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When the first waves of Chinese graduate students arrived on American campuses in the early 1980s, they were excited at entering an unfettered learning environment. After the recent ravages of the Cultural Revolution, political science students had few inhibitions about studying what had gone wrong in China as they were growing up.
“If there was anything Mao wouldn’t want to see, it was tears. Mao said on one occasion, ‘I can’t bear to see poor people cry. When I see their tears, I can’t hold back my own.’ “Another thing which upset Mao was bloodshed.” —From Mao Zedong: Man, Not God by Quan Yanchi11.These observations should not be taken on trust. The author, a loyal hack of the official Chinese Writers’
Explaining and debunking the theory and practice of Maoism. Part 4.
In these pages nearly seven years ago, Timothy Snyder asked the provocative question: Who killed more, Hitler or Stalin? As useful as that exercise in moral rigor was, some think the question itself might have been slightly off. Instead, it should have included a third tyrant of the 20th century, Chairman Mao. And not just that, but that Mao should have been the hands-down
A lecture by Harold White Fellow, Benjamin Penny, at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2001