasant revolutionary will choose to notice them and rethink this central dimension of Mao’s thought.
  • Nick Knight,Rethinking Mao: Explorations in Mao Zedong's Thought(2007), Chap. 4: Working Class and Peasantry in Mao Zedong's Thought, 1923—1945

• Mao thus perceived “politics” as a vitally important factor in the unfolding of history and the realization of historical goals. However, he did not perceive “politics” as autonomous from other historically generative elements within the “economic” realm of society’s “basis” (theforces and relations of production); rather, the effectivity of “politics” to accelerate the historical process was circumscribed by the “economic” realm, just as the further development of the “economic” realm was dependent on developments in the political realm. This mutual interdependence within the “basis” of society indicated the importance of political organization and action, but indicated also the objective limitations interdependence created. Guided by this framework, Mao was prepared to exploit the possibility for political action to its limit but was, during the Yan’an period, very mindful of not rushing ahead of the constraints of the objective situation. It was, nevertheless, on the possibility of exploiting the potential of “politics” to achieve short-term historical goals that Mao premised his confidence in the realization of “inevitable” long-term historical goals.
  • Nick Knight,Rethinking Mao: Explorations in Mao Zedong's Thought(2007), Chap. 5: Politics and Vision: Historical Time and the Future in Mao Zedong’s Thought, 1937-1945

• It is clear that Mao regarded a sinified Marxism as a union between Marxism’s universal laws and the particular “laws” that described the characterizing regularities of the Chinese context. How did he perceive this theoretical system as a “guide to action”? It must be stressed that Mao did not regard it as incorporating the formulae for automatic and necessarily correct policy responses to the various political, economic, and military contingencies that might arise in the course of revolution. The function of a sinified Marxism was to facilitate as accurate an interpretation of the Chinese context as possible. With this information, the CCP’s leaders would be in a position to formulate strategies and tactics commensurate with the objective possibilities and limitations of the concrete situation. Such strategies and tactics could only be regarded as appropriate in their conception rather than as necessarily correct. Having a clear and hopefully accurate picture of the historical situation would act as a guide to action by ruling out inappropriate policy responses and presenting certain strategies and tactics as preferable or even obvious. Here again, the influence of the inductive method is revealed in Mao’s method of formulating policies: Under no circumstances could one arbitrarily formulate strategies or tacticsa priori,but only via a careful analysis of the characteristics of a historically specific situation.
  • Nick Knight,Rethinking Mao: Explorations in Mao Zedong's Thought(2007), Chap. 7: Mao Zedong and the “Sinification of Marxism”

• The Cultural Revolution that broke out in 1966 is significant in the context of a discussion of Mao’s thought for several reasons. First (and as with the theory and practice of the Hundred Flowers movement), Mao indicated his willingness to depart from a central principle of Leninism by not only bunching an attack on the Party but by mobilizing non-Party elements as the spearhead of that attack. For Lenin, a communist party represented the vanguard of the working class, its most advanced and politically conscious section. In the Leninist conception, there is no suggestion that the vanguard party might itself become an agent of retrogressive ideas, policies, and actions that could threaten the attainment of the revolutionary goals of the working class. Mao, however, made no assumption that the Party was above and beyond the struggles within society; contradictions and ideologies of a class nature were inevitably reflected within the Party, and it could thus be inhabited by negative and counter-revolutionary elements. Such elements had to be struggled against, and if their position within the Party was so powerful that they could not be dislodged by an intra-party struggle, then it would be necessary to mobilize progressive forces from the wider community to defeat them. During the years of the Cultural Revolution, Mao led a coalition of nonparty elements (students, youth, the military, sections of the working class) in his attack on those within the Party deemed to have taken “the capitalist road.” However, while Mao demonstrated a rather different appreciation of the vanguard status of the communist patty than had Lenin, he would not, despite its widespread failings, permit its complete destruction.
  • Nick Knight,Rethinking Mao: Explorations in Mao Zedong's Thought(2007), Chap. 8: Mao Zedong on the Chinese Road to Socialism, 1949-1969

• The Chinese revolution is indisputably one of the most important events of twentieth-century history, and its doctrine, known as Maoism, has accordingly become one of the chief elements in the contemporary war of ideas, irrespective of its intellectual value. Measured by European standards the ideological documents of Maoism, and especially the theoretical writings of Mao himself, appear in fact extremely primitive and clumsy, sometimes even childish; in comparison, even Stalin gives the impression of a powerful theorist. However, judgements of this kind must be made with some caution. Those who, like the present writer, do not know Chinese and have only a scanty and superficial knowledge of China's history and culture doubtless cannot grasp the full meaning of these texts, the various associations and allusions perceptible to a reader acquainted with Chinese thought; in this respect one must rely on the views of experts, who, however, do not always agree.
  • Leszek Kołakowski,Main Currents of Marxism(1976)

L

• The question of how to deal with the legacy of Mao Zedong, how to separate man from myth, ranged among the most difficult tasks faced by the new CCP leadership. The close interrelation of Mao as symbol of the Chinese Revolution with CCP politics demanded a cautious treatment in order not to tarnish the party’s claim to legitimate rule. Deng Xiaoping (1904–97), who emerged as the “architect” of the process of gradual reform after December 1978, had been actively involved in repudiating the impact of Khrushchev’sde-Stalinizationpolicies in 1956 and thus was highly aware of the potentially disastrous consequences of debunking the CCP’s most prominent symbol. Mao Zedong’s elevated status was to be reduced. He was to become “man, not God,” as a popular Chinese biography was to put it later, but his achievements were not to be discredited by way of a thorough de-Maoization process.
  • Daniel Leese, "Mao the Man and Mao the Icon", inA Critical Introduction to Mao(2010) edited by Timothy Cheek

• Mao’s key idea about the need for violent rebellion to sweep away social injustice and his practical strategies to achieve this aim – party-building, mass work, protracted guerrilla warfare – have attracted the discontented across decades and territories. Educated persuaders have used these emotional ideas to galvanise insurgencies, sometimes with enormous bloodshed. But except in China, Maoist insurgencies have failed to translate into stable political power. (And even in China, the Maoist fondness for mass mobilisation has threatened to topple the regime at least twice, amid the catastrophic aftermath of the Great Leap Forward and in the first two years of the Cultural Revolution.) Mao’s promise of ‘mass democracy’ has never delivered: in practice, it has usually resulted in the triumph of those who shout the loudest, or fight and plot the hardest. A Beijing taxi driver once summed up for me, during a five-minute conversation, Maoism’s eighty-year political appeal and its limitations. ‘The good thing about China under Mao is that everyone was equal. Not like now, when people will do you over for money, and even beggars won’t leave you alone until you give them 100 yuan.’ I asked if he would therefore like to turn the clock back to Mao’s era. ‘No,’ he quickly replied. ‘I’d rather get myself some education.’ To this member of an over-worked, underprivileged economic class in China today, equality of opportunity is more attractive than forcible equalising of outcome.
  • Julia Lovell,Maoism: A Global History(2019), Conclusion

• Paradoxes are found in all great men. One need think only of the contradictory principles and impulses that motivated such twentieth-century figures as Stalin,Roosevelt,Churchill,de GaulleandMandela.The contradictions were even more marked in Mao. As a Chinese revolutionary, he rejected Western values but made it his mission to match Western achievements; he led a revolution against the world to join the world. His driving purpose was to liberate China from decades of foreign oppression, but to realise this aim he adopted a Western political theory – Marxism. He selected it because he saw it as an essentially destructive force, and he believed that in China destruction must necessarily precede construction. He sent his youngRed Guardsstorming through the nation in the 1960s to destroy ‘the four olds’, his term for the remnants of China’s past. Yet this was a man steeped in China’s history, whose daily reading was the Chinese classics and who took as his political and military mentors not contemporary texts but the writings of the ancient Chinese masters.
  • Michael Lynch,Mao(2004), Introduction

• The adulation Mao received during his lifetime and the outpouring of national grief evoked by his death may have appeared excessive, but they were not wholly irrational. The Chinese people had good reason to look upon him with awe. At home, he had led a vast social revolution, had resisted the Japanese invader, had defeatedChiang Kai-shekand the Nationalists, and had destroyed the vestiges of European imperialism in China. On a wider front, he had transformed his country into aworld powerand taken it into thenuclear age,had challenged the Soviet Union for the leadership of international socialism, and had made China a model and inspiration for emerging nations still engaged in anti-colonial struggle. By any measure, these were towering achievements.
  Yet beside them have to be set failures that were equally monumental. Mao’s attempt to revolutionise theChinese economyin the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s ended in the death fromstarvationof 50 million people. Further millions died or suffered during the Cultural Revolution when Mao tried during the last ten years of his life to impose a bindingpolitical correctnessnot only on his contemporaries but on China perpetually. It has been said thatHitlerkilled people for what they were, Stalin for what they did, and Mao for what they thought. The charge against Mao is not that he willed those deaths but that he allowed them to happen, that he did not balance the risks, and finally acquiesced in losses that were avoidable.
  • Michael Lynch,Mao(2004), Conclusion

• One of the paradoxes in Mao as a revolutionary thinker is that despite the emphasis in his teaching on the need forrealism,he was far happier dealing with abstractions, to which he could commit himself, than with the reality of the weakness and irresolution of individuals. He had the cast of mind of the revolutionary who is always more comfortable with abstract concepts, which require a grand design for their achievement, than with the reality of people as they ordinarily are. It has been a notable feature of many of the major figures in revolutionary history that they have admired ‘the people’ or the proletariat as a historical force but have been scathing and dismissive of individuals or groups who did not meet revolutionary expectations. The most fanatical of theFrench revolutionaries,Robespierre,was deeply depressed by the poor quality of the human material available for building thenew world.Yet he was sustained by the belief that society was perfectible if its enemies were ruthlessly removed. Both Marx and Lenin rejected as worthless whole classes of people and whole cultures, but remained convinced that the will of the people madeutopianot merely attainable but inevitable.
  Theabsolutismof the belief in an ultimate goal enabled revolutionaries to come to terms with the invariably destructive consequences of their policies. Individualtragedyanddisasterbecome acceptable. The grander the design in which they believed, the easier it was to regard people as merely the instruments for fashioning the design. It was essentially a process of depersonalising. People in a collective sense were a source of inspiration, but people as individuals, with all their weaknesses, were a cause of embarrassment. This attitude of mind often began with a detestation ofinjustice,moved to the view that the injustice was part of a structured system, and concluded that only by destroying the system could injustice be eradicated. Thus amelioration was not enough;reformcould bring only temporary respite. Destruction was not an option but a necessity. There was a teleology attaching to it which appealed to the revolutionary mind. Because the goal was certain to be realised, come what may, the reverses and partial failures along the path, no matter how severe, were always bearable.
  • Michael Lynch,Mao(2004), Conclusion

• The ever-growing historiography devoted to Mao does not present the clearest of pictures. Often depending on the political leanings of the authors, Mao is variously portrayed as an unredeemed monster, the new emperor of a new China, an idealist facing insuperable problems, an opportunist concerned only with preserving himself in power, a planner whose economic illiteracy proved disastrous, a wily politician and shrewd statesman who saw his country through internal and external crises and prepared it successfully for modernity; such are the conflicting images of Mao Zedong. Given his formative role in the development of China as asovereignstate and a major international power, the number of conflicting interpretations is likely to increase rather than diminish.
  • Michael Lynch,Mao(2nd ed., 2017), Mao Zedong: An Assessment

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• As he approachedhis death in 1976,Mao ruminated that he could claim two great victories: the conquest of China and the Cultural Revolution, though he acknowledged that some might disagree about the latter. He made no mention of socializing the country in the 1950s or masterminding China’s emergence from isolation with the Nixon visit and entry into theUNin the 1970s. Mao’s self-image was as a revolutionary, and it is that persona that connects his three great errors. He thrived on upheaval, yet after the post-1949 socialist revolutions that he had led, the prospect for Chinese nation-building was the magnification ofbureaucracyand routine in an endless series of Five-Year Plans on the model of the Stalinist command economy. The great organizers of nation building,Liu ShaoqiandZhou Enlai,would be in their element. But Mao, who knew nothing about economics, would find his expertise in revolution to be a surplus to requirements.
  In the 1957 rectification campaign, he aimed to shake up the Party bureaucracy to prevent it from getting into the comfortable rut of ruling by fiat. He failed. Mao’s romantic concept of the Great Leap Forward was intended to unleash the revolutionary energies of China’s masses, but Liu and Zhou knew that the masses unorganized would achieve little, and the formation of the communes and the backyard steel drive owed everything to the bullying of Party cadres at all levels. Frustrated by the failures of rectification and the Leap, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in a final effort to reignite revolutionary fire under the CCP. In this way, he knew he would once more be setting the agenda.
  How did Mao get away with these colossal and costly errors? His senior colleagues were all revolutionaries, hardened in battle, ruthless in action. Yet whenMarshal Pengcriticized the Leap, few stood up beside him, and none in the top leadership. In the aftermath of the Leap, Mao briefly ceded control of the economy to his colleagues. But when he judged they were about to permit the return of family farming, he returned proclaiming the importance of class struggle, and his colleagues folded. Rural reform did not take place until after his death. And at the start of the Cultural Revolution, first one senior leader and then another was denounced and purged. Mao adapted his guerrilla tactics to political struggle, and picked off his opponents in bite-sized pieces. At no stage did any one of them dare to rally his comrades to prevent the Chairman decimating a leadership that had lasted almost unchanged for twenty years.
  • Roderick MacFarquhar, "Who Was Mao Zedong?",The New York Review of Books(October 25, 2012)

• Mao lies a-mouldring in his tomb, but his soul and his body of work will keep marching on as long as the C.C.P. remains in power. In his attempts to keep out Western ideological influences,Xihas no rival ideology to use as a shield. Confucianism and Marxism-Leninism cannot be revived. Only Mao as hero-leader and leftist ideologue can withstand the sugar-coated bullets of the foreign bourgeoisie. A pox on the criticisms of him in the 1981 resolution on party history! Xi believes that attacks on Stalin and Lenin undermined the Soviet Union well beforeGorbycame to power, so there will be no tolerance for attacks on Mao. His life and legacy are surer legitimators of C.C.P. power than economic success which cannot always be guaranteed.
  • Roderick MacFarquhar, in "Is Mao Still Dead?: A ChinaFile Conversation"(February 12, 2015)

• Mao then rose from guerrilla chief in the late 1920s to a party leader in the mid-1930s on the Long March, the flight of the C.C.P. from the southeast to the northwest to escape Chiang Kai-shek’s attacks. This was an epic event in Communist annals because it took a year, covered some 6,000 miles and reduced the 85,000 who had set out to a mere 8,000 by the time they reached the northwest. He absorbed two lessons: All power grew out of the barrel of a gun; and most of the time peasants were very difficult to organize because they had fields to tend and families to feed.
  From the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, Mao played his tiger role. He led an increasingly strong and efficient party and army that survived the anti-Japanese war and then defeated Chiang and the K.M.T. in the civil war of the late 1940s. From 1949 until 1956, Mao presided over the installation of the Communist dictatorship in China, rooting out all opposition, real or imagined, and transforming the ownership of the means of production from private hands to socialist control.
  It was then that he dabbled in the monkey business for the first time. From the point of view of a dutiful C.C.P. cadre, “monkey business” could be defined as any measure that would disrupt the party’s standard operating procedures. Cadres did not appreciate it when Mao in 1956 exhorted intellectuals to “Let a hundred flowers bloom” and a year later again encouraged intellectuals to criticize the conduct of the party. As members of the ruling elite, the cadres resented being criticized, and Mao, having promised that the criticisms would only be like a light rain, quickly wound up the campaigns when they turned into a typhoon, and purged the critics.
  Mao truly became the monkey king by starting the Cultural Revolution in 1966 to dispel the “miasmal mist” of Soviet-style “revisionism” from the C.C.P. Now, it was the youth of China, not the peasants, who were to be his agents of destruction, as major party and government departments were trashed and their officials humiliated and purged.
  For Mao, the Cultural Revolution ended in 1969 with the appointment of a new, and hopefully more revolutionary, leadership. But though he had dealt the age-old bureaucratic system of China a terrible blow, he knew that it could rise again from the ashes. He always emphasized that China would have to experience regular Cultural Revolutions.
  • Roderick MacFarquhar, "How Mao Molded Communism to Create a New China",The New York Times(Oct. 23, 2017)

• Mao oversaw the major movements in the early 1950s that spread communist rule down to the grass roots throughout China, and it was he who made the major policy decisions during the twenty-seven years that he lived after the revolution. Mao initiated the abandonment of “New Democracy” in favor of a rapid advance to socialism; after the triumph of rural collectivization, it was Mao who initiated the thaw that morphed into the relatively liberal “hundred flowers” era, and it was he who then reversed course into the Anti-Rightist Campaign. In his subsequent leftist phase, Mao conceived of the Great Leap Forward, the Socialist Education Movement, and, finally, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Despite these disasters, to the end of his days, nobody dared challenge Mao. For better or worse, his was the outsize personality that overawed all his colleagues, bestriding the country like a colossus to whom all Chinese citizens had been inculcated to give obedience. The signs suggest that Xi aspires to a similar Maoist role.
  • Roderick MacFarquhar, "Does Mao Still Matter?", in Jennifer Rudolph, Michael Szonyi (ed.),The China Questions(2018)

• There is more ofDeweythan ofMarxin all this.
  • Herbert Marcuse,on "On Practice", in 1962, quoted in Stuart R. Schram, "Mao Studies: Retrospect and Prospect",The China Quarterly,No. 97 (Mar., 1984)

• Even if one excludes the civil war, the regime must be held accountable for a huge number of deaths. Although the estimates are quite speculative, it is clear that there were between 6 million and 10 million deaths as a direct result of the Communist actions, including hundreds of thousands of Tibetans. In addition, tens of millions of "counterrevolutionaries" passed long periods of their lives inside the prison system, with perhaps 20 million dying there. To that total should be added the staggering number of deaths during the ill-namedGreat Leap Forward—estimates range from 20 million to 43 million dead for the years 1959–1961—all victims of a famine caused by the misguided projects of a single man, Mao Zedong, and his criminal obstinacy in refusing to admit his mistake and to allow measures to be taken to rectify the disastrous effects.
  • Jean-Louis Margolin,'China: A Long March into Night',The Black Book of Communism(1999), pp. 463-464

• Mao and the system that he created were directly responsible for what was, and, one hopes, will forever remain, the most murderous famine of all time, anywhere in the world.
  Undoubtedly it was not Mao's intention to kill so many of his compatriots. But the least one can say is that he seemed little concerned about the death of millions from hunger. Indeed, his main concern in those dark years seems to have been to deny a reality for which he could have been held responsible.
  • Jean-Louis Margolin,'China: A Long March into Night',The Black Book of Communism(1999), p. 487

• The psychological effects of the Long March are much more intangible. For Mao, at least, the experience served to reinforce his voluntaristic faith that people with the proper will, spirit, and revolutionary consciousness could conquer all material obstacles and mold historical reality in accordance with their ideas and ideals. For those who survived the ordeal-and for those who were inspired by the story of their survival-the experience, however bitter it was at the time, gave rise to a renewed sense of hope and a deepened sense of mission. People must be able to hope before they can act; they must possess not only ideals and a sense of mission, but hope and confidence that they will be able to realize their ideals through their own actions. More than any other event in the history of Chinese Communism, it was the Long March-and the legendary tales to which it gave rise-that provided this essential feeling of hope, the confidence that determined people could prevail under even the most desperate conditions. And more than any other individual, it was Mao Zedong who radiated and inspired this faith in the future. It was a faith not only in those deemed capable of molding the future in accordance with Communist hopes but also in the values regarded as essential to the eventual realization of those hopes. The familiar Maoist virtues of unending struggle, heroic sacrifice, self-denial, diligence, courage, and unselfishness were values espoused not by Mao alone but carried and conveyed by all of the veterans of the Long March, for these were the values they had come to regard as essential to their own survival and to the survival of the revolution to which they had devoted their lives. These ascetic values lay at the core of what later came to be celebrated as "the Yan'an spirit."
  • Maurice Meisner,Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic(3rd ed., 1999), Chap. 4: The Maoist Revolution and the Yan'an Legacy

• Despite the prominence of the theory of New Democracy in formal Maoist theory for more than a decade, and its seeming promise of a lengthy stage of capitalist (or at least semi-capitalist) development, the bourgeois phase of China's postrevolutionary history was abruptly terminated after a scant four years. No doubt in good measure responsible for the hasty prouncement of the "transition to socialism" was Mao Zedong's longstanding populist-type hostility to all forms of capitalism and his persistent refusal to intellectually accept the Marxist thesis that socialism presupposes capitalism.
  • Maurice Meisner,Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic(3rd ed., 1999), Chap. 8: The Social and Political Consequences of Industrialization

• Mao Zedong, the main author of the Great Leap, obviously bears the greatest moral and historical responsibility for the human disaster that resulted from the adventure. But this does not make Mao a mass murderer on the order of Hitler and Stalin, as it is now the fashion to portray him. It was not Mao's intention to kill off a portion of the peasantry, as Becker and others imply. There is a vast moral difference between unintended and unforeseen consequences of political actions, however horrible those consequences might be, and deliberate and willful genocide. The blurring of that difference does no service to the task of understanding the terrible moral ambiguities of this most genocidal of all centuries.
  • Maurice Meisner,Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic(3rd ed., 1999), Chap. 13: The People's Communes and the "Transition to Communism"

• Mao Zedong's last revolutionary act was to turn into the greatest tragedy of his long revolutionary career-and one with dire consequences for the Chinese people. In 1966 into the seventy-two-year-old Mao staged his final revolutionary drama, stimulating a cataclysmic upheaval that he baptized "the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution." It was his last desperate attempt to revive a revolution that he believed was dying. It was an attempt that failed, and it was a failure on a grand scale, dominating and distorting the social and political life of the People's Republic for more than a decade and tarnishing the historical image of Mao in the process. In launching the Cultural Revolution, Mao proclaimed principles and ideals he could not (or would not) sustain, and unleashed social and political forces he could not control, forces which were to exact a fearsome human and social toll. Before the drama had played itself out, it consumed, physically or spiritually, virtually all of its original promoters and supporters as well as many of its intended victims along with a good number of unintended ones who would have preferred to stand on the sidelines of the battles that racked and nearly wrecked China during the last decade of the Maoist regime.
  • Maurice Meisner,Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic(3rd ed., 1999), Chap. 17: The Concept of Cultural Revolution

• In the years immediately preceding the Cultural Revolution, Mao arrived at a conclusion that no other Marxist in power had hitherto been willing to entertain. A socialist society, he now believed, could generate a new class of exploiters; the main barriers to the "transition to socialism" were not the bourgeois residues of the past but rather the bureaucrats of the present, the onetime revolutionaries whom the revolution had transformed into rulers and who by virtue of their political power controlled the new society and appropriated much of the fruits of social labor in the process. On occasion Mao was quite explicit, indeed blunt, in setting forth this view; as when (in 1965) he condemned "the bureaucratic class" as a class "in sharp opposition to the working class and the poor and lower-middle peasants," as those becoming "bourgeois elements sucking the blood of the workers." Nor did he hesitate to identify the site and source of these "new bourgeois elements" or their leaders. They were, he charged on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, "those people in positions of authority-within the Party who take the capitalist road." What seemed at the time to be pure ideological bombast proved to be a remarkably accurate prognosis of the future of Chinese Communist society.
  • Maurice Meisner,Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic(3rd ed., 1999), Chap. 17: The Concept of Cultural Revolution

• What makes this so remarkable a phenomenon in the history of postrevolutionary societies is that the call for rebellion against the existing political order came from those who had built that order. It came from some among the veterans of the revolution-and Mao was certainly the most venerable and venerated of the veterans-who had created state and Party institutions they now had come to regard as obstacles to, rather than as instruments of, the revolutionary social changes they sought. But the more important question about the Cultural Revolution is not so much why Mao issued his rebellious call but rather why and how so many tens of millions of ordinary Chinese citizens responded to it.
  • Maurice Meisner,Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic(3rd ed., 1999), Chap. 18: The Cultural Revolution 1966-69

• Among the distinguishing features of the Mao period, many observers once believed, was a unique attempt to reconcile the means of modem industrialism with the ends of socialism. That, no doubt, was Mao's aim, and it certainly was the Maoist claim. But, in the end, Mao Zedong was far more successful as an economic modernizer than as a builder of socialism. This judgment, of course, does not accord with the conventional wisdom of the day, which tells us that Mao sacrificed "modernization" to "ideological purity" and that economic development was neglected as the late Chairman embarked on a fruitless quest for a socialist spiritual utopia. The actual historical record conveys a rather different story, and it is essentially a story of rapid industrialization. The post-Mao critiques of the Maoist economic legacy, which dwell less on the accomplishments than on the deficiencies of the era, nonetheless reveal that the value of gross industrial output grew thirty-eight-fold during the Mao period, and that of heavy industry ninety-fold, albeit starting from a tiny modern industrial base whose output had been halved by the ravages of foreign invasion and civil war. But between 1952 (when industrial production was restored to its highest pre-war levels) and 1977, the output of Chinese industry increased at an average annual rate of 11.3 percent, as rapid a pace of industrialization as has ever been achieved by any country during a comparable period in modern world history.' Over the Mao era, the contribution of industry to China's net material product increased from 23 percent to over 50 percent while agriculture's share declined from 58 to 34 percent.
  • Maurice Meisner,Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic(3rd ed., 1999), Chap. 21: The Legacies of the Maoist Era

• Although it has become unfashionable to recall the accomplishments of Mao’s time, it remains the case that the Maoist regime made immense progress in bringing about China’s modern industrial transformation, and it did so under adverse internal and external conditions. Without the industrial revolution of the Mao era, the economic reformers who rose to prominence in the post-Mao era would have had little to reform.
  Of the Chinese people, Mao’s industrial revolution demanded hard labor and great sacrifices, as had been the case in the industrialization of Japan and Russia in earlier times. Popular consumption and living standards suffered as the Communist state appropriated ever larger shares of the surplus to finance the expansion of the modern industrial plant. The state, simply put, exploited the people it ruled, especially the peasantry in order to build a heavy industrial base and to support the growing bureaucracy that presided over it. But it is not the case, as some of the more zealous champions of the market have suggested, that the Chinese people did not materially benefit during the years of Maoist industrialization. To be sure, China’s sharply rising national income did not translate itself into corresponding increases in income for the working population, whose labor was responsible for the rise. Some of the increase was absorbed by a rapidly growing population, partly the result of the ineffectiveness of belatedly implemented birth control policies. However, most of the surplus flowed into state coffers (and from there to the modern industrial sector and its bureaucracy), leaving only enough for meager increases in popular income over the last two decades of the Maoist regime. While the income of state employees, including regular factory workers, rose significantly during the late Mao period, the income of peasants, who made up 75 percent of the laboring population, increased little, if at all, after 1957. Yet among gains not easy to quantify in economic calculations, but vital for measuring popular welfare, one must note the vast expansion of schools and educational opportunities during the Mao era, the transformation of a largely illiterate population into a mostly literate one, and the building of a relatively comprehensive health care system where none existed before. The near doubling of average life expectancy over the quarter-century of Mao’s rule – from an average of thirty-five in pre-1949 China to sixty-five in the mid-1970s – offers dramatic statistical evidence for the material and social gains that the Communist Revolution brought to the great majority of the Chinese people.
  Upon completing his monumental history of the Soviet Union, the great English historianE. H. Carrwarned: “The danger is not that we shall draw a veil over the enormous blots on the record of theRevolution,over its cost in human suffering, over the crimes committed in its name. The danger is that we shall be tempted to forget altogether, and to pass over in silence, its immense achievements.”
  Carr’s words deserve to be pondered by students ofmodern Chinese historyas well asRussian history,for revolutions do not easily lend themselves to balanced appraisals. Great social upheavals typically arouse great and unattainable expectations, and when those high hopes are dashed long periods of disillusionment and cynicism inevitably follow, while the actual historical achievements are ignored or forgotten. It usually takes several generations, far removed from the political and ideological battles of the revolutionary epoch, to bring the historical picture back into focus. It is the blots on the Maoist record, especially the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution, that are now most deeply imprinted on our political and historical consciousness. That these adventures were failures colossal in scope, and that they took an enormous human toll, cannot and should not be forgotten. But future historians, without ignoring the failures and the crimes, will surely record the Maoist era in the history of the People’s Republic (however else they may judge it) as one of the great modernizing epochs in world history, and one that brought great social and human benefits to the Chinese people.
  • Maurice Meisner,Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic(3rd ed., 1999), Chap. 21: The Legacies of the Maoist Era

• The legacy that Mao Zedong left for his successors was thus a most ambiguous and contradictory one, marked by a deep incongruity between the Maoist regime's progressive socioeconomic accomplishments and its retrogressive political characteristics. On the one hand, Mao "created a nation," as Deng Xiaoping said, completing in the early years of the People's Republic many of the unfinished tasks of the Guomindang's abortive bourgeois revolution. The Maoist regime also established some of the preconditions for socialism. It began China's modern industrial revolution; it abolished private ownership of the means of production, a necessary if by no means sufficient condition for socialism; and it kept alive (far longer into the postrevolutionary era than might have been anticipated) a vital socialist vision of the future. On the other hand, Maoism retained essentially Stalinist methods of bureaucratic political rule; it generated its own cults, orthodoxies, and dogmas and it consistently suppressed all intellectual and political dissent. Mao Zedong, to be sure, looked upon the Communist bureaucracy as a great evil, but the only remedy he could devise to control his own creation was to rely on his personal prestige and the force of his own personality. Neither in theory nor in practice does the Maoist legacy include meaningful institutional safeguards against bureaucratic domination.
  • Maurice Meisner,Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic(3rd ed., 1999), Chap. 21: The Legacies of the Maoist Era

• For Mao Zedong was both theLeninand theStalinof the Chinese Revolution, both the revolutionary founder and the post-revolutionary tyrant.
  • Maurice Meisner,Mao Zedong: A Political and Intellectual Portrait(2006), p. 192

• It was not Mao Zedong's impatience with the pace of history alone that was responsible for this rush toward utopia in the late 1950s. Mao had come to embody the increasingly radical expectations of peasants, rural Party cadres, and a good many higher Party leaders. He was also inspired, as were many others, by the striking successes of the Chinese Communist Party in the late 1940s- and early 1950s - the stunning victory over the Guomindang, the rapid consolidation of Communist power, the successes of land reform and earlyindustrialization,and the revolutionary fervors generated by the agricultural collectivization campaign of 1955-6. By late 1957 Mao Zedong had thrown off all conventional Marxian restraints on the revolutionary will, permitting him to embark on the tragic adventure of the Great Leap Forward. Standing above all institutions, he now became a tyrant as well as a utopianprophet,nearly oblivious to the human and social costs of his "great leap" to communism - and to the costs of the Cultural Revolution, an upheaval which in large measure grew out of the political tensions generated by the failure of the Great Leap.
  • Maurice Meisner,Mao Zedong: A Political and Intellectual Portrait(2006), p. 197

• There is a final irony that has been implied, but not stated, in the way in which this chapter has portrayed politics portrayed Chinese politics since the establishment of Chiang’s Nationalist government in 1928, through the victory of the Communist Party in 1949 to the present era, as a passing on of the baton in a wider, consistent, politics of modernity. For the political form of China today—a one-party state that does still allow a significant amount of individual autonomy, a powerful state with a role in the international order which is partly cooperative and partly confrontational, and a highly successful semi-capitalist economy in which the state and party still play a significant, embedded role—means that the Communist Party of today has essentially created the state sought by the progressive wing of the Nationalists in the 1930s rather than the dominant, radical Communists of the 1960s. One can imagine Chiang Kaishek’s ghost wandering round China today nodding in approval, while Mao’s ghost follows behind him, moaning at the destruction of his vision. The intellectual assumptions behind both the Nationalists and the Communists in the last century were similar in many important ways, making this seeming paradox perfectly comprehensible if examined in a somewhat longue durée that extends back before 1978 or 1949.
  • Rana Mitter,Modern China: A Very Short Introduction(2nd ed., 2016), Chap. 3: Making China Modern

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• It was no longer possible to say that only the Western world could become rich throughcapitalism,so a new narrative took hold: although a fewdeveloping countriesmight be able to enter global markets from the periphery, it is only because they are very small, almost insignificant. Strangely enough, today you sometimes hear the opposite: that developing countries might make it, but only if they are very large. This is due to the transformation of two giants, China and India, which for decades were held back by, in one case, a communist despot, and in the other ademocratic but strictly protectionist command economy.Therefore, people said that Chinese and Indians will be successful all over the world – except in China andIndia.But then, in 1976, China’sdictatorMao Zedong, as theUSeconomistSteven Radeletput it, ‘single-handedly and dramatically changed the direction of global poverty with one single act: he died’. His successor, Deng Xiaoping, began to accept the private enterprise that peasants and villagers secretly engaged in and extended it to the entireeconomy.All the restrainedcreativityandambitionwas finally let loose and China grew at record speed. Ironically,intellectualsaround the world – modern-dayMax Webers– soon explained that this is itself not that strange, asConfucianismmade it easy to modernize the economy.
  • Johan Norberg,The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World(2023)

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• One communist country went through a destruction of collusions for collective action that was equivalent to the organizational destruction in Germany and Japan. This was China during the cultural revolution. For whatever reasons, Mao started a revolution against his own upper-level and middle- level subordinates—the red mandarins. He decimated the very administrators and managers on which his economy depended. Only the military was spared. The immediate result was extreme instability and administrative chaos: the economic performance of the Chinese economy during the cultural revolution was much worse than in other communist countries. A longer-run result was that, when Mao died, there were not nearly as many well-entrenched coteries of administrators as in the Soviet Union and the European communist states.
  So when Deng and the other pragmatists defeated Mao's widow and the rest of the "gang of four" shortly after Mao's death, there were few industries, enterprises, or coteries of administrators whose insider lobbying could undermine Deng's market-oriented reforms. Deng was presumably also helped because virtually everyone was glad to see the end of the chaos. The encompassing interest of Deng, the new pragmatic autocrat, prevailed, largely because the cultural revolution had destroyed the narrowly entrenched interests with a stake in the status quo.
  Deng could do whatGorbachevand the other European communist reformers could not do: win out over the countless cliques engaged in covert collective action and other insider lobbies. The lion's share of the then-poorChinese economy—agriculture—was promptly put under an individual responsibility market system. Other market-oriented reforms followed. The result, as we know, was rapid economic growth: output has often increased at 10 percent or more per year. This difference between China and the European countries that were communist, but had no cultural revolution, is precisely consistent with the argument offered here.
  • Mancur Olson,Power and Prosperity(2000), Chap. 9: Implications for the Transition

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• We tried to avoid these shortcomings by making careful and discriminating use of a wider array of sources than any other biographer, weighing evidence carefully, and presenting sound and forceful judgments unmarred by political considerations. This dispassionate attitude allows us to present the Great Helmsman as the multifaceted figure that he was—a revolutionary and a tyrant, a poet and a despot, a philosopher and a politician, a husband and a philanderer. We show that Mao was neither asaintnor ademon,but rather a complicated figure who indeed tried his best to bring about prosperity and gain international respect for his country. Yet he made numerous errors, having trapped himself in a cul-de-sac of a political and ideological utopia, and basking in his cult of personality while surrounding himself with sycophantic courtiers. Without a doubt he was one of the greatest utopians of thetwentieth century,but unlike Lenin and Stalin, he was not only a political adventurer but also a national revolutionary. Not only did he promote radical economic and social reforms, but he also brought about a national revolution in former semicolonial China and he united mainland China, which had been engulfed in a civil war. Thus it was Mao who renewed the world’s respect for China and theChinese people,who had long been despised by the developed Western world and Japan. Yet his domestic policies produced national tragedies that cost the lives of tens of millions of Chinese.
  • Alexander V. Pantsov, with Steven I. Levine,Mao: The Real Story(2007; 2012), Introduction: Myths and Realities

• In Mao’s case, a number of other factors likewise explain this attitude. Unlike Lenin and Stalin, who destroyed a great and powerful Russia that prior to the October Revolution had been one of the leading world powers, Mao transformed China from a semi-colony into an independent and powerful state. He was not only a revolutionary who transformed social relations, but also a national hero who brought to fruition the mighty anti-imperialist revolution begun by Sun Yat-sen, compelling the entire world to respect the Chinese people. He united mainland China after a long period of disintegration, power struggle, and civil wars. It was during Mao’s rule that China was finally able to become one of the main geopolitical centers of the world, politically equidistant from both superpowers, and, therefore, attracting increased attention from world public opinion. Of course, during Mao’s rule the Chinese people remained poor, and the Chinese economy backward, but it was precisely during this time that Chinese began to take pride in their country’s present as well as its past. This is why the Chinese people will never forget the “Great Helmsman.”
  Mao brought to the Chinese not only national liberation, but social servitude. It was he and the Chinese Communist Party he directed that, through deceit and violence, imposed totalitarian socialism upon the long-suffering people of China, driving them into the abyss of bloody social experiments. The lives of hundreds of millions of people were thereby maimed, and several tens of millions perished as a result of hunger and repression. Entire generations grew up isolated from world culture. Mao’s crimes against humanity are no less terrible than the evil deeds of Stalin and other twentieth-century dictators. The scale of his crimes was even greater.
  Still, Mao is distinguished from the ideologists and practitioners of RussianBolshevismeven in histotalitarianism.His personality was much more complex, variegated, and multifaceted. No less suspicious or perfidious than Stalin, still he was not as merciless. Almost throughout his entire career, even during the Cultural Revolution, in intraparty struggle he followed the principle of “cure the illness to save the patient,” compelling his real or imagined opponents to confess their “guilt” but not sentencing them to death. This is precisely why the “moderate” faction, despite the repeated purge of its members, was ultimately able to stand its ground and come to power after the Chairman’s death. Mao did not cure the “illness” of Deng Xiaoping and his supporters, but neither did he eliminate them physically. He did not even order the death of Liu Shaoqi. The chairman of the PRC was hounded to his death by enraged Red Guards. Moreover, Mao did not take revenge on his former enemies. He neither killed Bo Gu, norZhou Enlai,norRen Bishi,nor Zhang Guotao, nor evenWang Ming.He tried to find a common language with all of them after forcing them to engage in self-criticism. In other words, he forced them to “lose face” but also kept them in power.
  In all of this, Mao was an authentically Chinese leader and ideologist who was able to combine the principles of foreign Bolshevism not only with the practice of the Chinese revolution, but also with Chinese tradition.
  A talented Chinese politician, an historian, a poet and philosopher, an all-powerful dictator and energetic organizer, a skillful diplomat and utopian socialist, the head of the most populous state, resting on his laurels, but at the same time an indefatigable revolutionary who sincerely attempted to refashion the way of life and consciousness of millions of people, a hero of national revolution and a bloody social reformer—this is how Mao goes down in history. The scale of his life was too grand to be reduced to a single meaning.
  And that is why he reposes in an imperial mausoleum in the center of China, in the square adorned with his gigantic portrait. He will be there for a long time, perhaps forever. In essence, the phenomenon of Mao reflects the entire trajectory of twentieth-century China in all its complexity and contradictions, the trajectory of a great but socially and economically backward Eastern country that made a gigantic break from the past to the present over the course of eight decades.
  • Alexander V. Pantsov, with Steven I. Levine,Mao: The Real Story(2007; 2012), Epilogue

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• To govern a nation with a poet’s logic and vision can only lead to great catastrophe. In reading Mao’s works, you’ll notice they are extremely enchanting. Packed as they are with the imagination, passion, and the utopian ideals of a poet, they are endlessly moving. But as soon as such ideas are transformed into practice, they will often bring about disaster. Mao often exhibits just such a conversion: romanticism at the theoretical level mutating into despotism at the practical level.
  • Qian Liqun, "Mao and his Era"(2009)

• Even among totalitarian rulers such as Stalin, Mao sets himself apart. Such dictators usually only control the bodies of the people; dissidents, heretics, and opponents are at most sent to prison or labor camps and thus are neutralized corporeally. Mao, however, sought also to remould thought. He said once that two types of people existed in Chinese tradition: heroes and sages. Heroes were extremely talented in some areas such as politics and economics; sages existed to influence people’s thought. Mao sought to position himself as a hero, but desired even more the role of sage. He wanted to effect a spiritual control of people, to conquer the popular will, to influence and remould people’s thought, to have his dictatorship permeate into people’s minds, and he created an array of systems and methods to do so. This is both awesome and dreadful, and is without precedent.
  • Qian Liqun, "Mao and his Era"(2009)

• In China’s grassroots society, the deification of Mao Zedong has taken place to a staggering degree. In countless taxicabs dangle icons of Mao, warding off evil spirits. I investigated a little the question of which among China’s many emperors and generals could become deities and which could not. Zhuge Liang chư cát lượng (181-234) and Guan Yu quan vũ (d. 219) were deified, butQin ShihuangTần thủy hoàng (259-210 BCE),Han WudiHán võ đế (141-87 BCE) andLiu BeiLưu bị (161-223) did not make the grade. There are two prerequisites for such a deification: one must either have preternatural wisdom, or a godlike ability to ward-off misfortune—Mao Zedong had both. Further bolstering Mao worship are those intellectuals, who, over recent years, have taken a Maoist turn. Some have, for example, proselytized the “three new traditions” tân tam thống which advocate establishing a new national ideology through the aggregation of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, andConfucius.These intellectuals see themselves as “Imperial Tutors,” and their “three new traditions” as “Schemes for good government and security” offered to the current regime. After the recent abrupt rise of China’s economy, there is now a push to strengthen Chinese soft-power. What China has to offer in this realm, other than Confucius, is Mao Zedong. In the present statist stream of thought, Mao’s status is extremely prominent, and he also carries influence among certain groups of young people, some of whom are even intent on establishing a “Maoist Party.”
  • Qian Liqun, "Mao and his Era"(2009)

• Without a rational assessment and critique of Mao Zedong thought and culture, its cancers will be anointed along with its charms and passed down in this spirit. The effect very likely will be catastrophic. Speaking personally, such cancers are already internalized as a kind of poisonous gas deep within myself. Because of this, I must hold fast to the fundamental position of “in the process of critiquing and assessing Mao Zedong thought and culture, making a serious accounting of myself.”
  My students, on the other hand, believe that there is no need for their teacher to spend his days in reflection and repentance. They see a teacher with many good qualities and see these as endowed upon him by Mao Zedong. This is, indeed, in some ways true. The key reason for this generational gap rests in the fact that the challenges we face are different: my challenge remains to cast off the influence, not only historical but actual, of Mao Zedong; their challenge, lies in the fact that they are totally estranged from the Mao era; they know nothing of it, so they must start from scratch to seek out its reasonable elements. Therefore, between teacher and student there is a divergence of opinions and ideas. But, I have to say, I am most antipathetic to their “price theory.” They agree that the Mao era was replete with problems but believe that these were a price that had to be paid. Whenever I hear of this price theory, I get all fired up; do they really know what price was paid? The death of millions or even tens of millions. In my view, the death of one person is one too many, let alone tens of millions. Can we be so blasé as to use “price” to “settle this up”? They haven’t personally experienced that time and think they can look upon it objectively – “people died, so they died.” And this touches upon another key problem: the life of a person, in my view is of the utmost import.
  I have many haunted memories, and my students criticize me for always wallowing in my personal recollections, for being unable to break free from them. But I still want to remind these young scholars: in summing up the thought and culture of the 1980s, there is one great lesson to be learned. The attempt to directly apply Western modernity without thinking through the problems of China, to believe that China’s developmental trajectory is simply to follow the road of Western modernity, will result in immense confusion. In the same vein, we absolutely cannot directly apply an unexamined Mao Zedong thought and culture to respond to the problems of contemporary China. This would lead not only to great confusion, but to catastrophe.
  • Qian Liqun, "Mao and his Era"(2009)

• Mao was China's biggest idealist and dictator. His ideology encompasses both idealism and despotism. This often creates conflicts, or dualism. For example, if you aren't an enemy, you're a friend; if something is inaccurate, then it's a mistake. The best way to resolve the contradictions inherent in dualism is by protesting.
  But that makes people become truculent. Mao considered himself the guardian of truth, and people who thought differently from him were branded as enemies. This tendency can still be seen in modern China. Even those who criticize Mao bear traces of his thinking.
  • Qian Liqun, ininterviewwith JoongAng Ilbo on Sept. 18, published in September 25, 2012

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• As for Mao Zedong, I now see him as both a brilliant leader and a scheming tyrant. He blazed the trail to the Promised Land but could not take his people there. Under his leadership, China grew united and strong, life expectancy lengthened, and hundreds of millions were rescued from pauperdom. At the same time, his wild social experimentation was responsible for the misery and deaths of millions, or possibly tens of millions. Never a true friend, he twice threw me into wrongful isolation in prison when it suited some political purpose.
  Mao was a thinker, philosopher, analyst, general, political leader, poet, and a connoisseur of great stature. He unified and led the revolution through unbelievable hardships, overcoming unthinkable odds, to achieve victory over the established powers in China that had the support of virtually all the world's governments. If he had died before coming to power, he would probably still be remembered as a prophet and as something close to a saint. Even so, it is still he, not Sun Yat-sen, whom most Chinese still look on as the "George Washingtonof China. "
  But today I believe that Mao was a tragic figure ofAeschyleanproportions. Having preached and warned for years against the corruption that usually follows power, having inveighed against arrogance and exaggeration of the role, prowess, and wisdom of any single individual, he became their victim and in turn victimized the Chinese people. With unimaginable hubris, he thought of China-and the world-as an experimental laboratory in his hands. None of the ordinary human relationships of family, community, and friendship were important to him, but only the moving of people through the motions of carrying out his own grand designs. The results was that, in the end, with his formidable powers of introspection, he saw himself gradually turn into the very embodiment of what he had despised and fought against as a young Hunanese patriot-a crabbed old despot, friendless, clueless, disenchanted.
  • Sidney RittenbergandAmanda Bennett,The Man Who Stayed Behind(2001), Epilogue

• On the Chinese side, change was a part of an even greater development: China’s resumption of an international and regional role appropriate to her historic stature and potential. Mao’s revolution had made China more integrated than ever before, and made significant improvements in health and education. But its economic development had been chaotic, and it had not lifted the Chinese people out of poverty.
  • J. M. Roberts and Odd Arne Westad,The Penguin History of the World(6th ed., 2014), Book 8: Our Own Time, 3: Crises and Détente

• Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded, not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering a high morale and cummunity propose... The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao's leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history.
  • David RockefellerinFrom a China Traveler,New York Times, Aug. 10, 1973, p. 31.

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• Mao had worked late into the night — his custom. He awoke about 11:00 a.m., ate a bowl of rice and some Chinese pickles, and the group set off. Baggage had been sent ahead, but Mao's bodyguards had packed a few books to take along, two Chinese encyclopedic dictionaries,Lexicon of Words (Ci Hai)andOrigin of Words (Ci Yuan),and two dynastic works of great distinction, studied and annotated by emperors, statesmen, and scholars for hundreds of years. One was calledRecords of the Historian(Shi Ji)and covered the period from the semi-mythical Yellow Emperor, China's founding father, and into the Han dynasty until about a hundred years before Christ. The other,The General Mirror for the Aid of Government(Cu Chi Tang Qian),covered thirteen hundred years of history and had been compiled in the eleventh century. It was designed as a practical handbook for the emperor, telling him how his predecessors had handled difficult questions. No text by Marx or Lenin.
  • Harrison E. Salisbury,The New Emperors: China in the era of Mao and Deng(1993), Chap. 1: The Old Capital

• Publicly, Mao had sailed in the face of the American threat and, in effect, thumbed his nose at Stalin's warnings as well. In 1946, when Chiang Kai-shek began preparing an all-out drive against the Communists, Stalin urged Mao to enter into a coalition with Chiang and take a secondary role. Resistance, Stalin contended, might lead toWorld War III.For many years Stalin had demonstrated his preference for Chiang, as Mao bitterly knew. Stalin had supported Chiang even after he turned on the Communists in the1927 massacre at Shanghai.
  Only with the greatest reluctance had Stalin shifted his backing from Chiang Kai-shek in Shanghai to the Communists and left-wingers.
  Mao had no illusions about whom Stalin preferred. As a contemporary Soviet historian commented: "Stalin favored a two-Chinas policy." Stalin felt Chiang was weak and posed no danger to Moscow. He did not trust Mao.
  • Harrison E. Salisbury,The New Emperors: China in the era of Mao and Deng(1993), Chap. 2: The Poet of the Fragrant Hills

• Mao's quarters were fitted to his taste. Along the north wall, so that the southern sun would flood the broad windows, was a study through which one passed into his bedchamber, the biggest of his rooms. Beside the courtyard windows stood his bed, a square wooden bed, the legs mounted on sturdy wooden blocks, bigger than the greatkang,or oven-bed, in his parents' home in Shaoshan, bigger than many a room in the new flats of Beijing — not a king-sized bed, an emperor-sized bed. Mao reposed on a hill of pillows. Half his bed, as long as he lived, was piled with papers, books, the slender sheaves of the Chinese classics that he read and reread from boyhood to old age. As for the other half of the bed, it was to have many and varied occupants.
  A pair of brass bracket lamps were mounted on the wall behind Mao's bed, eight feet from the floor. More bracket lights were fixed between the windows. On tables beside his bed and at its head stood gooseneck lamps, flexible to adjust to his angle of sight. The walls of the bedroom and study were lined with books and document boxes filled with reports, correspondence, and possibly some items from the special library collected for Mao by the secret police specialist,Kang Sheng.The floor was covered with a Chinese carpet of apple green.
  • Harrison E. Salisbury,The New Emperors: China in the era of Mao and Deng(1993), Chap. 6: The Study of Chrysanthemum Fragrance

• Mao's mind was philosophical and poetic. He felt at home with the Chinese classics. He knew Confucius and his follower Mencius, and he knew how the Ming and the Tang and the other dynasties had handled economics. Statistics bored him. He preferred to leave these details to subordinates.
  Mao's great strength in the Long March and in the Revolution was his belief in the efficacy of mass action. He was convinced that there was no problem that could not be solved if he mobilized the strength of the masses. He did not literally believe in his famous parable of the old man who moved a mountain, but he did believe he knew how to direct the strength of China's huge population. With that energy there was no goal China could not attain — whether moving a mountain or creating a steel industry or wiping out the opium habit.
  • Harrison E. Salisbury,The New Emperors: China in the era of Mao and Deng(1993), Chap. 14: Deng Tackles His Biggest Job

• Mao was strongly inclined to "total solutions." He believed inphilosophyas an instrument of change and that society was always in flux between periods of stability and periods ofluan,chaos. Change arose fromluan.Stability was static. In a state of upheaval, progress was made and new, capable people and ideas emerged.
  The Mao scholarLi Zehouquotes Mao as saying after he read the history of China's Warring States, "It is a delight to read. But when it moves to the peaceful years I hate it. Not because I love chaos but because a time of peace is not good for the development of the people. It is unbearable."
  Whether all this underlay Mao's fatalistic decision will never be known. He kept no diary, and none of his secretaries was privy to all his thoughts. But there can be no question that Mao well understood his historic achievement in routing Chiang Kai-shek and uniting China under the Communist banner, and he also believed that the crusade ultimately called the Cultural Revolution was an even greater enterprise. It was, in his view, a revolution not only to save his revolution but to perfect it, endangered as he believed it to be by contamination, impurities, and even treason from within. It must be saved from the men who had helped to create it. In thisKang Sheng's poisoned words played a part.
  If Mao achieved success in his new campaign it would, he reckoned, be the ultimate deed of his career, overshadowing even the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949. This, he was confident, would place his name not among the great men of China but at the head of the list, as the emperor of emperors.
  • Harrison E. Salisbury,The New Emperors: China in the era of Mao and Deng(1993), Chap. 25: Poisoned Paper

• We spoke at length and We really liked Mao Zedong. A lot. He gave Us a very good impression, asPaul VIdid. He is a good and very serious leader, and his people have done well to embrace him.
  • Haile Selassie(June 1972), as quoted inOriana Fallaci'sIntervista con la Storia(sixth edition, 2011) p. 532

• Various kinds of enmity are joined in Mao’s concrete situation, rising up to absolute enmity.Racial enmityagainst the white colonial exploiter; class enmity against the capitalist bourgeoisie;national enmityagainst theJapanese intruder of the same race;internecine enmity nursed in long, embittered civil wars—all this did not paralyze or relativize each other, as they might be thought to; rather, they were confirmed and intensified in the situation. Stalin succeeded in joining the telluric partisanship of the national homeland with the class enmity of international communism. Mao was years ahead of him, surpassing Lenin in his theoretical consciousness by taking the formula of war as the continuation of politics by other means even farther.
  • Carl Schmitt,The Theory of the Partisan(1963)

• Few major figures of the twentieth century have been subject to such widely varying assessments as Mao Zedong. In the 1940s, he was seen in many quarters (including the Kremlin) as a talented guerrilla leader whose Marxist credentials were of dubious authenticity. In the early 1950s, he was perceived rather as the ruler of a totalitarian party state, subservient to Moscow. Then, during the Cultural Revolution, he was metamorphosed once more in people's minds (especially those of student rebels in the West) into an inspired visionary who had devised a new pattern of socialism, purer, more radical, and more humane than that of the Soviet Union. Finally, in his last years the view began to gain ground that he was, on the contrary, a harsh and arbitrary despot cast in a traditional Chinese mould. Mao was all these things simultaneously, and a number of others beside.
  It has often been said that Mao Zedong was both China's Lenin and her Stalin. If, however, we wish to explain developments in China in terms of analogies drawn from Russian experience, it would be more appropriate to say that Mao Zedong was China'sLenin,Stalin,andPeter the Great.
  • Stuart R. Schram,"Makers of the Twentieth Century: Mao Zedong",History Today(April 1981)

• The one domain in which there was almost total continuity in Mao's approach from the 1930s to the1970swas that of patterns and methods for the exercise of political authority. Moreover, in this case it should have been possible, I would argue, to discern in Mao's speeches and writings prior to 1949 the signs of many things to come.
  Mao declared that the new regime he was about to set up could be called a 'people's democratic autocracy' just as well as a 'people's democratic dictatorship'. Too much should not be made of this terminological difference, fortu-ts'aiwas sometimes used in years past, when Marxist expressions did not yet all have standard equivalents in Chinese, as a translation for 'dictatorship'. None the less, to the extent that it carries an aura of old-fashioned Chinese-style autocracy, this term in fact sums up rather well the essence of Mao's approach to political leadership.
  On the one hand, he promoted grass-rootsparticipatory democracyon a larger scale than any other revolutionary leader of modern times. In this respect he served the Chinese people well, and helped to prepare them for the next stage in their political development. But at the same time he regarded the promotion of democracy as feasible only within the framework of a 'strong state'. In this he was, in my opinion, correct. Unfortunately, his idea of a strong state was something very like an autocracy, in which he, as the historic leader of the Chinese revolution, remained in the last analysis the arbiter as to what political tendencies were legitimate, and which were not.
  • Stuart R. Schram,The Thought of Mao Tse-Tung(1989), Part 1: Mao Tse-tung's thought to 1949

• Throughout his career, from the Ching-kang-shan and Yenan to the 1960s, Mao Tse-tung treated democracy and centralism as two indissolubly linked aspects of the political process, one of which could not be promoted without reference to the other. The Cultural Revolution saw the emergence of two quite different concepts. Democracy was replaced by 'rebellion'; centralism was replaced bychung,or personal loyalty to the great leader and helmsman. No doubt Mao Tse-tung saw these tendencies as bound together in a dialectical unity, like democracy and centralism, which he had not in principle repudiated. Nevertheless, he allowed a situation to develop in which the 'heads', of which he himself acknowledged the necessity, at all levels of society and the economy, could not in fact function as heads because, although they were held accountable they had no power to take decisions. The alliance between the leader and the masses took the form, on thenational level, of anunstructured plebiscitary democracy, sadly reminiscent of earlier examples. At lower levels, it produced a mixture of arbitrary rule by adhoc committees, military control, apathy and confusion.
  • Stuart R. Schram,The Thought of Mao Tse-Tung(1989), Part 2: Mao Tse-tung's thought from 1949 to 1976

• I argued in Part 1 that Mao had devised the concept of the 'principal contradiction' because, unlike Marx, who was never in doubt as to the basic conflict underlying Western society in his own day (that between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie), Mao lived in a world characterized by a bewildering variety of social strata, deposited layer by layer in the course of a century of rapid change. Chinese and world society are not likely, in the coming decades, to grow less complex, nor is the interaction between countries and cultures likely to grow less intense. In this context, Mao's ideas about contradictions may provide, if not a map, then a compass, for charting the contours of a changing reality.
  At the same time, Mao himself, as I have noted repeatedly (and as he remarked more than once), was full of contradictons. In an effort to sum these all up, let me conclude with what may appear to benothing more than a bit of folklore, but has perhaps a deeper significance. I quoted above Mao's statements, and those of the Tsing-hua University Middle School Red Guards, regarding the Monkey King, Sun Wu-k'ung, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Mao had repeatedly used Monkey as a political symbol in earlier years, and prior to the Great Leap, virtually all of these references were negative. Indeed, in May 1938 he went so far as to identify Monkey with the 'fascist aggressors' who would be buried in the end beneath the 'Mountain of the Five Elements' constituted by the peace front. But suddenly, in 1958, the tone changed, and Mao declared:
  Monkey paid no heed to the law or to Heaven (wu-fa wu-fien). Why don't we all learn from him? His anti-dogmatism [was manifested in] daring to do whatever he liked…
  Perhaps that sums up, better than any other single image, the essence of Mao's political role, and its profound ambiguity. Eternal rebel, refusing to be bound by the laws of God or man, nature or Marxism, he led his people for three decades in pursuit of a vision initially noble, which turned increasingly into a mirage, and then into a nightmare. Was he a Faust or Prometheus, attempting the impossible for the sake of humanity, or a despot of unbridled ambition, drunk with his own power and his own cleverness? More of the latter than used to be imagined, no doubt, and yet something of the former as well. Even today, the final verdict, both on the man and on his thought, must still remain open.
  • Stuart R. Schram,The Thought of Mao Tse-Tung(1989), Conclusion

• In a word, was Mao too much a man of the20th centuryto command much interest in the21st?History records many singular recurrences of ideas and institutions, but Leninism and the Stalinist command economy, which so dominated the present century, do appear to have run their course. Modernization and economic development are another matter. While attention will no doubt continue to focus on the costs of development, perhaps only the rich can allow themselves to treat it as irrelevant. Thus, though Mao will probably not be remembered as the unerring architect of the future and the creator of a new world and a new humanity, a more modest place in history as a modernizing despot may well be his.
  • Stuart R. Schram,"Mao Zedong a Hundred Years On: The Legacy of a Ruler",The China Quarterly,No. 137 (Mar., 1994)

• In many ways his political instincts were sound. He tried to invest in the Chinese people. But in his personal feelings he was emotional, wrong-headed, and hysterical, and these qualities increasingly took over in the 1950s. But despite enormous blunders and crimes, he was a great leader who was trying to do the best for China. I think he’ll be remembered for that.
  • Stuart R. Schram,quoted in Ken Gewertz, "Mao under a microscope"(December 11, 2003)

• I agree with the current Chinese view that Mao's merits outweighed his faults, but it is not easy to put a figure on the positive and negative aspects. How does one weigh, for example, the good fortune of hundreds of millions of peasants in getting land against the execution, in the course of land reform and the “Campaign against Counter-Revolutionaries,” or in other contexts, of millions, some of whom certainly deserved to die, but others of whom undoubtedly did not? How does one balance the achievements in economic development during the first Five-Year Plan, or during the whole twenty-seven years of Mao's leadership after 1949, against the starvation which came in the wake of the misguided enthusiasm of the Great Leap Forward, or the bloody shambles of the Cultural Revolution?... In the last analysis, however, I am more interested in the potential future impact of his thought than in sending Mao as an individual to Heaven or to Hell.
  • Stuart R. Schram,quoted in Roderick MacFarquhar, "Stuart Reynolds Schram, 1924–2012".China Quarterly(December 2012)

• In fact, the occurrence of favorable unintended consequences (the Smith-Menger-Hayek case) also has some parallels in the field of economic planning in China, though for that we have to look at other parts of recent Chinese history. As the fast economic progress ofEast AsianandSoutheast Asianeconomies gets more fully analyzed, it is becoming increasingly clear that it is not only the openness of the economies—and greater reliance on domestic and international trade—that led to such rapid economic transition in these economies. The groundwork was laid also by positive social changes, such as land reforms, the spread of education and literacy and better health care. What we are looking at here is not so much the social consequences of economic reforms, but the economic consequences of social reforms. The market economy flourishes on the foundations of such social development. As India has been lately recognizing, lack of social development can quite severely hold up the reach of economic development.
  When and how did these social changes occur in China? The main thrust of these social changes was in the pre-reform period, before 1979—indeed a lot of it during the active days of Maoist policy. Was Mao intending to build the social foundations of a market economy and capitalist expansion (as he certainly did succeed in doing)? That hypothesis would be hard to entertain. And yet the Maoist policies of land reform, expansion of literacy, enlargement of public health care and so on had a very favorable effect on economic growth in post-reform China. The extent to which post-reform China draws on the results achieved in pre-reform China needs greater recognition. The positive unintended consequences are important here.
  Since Mao did not consider seriously the likelihood that a flourishing market economy would emerge in China, it is not surprising that he did not consider this particular entailment of the social changes that were being brought in under his leadership. And yet there is a general connection here that is quite close to the focus on capability in this work. The social changes under consideration (expansion of literacy, basic health care, and land reform) do enhance human capability to lead worthwhile and less vulnerable lives. But these capabilities are also associated with improving the productivity and employability of the people involved (expanding what is called their “human capital”). The interdependence between human capability in general and human capital in particular could be seen as being reasonably predictable. While it may not have been any part of Mao’s intention to make things easier for market-based economic expansion in China, a social analyst should have been well placed—even then—to predict just such a relationship. Anticipation of such social relations and causal connections helps us to reason sensibly about social organization and about possible lines of social change and progress.
  • Amartya Sen,Development as Freedom(1999), Chap. 11: Social Choice and Individual Behavior

• Supposedly this was Mao’s reaction to all the suffering: ‘You have only tree leaves to eat? So be it.’ What is undeniable is that he took no serious steps to change policy until it was too late. He continued to take satisfaction from communist successes in the decade since 1949.Landhad been collectivised, industrynationalised.Rival parties had been eliminated. The non-Chinese groups in the population had been cowed. The ruling group enjoyed unchallenged supremacy; its members had the prestige and authority of men who had fought in the civil war against the Kuomintang. Yet the Great Leap Forward had not worked out as Mao had intended. The tens of millions of deaths were not the only reason why the central leaders of party and army were alarmed – and many leaders in fact were just as unconcerned about the hardship as Mao himself.
  • Robert Service,Comrades: A History of World Communism(2009)

• Mao had been like a great pendulum of the Chinese Revolution since the 1950s. By swinging from side to side in strategy, he showed that he knew how to hold on to power and pull up short of destroying the state order. But he had run out of ideas about how to advance the revolutionary cause in China. Maoism was a helpful way to winpeasantsupport and make a revolutionary war. It could unify and energise a whole people by fundamental social and economic reforms. But it was a poor way to industrialise a country. It involved horrendous suffering even in its quieter periods. Its ruptures with theSoviethistorical experience included both advantages and disadvantages for citizens of the People’s Republic of China. But it shared many basic concepts, practices and structures with theUSSR.Maoism was a variant ofMarxism-Leninism.Its bankruptcy was evident to most Chinese long before Mao died.
  • Robert Service,Comrades: A History of World Communism(2009)

• Mao, I call a populist tyrant because of what we associate today, and especially afterDonald Trumpwith the termpopulism.And inEastern Europeand elsewhere in the globe, we've just been through a period, hopefully past tense of populistauthoritarianism.But populism or another term that scholars use for voluntourism, it is an appeal to the mass public, the downtrodden and the dispossessed and the disaffected elements of a society in particular. That's who Mao appealed to in China, the rural peasantry of course most notably, but other elements of society in the urban proletariat as well.
  Mao was a deeply anti-elitist politician who repeatedly appealed straight to the masses and would try and mobilize them, I should say, through his campaigns, the yundong. One yundong after another characterized Mao's era. He would mobilize the masses against the state. He didn't use the state against the masses so much, certainly not after 1956, but he used the masses against the state repeatedly. He had an innate faith in them in their voluntourist agency, you might say. He distrusted institutions, he distrusted elites, and this led to his views aboutrevisionism.He wanted to transform Chinese society, normatively, culturally, behaviorally, and the institutions would get corrupted in that process, he believed. So he leapfrogged the institutions, the bureaucracies and appeals repeatedly straight to the masses. So that's why I call him a populist.
  He was also very much a revolutionary in, I would argue theTrotskyitevariety. He saw perpetual revolution and the export of it. You James are in fact writing your own PhD dissertation about the export of Maoist revolutions abroad during the sixties and the seventies. So that was also populous. To be a revolutionary, you have to be a populist. And then I would note, why do I call him a tyrant? So I call him a populous tyrant. Well, he was a tyrant of global historical proportions. He's up there in the league of Hitler and Stalin, if not more so. Many more Chinese died under his rule than did under Hitler's rule or Stalin's rule orPol PotinCambodia,tens of millions, somewhere between 40 and 50 million Chinese died as a result of his policies directly or indirectly. I don't know about tens of millions, but countless millions, others were persecuted by him and took their own lives and were stigmatized. He was a despot and a tyrant extraordinary.
  • David Shambaugh,"China’s Leaders from Mao to Now, with David Shambaugh"(September 2021)

• Even to his closest comrades, Mao was hard to fathom. His spirit, in Smedley's words, ‘dwelt within itself, isolating him’. His personality inspired loyalty, not affection. He combined a fierce temper and infinite patience; vision, and an almost pedantic attention to detail; an inflexible will, and extreme subtlety; public charisma, and private intrigue.
  • Philip Short,Mao: The Man Who Made China(2017), Prologue

• The achievements of Mao's great contemporaries,Roosevelt,Churchilland De Gaulle, are measured against those of their peers. Even Stalin built on Lenin's accomplishments. Mao's life was played out on an altogether vaster canvas. He was unquestioned leader of almost a quarter of mankind, inhabiting an area the size of Europe as far as the Urals. He wielded powers equalled only by the most awesome of Chinese emperors in an era when China's history was so compressed that changes which, in the West, had taken centuries to accomplish, occurred in a single generation. In Mao's lifetime, China made the leap from semi-colony to Great Power; from millennial autarky to socialist state; from despoiled victim of imperialist plunder toPermanent Member of the UN Security Council,complete withH-bombs,surveillance satellitesandICBMS.
  Mao had an extraordinary mix of talents: he was visionary, statesman, political and military strategist of genius, philosopher and poet. Foreigners might sniff. In a memorable put-down,Arthur Waley,the great translator of Tang dynasty poetry, described Mao's poems as ‘not as bad as Hitler's paintings, but not as good as Churchill's’. In the judgement of another Western art historian, hiscalligraphy,while ‘strikingly original, betraying a flamboyant egotism, to the point of arrogance, if not extravagance… [and] a total disregard for the formal discipline of the brush’, was ‘essentially inarticulate’. Most Chinese scholars disagree. Mao's poems, like his brushwork, seized the tormented, restless spirit of his age.
  To these gifts, he brought a subtle, dogged mind, awe-inspiring charisma and fiendish cleverness.
  • Philip Short,Mao: The Man Who Made China(2017), Epilogue

• Stalin cared about what his subjects did (or might do); Hitler, about who they were. Mao cared about what they thought.
  China's landlords were eliminated as a class (and many of them were killed in the process); but they were not exterminated as a people, as the Jews were in Germany. Even as his policies caused the deaths of millions, Mao never entirely lost his belief in the efficacy of thought reform and the possibility of redemption. ‘Heads are not like chives’, he said. ‘They do not grow back again.’
  What was achieved at the cost of such bloodshed and pain?
  Mao's own judgement, that his two major accomplishments were his victory over Chiang Kai-shek and the launching of the Cultural Revolution, offers a partial answer, though not quite in the sense he had intended. The one reunified China after a century of division and restored its sovereignty; the other gave the Chinese people such an overdose of ideological fervour as to immunise them for generations to come. Mao's tragedy and his grandeur were that he remained to the end in thrall to his own revolutionary dreams. Where Confucius had taught harmony – the doctrine of the mean – Mao preached endless class struggle, until it became a cage from which neither he nor the Chinese people could escape. He freed China from the straitjacket of its Confucian past. But the bright Red future he promised turned out to be a sterile purgatory.
  • Philip Short,Mao: The Man Who Made China(2017), Epilogue

• Mao ruled for twenty-seven years. If the past, as he believed, is indeed a mirror for the present, will the twenty-first century see a third Chinese golden age, for which the Maoist dictatorship will have opened the way?
  Or will it be his fate to be remembered as a flawed colossus, who brought fundamental change to China on a scale that only a handful of others have achieved in the past several millennia, but at a terrible price, and then failed to follow through?
  History is laid down slowly in China. One day, perhaps, Mao's shadow will loom less large. His name will recede into a more distant, less threatening past, to join the shades of other founding statesmen: Peter the Great, the tyrant who laid the foundations of modernRussia;George Washington, slave-owner and humanist; Napoleon, ‘the greatest criminal in French history’, as one French intellectual put it; Oliver Cromwell, iconoclast and regicide; a handful of others. But the regime Mao founded may well last longer than most Westerners wish to think. In Asia, elements of a market economy have coexisted for thousands of years with authoritarian rule. Certainly China will change, but not necessarily as the rest of the world expects.
  • Philip Short,Mao: The Man Who Made China(2017), Epilogue

• [visitingMao Zedong's mausoleumand seeing Mao's embalmed corpse] Aww... Look at him sleeping... He's like a little angel, that killed 50 million people. [to Mao (while speaking in a baby voice)] Yes you are! Yes you are!
  • Homer Simpson(voiced byDan Castellaneta),Goo Goo Gai Pan(written byDana Gouldunder the pseudonym "Lawrence Talbot" ), (2005), Season 16, episode 12 ofThe Simpsons.

• I think my first impression – dominantly one of native shrewdness – was probably correct. And yet Mao was an accomplished scholar of Classical Chinese, an omnivorous reader, a deep student of philosophy and history, a good speaker, a man with an unusual memory and extraordinary powers of concentration, an able writer, careless in his personal habits and appearance but astonishingly meticulous about details of duty, a man of tireless energy, and military and political strategist of considerable genius.
  • Edgar Snow,Red Star Over China(1937)

• After a moment of silence Mao said that he had, as I knew, begun life as a primary school teacher. He had then had no thought of fighting wars. Neither had he thought of becoming a Communist. He was more or less a democratic personage such as myself. Later on, he sometimes wondered by what chance combination of reasons he had become interested in founding the Chinese Communist Party. Anyway, events did not move in accordance with the individual human will. What mattered was that China had been oppressed by imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism.
  “Man makes his own history, but he makes it in accordance with his environment,” I quoted. “You have fundamentally changed the environment in China. Many wonder what the younger generation bred under easier conditions will do. What do you think about it.”
  He also could not know, he said. He doubted that anyone could be sure. There were two possibilities. There could be continued development of the revolution toward Communism, the other possibility was that youth could negate the revolution, and give a poor performance: make peace with imperialism, bring the remnants of the Chiang Kai-shek clique back to the mainland, and take a stand beside the small percentage of counter-revolutionaries still in the country. Of course he did not hope for counter-revolution. But future events would be decided by future generations, and in accordance with conditions we could not foresee.
  Mao Tse-tung walked me through the doorway and, despite my protests, saw me to my car, where he stood alone for a moment, coatless in the sub-zero Peking night, to wave me farewell in the traditional manner of that ancient cultured city. I saw no security guards around the entrance, nor can I now recall having seen even one armed bodyguard in our vicinity all evening. As the car drove away I looked back and watched Mao brace his shoulders and slowly retrace his steps, leaning heavily on the arm of an aide, into the Great Hall of the People.
  • Edgar Snow,"Interview with Mao",The New Republic(1965)

• In their native countries,RooseveltandChurchillare regarded as examples of wise statesmen. But we, during our jail conversations, were astonished by their constant shortsightedness and even stupidity. How could they, retreating gradually from 1941 to 1945, leave Eastern Europe without any guarantees of independence? How could they abandon the large territories ofSaxonyandThuringiain return for such a ridiculous toy as the four-zonedBerlinthat, moreover, was later to become their Achille’s heel? And what kind of military or political purpose did they see in giving away hundreds of thousands of armed Soviet citizens (who were unwilling to surrender, whatever the terms) for Stalin to have them killed? It is said that by doing this, that they secured the imminent participation ofStalinin the war againstJapan.Already armed with theAtomic bomb,they did pay for Stalin so that he wouldn’t refuse to occupy Manchuria to help Mao Zedongto gain power in ChinaandKim Il Sung,to gethalf of Korea!… Oh, misery of political calculation! When laterMikolajczykwas expelled, when the end ofBenešandMasarykcame,Berlin was blocked,Budapestwas in flames and turned silent,whenruins fumed in Koreaand when theconservativesfled fromSuez– didn’t really some of those who had a better memory, recall for instance the episode of giving away the Cossacks?
  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,The Gulag ArchipelagoPart 1, Chapter 6

• Mao's beginnings were commonplace, his education episodic, his talents unexceptional: yet he possessed a relentless energy and a ruthless self-confidence that led him to become one of the world's most powerful rulers. He was one of the toughest and strangest in China's long tradition of formidable rulers who wielded extraordinary powers neither wisely nor well, and yet were able to silence effective criticism for years or even decades by the force of their own character and the strength of their acolytes and guards. Mao need not have done what he did, and it was he alone who ensured that his visions of social and economic change became hopelessly enmeshed with violence and fear. It was his rhetoric and his inflexible will that led to the mobilization of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens, who - even when they wished to - could find no way to halt the cataract of energy swirling around them.
  • Jonathan Spence,Mao Zedong: A Life(1999), Foreword

• Powercorrupts,and, in many cases, absolute power makes you really horny.Clinton,Chirac,Mao,Mitterrand.
  • Donald Sutherland,"Letters from the Rose Garden"email toGary Ross,2011, included in the special features ofThe Hunger Games(2012)

T

• In critical respects, this Mao-dominated universe can be considered the Chairman’s extended family. Mao’s patriarchal approach to rule was, of course, reflective of a deeplypatriarchalsociety, but it was even more fundamentally a consequence of a long and successful revolutionary struggle. As with all other founders of indigenous communist regimes, after achieving power Mao’s position was unchallengeable until his death: he was truly the father of his country in the eyes of his followers.
  • Frederick C. Teiwes and Warren Sun,The End of the Maoist Era: Chinese Politics During the Twilight of the Cultural Revolution, 1972-1976(2007), Conclusion

• What explains the obedience Mao received from the elite during the last years of his life, an obedience that extended beyond carrying out explicit orders inimical to elite interests to shaping positions according to expectations of the Chairman’s wishes, and holding sacrosanct his “line” even as he slipped into a coma? The answer lies in a combination of fear, belief, and moral authority, with both fear and belief basically reflecting moral authority. Fear was at root a fear of being off side with Mao, with possible consequences, varying by period, of loss of influence and position, or of mortal threat under the most dire circumstances, as well as of personal inadequacy in not being able to keep up with the Chairman’s thinking.
  • Frederick C. Teiwes and Warren Sun,The End of the Maoist Era: Chinese Politics During the Twilight of the Cultural Revolution, 1972-1976(2007), Conclusion

• From early on in his career Mao was a visionary, a strategic genius, a realistic revolutionary, a nationalist, and a dedicated Marxist. From early days he also saw himself as a leader of great destiny, and he was always acutely attentive to his personal power, but it was power for great purposes. Mao could also capture the popular and elite imagination, whether for the universally approved “standing up” to foreign imperialists and national unification, or, before everything went wrong, the Great Leap’s pursuit of unprecedented economic growth.
  For all his talent, Mao’s successes before 1949 owed much to circumstances, notably the Japanese invasion and incompetence of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. He also built successfully on Marxist ideology and the organizational backbone of a Leninist party. After 1949, Mao initially benefited from an already tested program for statebuilding based on the Soviet model. Mao’s great achievement was to enlarge upon these circumstances by developing broad-based party unity, a form of quasi-collective leadership allowing significant leadership discussion, and a pragmatic, often cautious approach to policy. Together this produced the unimaginable victory of 1949, and also sustained the party’s further successes to the mid-1950s.
  Paradoxically, the seeds of later disasters can be found in the victory of 1949. Most fundamentally, Mao’s power, while uncontested within the party as long as successes continued during the struggle for national power, became unchallengeable upon coming to power and would remain so for rest of his life. His emperor-like authority was unmistakable in the Gao Gang case and the handling of agricultural cooperativization, even as he maintained the semblance of collective leadership. In many senses, leadership politics under the Chairman was like the highly personalistic court politics of imperial China that could be altered into more arbitrary forms at any time of the emperor’s choosing. For much of the initial period up to 1956, Mao left alone certain areas (notably the economy) in which he recognized his limitations, but his ability to intervene was clear.
  • Frederick C. Teiwes, "Mao Zedong in Power (1949–1976)", in William A. Joseph,Politics in China: An Introduction(3rd ed., 2019)

• Mao’s sin was less corruption than hubris, his belief that he was “alone with the masses” and had a special understanding of the needs of the revolution and the Chinese people. No one and no costs should stand in the way of his pursuit of those visions, and he could not accept responsibility when that pursuit led to disastrous consequences, which, in his view, were ultimately someone else’s fault. Mao Zedong was only able to do this because of the absolute power he had accumulated through the combination of his record of revolutionary success, the centralizing forces of the Leninist party organization that he built, and the authoritarian strain in traditional Chinese political culture.
  • Frederick C. Teiwes, "Mao Zedong in Power (1949–1976)", in William A. Joseph,Politics in China: An Introduction(3rd ed., 2019)

W

• Mao left a China that was badly broken, and it would take an enormous effort to fix it. The devastation and backwardness that he left in his wake prompted his successors to rethink the nation’s trajectory—indeed, it was a historic opportunity. When they finally seized this opportunity, they rejected Mao’s core ideas and even the antipathy to market mechanisms and private enterprise at the core of the Soviet economic system that had been sacrosanct in China since the 1950s. When the dust finally cleared, the new model would be the export-oriented developmental states of East Asia, whose features would be grafted onto the stock of a rebuilt and revitalized Communist Party. A reform of this magnitude could only gain traction if leaders were forced to admit that something in China had gone seriously wrong. This was not the legacy that Mao had hoped to leave. It was in fact the opposite of what he intended.
  • Andrew G. Walder,China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed(2015), p. 14

• It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Mao’s contributions to China after 1956 were unsuccessful by his own standards and destructive in ways that he surely did not imagine. During both the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, the destructive aspects of Mao’s initiatives far outweighed any outcomes that could be construed as positive. The Cultural Revolution succeeded in its agenda of destroying the structure of China’s party-state, and in sidelining the many officials who might have harbored inner doubts about Mao’s vision, but it created nothing lasting in its place. During the Cultural Revolution Mao tried repeatedly to put a positive face on each unexpected and unwanted development, asserting that out of disorder a greater order would eventually be born. But the public celebrations of the “great victories” of the Cultural Revolution, accompanied by the escalating intensity of the cult of Mao, all turned out to be as hollow as Mao’s earlier insistence that the accomplishments of the Great Leap were “nine fingers” and the shortcomings “one finger.” As Mao’s health failed during his final two years, he appeared to resign himself to the fact that his legacy was far from assured, and that powerful forces in the leadership and in society at large were arrayed against it.
  • Andrew G. Walder,China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed(2015), p. 319

• Mao Zedong left China in a quiet crisis, an unsettled state and society very much in flux. After the arrest of the officials on whom Mao depended to launch the Cultural Revolution and fight to preserve its legacy, there was little doubt that the Cultural Revolution, and the core ideas that had inspired it, would be repudiated. There was obvious popular yearning for social and political stability and a rise in living standards. In many ways, the devastation that Mao left in his wake gave his successors the opportunity for a new start. So much of the Soviet-inherited institutions had been smashed and had yet to be rebuilt. There was great uncertainty about the direction that China should take.
  • Andrew G. Walder,China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed(2015), p. 341

• Today, half a century after the launch of the Cultural Revolution, Mao has been reduced to a benign cultural icon. His image is displayed on China’s national currency, replacing the workers, peasants, tractors, and steam shovels of the Mao era. His face adorns the ubiquitous badges, posters, and other artifacts produced in the hundreds of millions during the era of the Mao cult, now marketed everywhere to tourists. Theme restaurants with Cultural Revolution–era decor entertain diners with songs and dances from the Red Guards and “loyalty to Mao” era. “New left” intellectuals, dissatisfied with the corruption and inequality spawned by China’s turn toward market-oriented state capitalism, hark back to the Mao era for its positive accomplishments; ordinary citizens reflect with nostalgia on the Mao era as a simpler, less money conscious, more egalitarian, and less corrupt time. The party leadership celebrated the 110th anniversary of Mao’s birth by emphasizing the positive accomplishments of his reign, seeking to solidify the party’s legitimacy, celebrate its history, and reinforce national pride. These views of Mao, and of the Mao era, are very different from the ones that prevailed in the late 1970s, as China began the long process of recovering from the damage of his misrule. They are based on highly selective historical memory and a great deal of forgetting.
  • Andrew G. Walder,China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed(2015), p. 343-344

• Most of what Mao tried to do backfired on him. The central organizing theme of the book, starting with chapter 7 and going through the very end, is that each time Mao tried a bold initiative, it had outcomes that must have surprised him—certainly [that] he did not welcome—and he repeatedly changed his tactics and ran into new problems. In the end—although this isn’t explicitly argued—I think you could probably draw the conclusion from the story that Mao lost his way in the end and ended up doing things that did enormous harm to China. He became so fixated on maintaining his vision that he lost sight of the damage that it was causing the country. What’s remarkable about him as a leader of a communist country is that he’s the only one who ever fomented rebellion against the state that he’d set up. If he had only wanted to get rid of officials who disagreed with him, he didn’t need to do that. I think that’s the thing that is really most remarkable about Mao as a leader. The other thing that I think people should walk away [with] after reading the book is that the period from 1949 through 1976 was really the core of the Chinese revolution. We tend to think of revolutions as being over when a new government takes power. But in China, that was just the beginning. China had not changed very much in 1949. The party had only controlled limited areas of the countryside. It ran no cities. It had this extremely rapid military conquest of China. The revolution in China was not one where ordinary people rose up under the leadership of guerrilla forces and took power in the cities. The Communist Party was able in the late 1940s to create a large modern army inManchuria,and it basically rolled south and then west across China. It was a military conquest. So basically, the transformation of China that took place—the revolution—really began in 1949 and ’50, after this army took power.
  • Andrew G. Walder, "China Under Mao"(2015)

• The things that Mao stood against—a leadership that is concerned with stability, with economic development, with security, with improving the standards of living of the Chinese people… those are the ultimate values for the leadership today, and Mao denigrated those ideas throughout his life. He did not want stability. He thought that if China was left to develop under stable dictatorship of the party, the party members would set themselves apart from ordinary people, would have a better lifestyle, would grasp privileges for themselves. He saw this happening in the Soviet Union, and he called this “revisionism.” He had this strange idea that it was capitalism or reversion to capitalism; it actually was the opposite of capitalism. What he foresaw as a future of China that he disapproved of was a bureaucratic dictatorship based on total state control and the privileges that inevitably came from that. If you understand in a clear-eyed fashion what Mao stood for and what he tried to fight for in his life, you realize that China’s leaders today—whatever their reverential attitude towards him is—they are doing everything that he fought against during his life. I think people in China are very fortunate that that is the case. In many ways, the polite and semi-worshipful attitude towards Mao by the current leadership really glosses over absolutely fundamental differences between China in that period and the leaders today. Another way in which it helps us to understand China today—and this is related to the campaign against corruption and all the similar things that people write about, things that have gone wrong in China under its market reforms—is that party officials (and I said this in the first few minutes) were under extraordinary scrutiny. They were under constant threat of being removed from power, criticized, even being put in prison for disobeying party policy. After Mao’s death, the party relaxed this kind of super-aggressive, almost punitive attitude towards party officials, and gave them a great deal more space to do what they wanted. One of the results, in the context of a market economy, is that they’ve enriched themselves. What’s interesting is this is more like capitalism, but it’s very different from what Mao said was capitalism back in the1960sand ’70s.Another way in which it helps us to understand China today is that the relaxation of the control over party officials, the relaxation of the campaigns that were so damaging and bloody in China in that period, has led to an exacerbation of the abuse of power and the use of people’s positions to enrich themselves. As much as Mao was worried about this in his life, that was almost absent. People today look back on the Mao period, I think with some justification, as one where party officials were not as corrupt as they are today. They may have abused their power somewhat, but they led very simple, even spartan lives. No one amassed fortunes. Party officials today can travel abroad; they fill up the business and first class cabins of international air flights; they come here and they buy real estate. They’re part of the international jet set, the international elite. There was nothing like this when Mao was alive, and I don’t think he could even have imagined that this was a possibility.
  • Andrew G. Walder, "China Under Mao"(2015)

• Mao's socialism is both an ideology of modernization and a critique of Euro-American capitalist modernization. But this critique is not a critique of modernization itself. Quite the contrary-it is a standpoint based on a revolutionary ideology and nationalism that produced a critique of the capitalist form or stage of modernization. For this reason, on the level of values and history, Mao Zedong's socialism is a type of modern anticapitalist modernization theory. From the perspective of its impact on the state, Mao's elimination of the "three differences" in actual social praxis eliminated the possibility of the existence of the autonomous categories of the individual and the state, from which arose an unprecedentedly hegemonic bureaucratic state.
  • Wang Hui,"Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity",Social Text(1998)

• Indeed, in China's historical context, modernization and the rejection ofrationalizationhave proceeded together, and this has produced profound historical contradictions. For example, on the one hand, Mao Zedong centralized power to establish a modern state system; on the other hand, he launched the Cultural Revolution to destroy that system. On the one hand, he used People's Communes and collectives to promote China's economic development; on the other hand, he designed the social distribution system to avoid the severe social inequalities of capitalist modernization. On the one hand, he used thenationalizationof the economy to subsume society under the state goal of modernization, in the process stripping individuals of all political autonomy; on the other hand, he was horrified and pained at the use of state mechanisms to suppress the autonomy of "the masses." In sum, inherent in China's socialist modernization experience is a historical antimodernity. This paradox has cultural roots, yet it is infinitely more important to search for an explanation in the dualsided historical discourse from which Chinese modernization emerged (namely, the search for modernization and reflections on the devastating consequences of Western modernization).
  • Wang Hui,"Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity",Social Text(1998)

• There are many alternatives to thinking of Mao as a fiend who was China’s Hitler. One useful way to think of current assessments of Mao is a bit like American views ofAndrew Jackson.Though admittedly far from perfect, the comparison is based on the fact that Jackson is remembered both as someone who played a significant role in the development of a political organization (theDemocratic Party) that still has many partisans and as someone responsible for brutal policies towardNative Americansthat are now often referred to asgenocidal.
  Both men are thought of as having done terrible things, yet this does not necessarily prevent them from being used as positive symbols. And Jackson still appears on $20 bills, even though Americans now tend to view as heinous the institution ofslavery,of which he was a passionate defender, and the early19th-century military campaigns against Native Americans,in which he took part. At times Jackson, for all his flaws, is invoked as representing an egalitarian strain within the American democratic tradition, a self-made man of the people who rose to power via straight talk and was not allied with moneyed elitists. Mao stands for something roughly similar. Workers in state-owned industries who in recent years have been laid off understandably associate Mao with a time when laborers got more respect, and he is remembered by some as a Communist leader who, for all his mistakes, never forgot his roots in the countryside and never viewed himself as belonging to a caste that was superior to ordinary folk.
  • Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom,China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know(2010)

• The feelings of ordinary Chinese toward Mao run the gamut from nostalgia to fury, admiration to disdain. There continue to be long lines to view his body, which remains on display in the lavish mausoleum in the center of Tiananmen Square that was built soon after his death. But not everyone who goes to look at him does so in a spirit of reverence (it has long been said that there are those who go just to make sure that the tyrant they feared is really dead, and there are many who go simply as tourists), though some definitely do go to pay homage to a man they still think of as a kind of deity. Most, no doubt, have a mindset not unlike that which citizens of today’s France might have when visiting Napoleon’s tomb, considering Mao a person of undeniable importance in their country’s past, who had his dark side and also made significant contributions to the nation, without which it would not be what it is now.
  • Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom,China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know(2010)

• I often heard peasants talk about the Great Leap Forward as though it was some sort of apocalypse that they had by some miracle escaped... We walked along the village... Before my eyes, among the weeds, rose up one of the scenes I had been told about, one of the banquets at which the families had swapped children in order to eat them. I could see the worried faces of the families as they chewed the flesh of other people's children... What had made them swallow that human flesh, amidst the tears and grief of other parents—flesh that they would never have imagined tasting, even in their worst nightmares? In that moment I understood what a butcher he had been, the man "whose like humanity has not seen in several centuries, and China not in several thousand years": Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong and his henchmen, with their criminal political system, had driven parents mad with hunger and led them to hand their own children over to others, and to receive the flesh of others to appease their own hunger. Mao Zedong, to wash away the crime that he had committed in assassinating democracy, had launched the Great Leap Forward, and obliged thousands and thousands of peasants dazed by hunger to kill one another with hoes, and to save their own lives thanks to the flesh and blood of their childhood companions. They were not the real killers; the real killers were Mao Zedong and his companions.
  • Wei Jingsheng,'Mon évolution intellectuelle entre seize et vingt-neuf ans', inLa Cinquième Modernisation et autres écrits du "Printemps de Pékin",trans. and ed. Huang San and Angel Pino (1997), pp. 244-246, quoted in Jean-Louis Margolin, 'China: A Long March into Night',The Black Book of Communism(1999), pp. 493-494

• Communism was to be China’s weapon for modernization, according to the party’spropaganda.It would make the country rich and strong. But Mao’s agenda went further than the creation of a modern, wealthy country. He wanted to transform Chinese society and people’s ways of thinking. It was “old China” that was to blame for the country’s weakness, Mao thought, more than evenBritish,Japanese, orAmerican imperialists.He liked to compare traditional, Confucian forms of thinking to women with bound feet, hobbling along while being disdained by others. His “new China,” on the other hand, should be youthful, progressive, and militant. Those who stood in the way were “pests” to be exterminated;landlords,priests,and capitalists were holding China back on purpose, in order to serve their own interests. They had to go, as did all those forces that blocked the new society the Communists would create. For Mao this was a millennial struggle. It was China’s last chance to redeem itself and retake its rightful position in the world.
  • Odd Arne Westad,The Cold War: A World History(2017), Chap. 9: China's Scourge

• He thus played the role of China’s Kemal Ataturk as well as her Lenin — and even, in strict truth, of her Stalin. Whereas Lenin enjoyed only a few short years of creative power after 1917, Mao followed thirty years of struggle to establish a Communist state with almost thirty years of power to build socialism in China. The challenge came less from the anti-Communists than from opponents and rivals within the Communist Party itself. Much of Mao’s energy was expended in unnecessary battles with comrades whose basic ideals he shared.
  • Dick Wilson,Mao: The People's Emperor(1979), Introduction

• Having defeated Japan and Chiang Kai-shek in the 1940s, he went on to declare war against the earth in the 1950s and against human nature in the 1960s. He tried for the extremes — of thorough-going free speech in the Hundred Flowers, of personal collectivism in the Great Leap Forward, of integral equality between leaders and led in the Cultural Revolution. In each case he failed, because his Party would not support him, but in each case there was some residue of the experiment which survived in China and made its Communism, its national life, distinctive. The modified people’s commune is now entrenched as a vehicle for China’s agrarian development in all its aspects — political, social and economic.
  The person behind this achievement, however, remains inscrutable. A man of enormous energy and drive, fuelled by a consuming hatred of authority and resentment of being rejected on grounds of breeding or education, he stormed through life detached and seemingly invulnerable to its blows. He persuaded many of his closest kinfolk and friends to join his revolutionary cause, only to see them die in the cruel fight for its success. From his succession of marriages only an occasional glimpse of affection is revealed. He was loving with his children while they were infants, but cavalier and insensitive once they were adult. In the end no one gained his heart: the human emotions were for him subordinated to the lonely quest for power.
  • Dick Wilson,Mao: The People's Emperor(1979), Conclusion

Y

• There were big differences between Mao during and after the revolution—I talked about this in my book The Historical Process of the Sinicization of Marxism. The most important distinction is that before the founding of the PRC, as Mao himself said, both he and the other leaders of the Communist Party were always "in a state of fear and trembling, as if treading on thin ice," fearing that the slightest misstep, or any strategic error, would send the Party into a deep abyss. This was based on Mao's principle of absolute strength, because in those days the Communist Party had too many enemies, and the situation was ever-changing, so a slight mistake could indeed cause big problems. Thus prior to 1949, Mao Zedong was always a cautious person, not very radical, not so "left." In fact it was quite the opposite, and in traditional party history, the Party had experienced three “left deviations.” At the time, everyone was left, and Mao Zedong was someone who resisted and criticized the left, and thus was more to the right. Indeed Mao was always regarded as a representative of rightist and conservative tendencies by the representatives of the Komintern and the CCP Central Committee. At the time, the basic policy of the leaders of the CCP, including the representatives of the Komintern in China, was to attack, so it was natural that there were many conflicts between the two, and it was inevitable that Mao Zedong would be under pressure. The biggest change in Mao Zedong after the founding of the PRC was that he was no longer cautious. It is not wrong to say that he was arrogant, but to be specific, what happened was that Mao Zedong's judgment of power differentials was increasingly wide of the mark.
  • Yang Kuisong, "Facing up to China's Revolution"(2018)

• In Mao a politician’s grasp of the historical moment was coupled with a poet’s whimsy, and it was often through some improvised flourish that he would unveil his program. When the Communist Party Central Committee and the top brass in Beijing tried to clamp down on popular protests, Mao did not use his supreme authority as party chairman to set his colleagues straight. Instead, he employed the very same approach as the masses by writing a big-character poster of his own, entitled “Bombard the Headquarters,” protesting that “some leading comrades” had adopted “the reactionary stand of the bourgeoisie… encircling and suppressing revolutionaries” and “stifling opinions different from their own.” You can imagine people’s reaction: what can it mean when the great leader Chairman Mao has gone so far as to write a big-character poster? It can mean only one thing—that Chairman Mao is in the same boat as ordinary people like themselves! No wonder, then, that the great proletarian Cultural Revolution soon engulfed China with the speed of an unquenchable wildfire.
  Historically, emperors have always cut the kind of figure and spoken the kind of language expected of an emperor, no matter how exalted or how humble their origins. Mao was the only exception. After he became leader, he often acted quite out of keeping with accepted norms, taking his comrades in the Communist Party leadership completely by surprise. Mao understood very well how to whip the masses into a frenzy, and by appearing on the Gate of Heavenly Peace in the early stages of the Cultural Revolution and greeting fanatical “revolutionary students” and “revolutionary masses” there, he impelled the high tide to ever greater heights.
  • Yu Hua,China in Ten Words(2011)

Z

• The feeling is shared by some older people. Amid today's chronic corruption and widening income disparity, Mao as a megalomaniac who launched the Cultural Revolution and other violent political campaigns during their youth seems very distant from China’s present-day reality. Many of China's elderly, especially those from the bottom social strata who did not benefit much from the country's economic boom, miss Mao’s reign and have become nostalgic for the Mao era, which they have romanticized as more socially fair and morally pure. Mao represents a simpler time before China became so money-obsessed and people began to believe in nothing but personal gain.
  In a strange twist of fate, although Mao eliminated all form of private capital in China, he now enjoys a deified status among many of the self-made rich elite because, according to one account, they admire Mao’s tenacity and his ability to turn weakness into strength. They worship Mao as a God. In a visit to Mao’s hometown,Shaoshan,in 2014, I was amazed to watch local wealthy Chinese in flashy Mercedes hire uniformed guards to march with them to lay flowers and wreaths in front of a giant copper status of Mao.
  Mao is not dead—his ghost continues to haunt China.
  • Suisheng Zhao, in "Is Mao Still Dead?: A ChinaFile Conversation"(February 12, 2015)

See also

• Zhou Enlai
• Deng Xiaoping

External links

• CNN profile
• The Mao Zedong Reference Archive at marxists.org
  • Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung
  • The Encyclopedia of Marxismgives a Trotskyist view of Mao's life.
  • The Encyclopedia of Marxismgives a Trotskyist view ofMao Zedong Thought.
• The Mao Zedong Reference Archive at marx2mao.org
• Mao Zedong on propaganda postersSet of propaganda paintings showing Mao Zedong as the great leader of China.
• Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung,an online version of Mao's famous "Little Red Book"

Additional sources

• In Chinese and In English: Various Types of Mao Zedong's Writings