Thanks to a reader who forwarded this video and translation of a rally - “A Memorial for Chairman Mao and Other Martyrs” - held in Luoyang, Henan Province, earlier this month. Apparently a number of people have been meeting in a public square in Luoyang for some time to ‘publicize Mao Zedong Thought‘, most of the time without incident. Recently, however, the city government in Luoyang has taken a dim view of their actions, and begun to crack down on the participants, urging them not to gather. It is not entirely clear, but the precipitating event may have been an anti-GMO rally earlier this year, wherein the introduction of GMO grain was viewed as an example of the collusion between foreign interests and ‘traitors’ (the officials that approved the deal).

Links to two papers that were written in relation to the June 2006 Hong Kong conference on the 40th Anniversary of the Cultural Revolution: “Evaluating the Cultural Revolution in China and its Legacy for the Future” and “Chinese Foreign Policy during the Maoist Era and its Lessons for Today.”

In 2005, the British publisher Jonathan Cape launched Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s Mao: The Unknown Story, to great fanfare. The book pictures Mao as a liar, ignoramus, fool, philistine, vandal, lecher, glutton, hedonist, drug-peddler, ghoul, bully, thug, coward, posturer, manipulator, psychopath, sadist, torturer, despot, megalomaniac and the greatest mass murderer of the twentieth century – in short, a monster, equal to or worse than Hitler and Stalin. He cared nothing about the fate of the Chinese people and his fellow human beings, or even his close friends and relatives. He was driven by bloodlust and the craving for power and sex. He ruled by terror, led by native cunning, and defeated Chiang Kai-shek by leaning towards Stalin and treacherously insinuating moles and sleepers into the Guomindang.

With thanks to Dong Xulin, we are now able to provide the full text of a little-known but often-in-demand study: Manufacturing History: Sex, Lies and Random House’s Memoirs of Mao’s Physician. This was edited by Dong Xulin and Q.M. DeBorja, and published by the CSG in 1996.

As China embraces capitalism, the Mao era is being surgically denigrated by the Chinese political and intellectual elite. This book tackles the extremely negative depiction of China under Mao in recent publications and argues most people in China, including the rural poor and the urban working class, actually benefited from Mao’s policy of a comprehensive welfare system for the urban and basic health and education provision for the rural, which is being reversed in the current rush towards capitalism.