"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."
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Anti-fascistsPoets from ChinaGeneral Secretaries and Chairmen of the Communist Party of ChinaAnti-imperialistsNon-fiction authors from China
Original Language: English
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Sources
Stuart R. Schram, quoted in Roderick MacFarquhar, "Stuart Reynolds Schram, 1924–2012". China Quarterly (December 2012)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong
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Mao Zedong
1893 – 1976
chinesischer Revolutionär
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