我们不建议阅读下面的文字。译者仅进行了十分业余的翻译，不对无论是翻译质量还是下面文字所述的内容的正确性或公正性负任何责任。
We do not recommend reading the following text. The translator has merely provided a very amateur translation and assumes no responsibility for the quality of the translation or the accuracy or impartiality of the content below.

Letter to Jiang Qing[1][2] (8th July, 1966)

Author: Mao Zedong

Jiang Qing[3]:

I received your letter of 29th June. It would be best for you to stay there for a while, following the advice of Comrades Wei and Chen[4]. I have two receptions for foreign guests this month; I shall let you know my whereabouts after meeting them. Since leaving Wulin[5] on 15th June, I spent over ten days living in a mountain cave in the west[6], somewhat out of touch with the news. I arrived at the land of ‘White Clouds and Yellow Cranes’[7] on the 28th, and have been here for ten days now. Reading the materials every day has proven quite captivating.

Great disorder under heaven leads to great order. This recurs every seven or eight years. ‘Monsters and demons’ leap out of their own accord. Driven by their own class nature, they cannot help but break cover. The Central Committee urges the distribution of my friend’s speech[8], and I am preparing to agree to its release—he dealt exclusively with the question of coups d’état. No one had ever spoken on the issue as he did. I have always felt uneasy about some of his formulations. I never believed those few small books of mine possessed such magical powers. Now, inflated by his hype, the whole Party and the whole nation have joined in the fanfare—truly like Wang Po extolling her own melons, pure self-praise. I was forced up Mount Liang by them; it seems that I have no choice but to agree with them.

It is the first time for me to agree with others on such a major issue against my own better judgment; this is what one might call ‘independent of human will’. Ruan Ji of the Jin Dynasty opposed Liu Bang; he walked from Luoyang to Chen’gao, and sighed: ‘With no heroes in the world, mere scoundrels have made a name for themselves.’ Lu Xun said something similar about his own essays; I fell a deep spiritual affinity with Lu Xun. I like his way of being frank. He said: ‘Dissecting oneself is often more ruthless than dissecting others.’ Having tumbled several times myself, I often do the same. But fellow comrades usually do not believe it. I am confident, yet also somewhat diffident.

In my youth I once said: ‘Confident that I shall live two hundred years, I will strike the waters over three thousand li.’ That just shows how full of swagger I was. Yet I was never quite so confident, always mindful of the saying ‘When there are no tigers in the mountain, the monkey claims to be king.’ And so I became such a ‘king’. Nor was it eclecticism; there is a primary ‘tiger spirit’ in me, alongside a secondary ‘monkey spirit’. I once quoted lines from the letter written by Li Gu of the Eastern Han Dynasty to Huang Qiong: ‘Yáoyáo zhě yì zhé, jiǎojiǎo zhě yì wū. Yángchūn báixuě, hé zhě gài guǎ. Shèngmíng zhī xià, qíshí nán fù.’[9] The last two sentences describe me exactly.

I once read these sentences at a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau. Self-knowledge is a virtue. At the Hangzhou Meeting this April, I expressed disagreement with the ways my friends expressed it. But what good did it do? He still talked about it like that at the Beijing Meeting in May; the newspapers and magazines trumpeted it even more fiercely—extolling me in almost supernatural terms. Thus, I was forced up Mount Liang. I suspect their intention is to borrow ‘Zhong Kui’ to strike at ghosts. I just became the ‘Zhong Kui’ of the Communist Party in the 1960s.

Things always turn into their opposites: the higher one is puffed up, the harder one falls; I am preparing to tumble into pieces. That is nothing at all: matter is indestructible; it is merely shattered into pieces. There are more than one hundred Parties in the world, most of them not believing in Marxism-Leninism, and Marx and Lenin themselves have been shattered by people—so what chances do we have? I urge you to pay attention to this problem: do not let victory go to your head, and think about your own weaknesses, shortcomings and faults. I have discussed this issue with you countless times; you must remember that I have just discussed it in Shanghai in April. What I have written above sounds rather like ‘subversive talk’; don’t some anti-Party elements just say it like this? But they intend to overthrow our entire Party and myself, whereas I merely state that some characterisations of my role are inappropriate; that is the difference between me and the ‘black gang.’

This matter cannot be made public now; the entire Left and the broad masses hold this view. If we make it public, we will be pouring cold water on them and helping the Right; the mission now is to fundamentally (completely is not possible) beat the Right down across the entire Party and nation, and another campaign to sweep away ‘monsters and demons’ would take place in seven or eight years; there will be more afterwards. Thus these nearly ‘subversive talks’ of mine must not be made public; when it can be made public cannot be determined at the moment, because the Left and broad masses will not welcome me saying like this. Maybe sometime after my death, when the Right hold the power, let them make it public. They will use my talks like this to attempt to raise the ‘black flag’ forever; but if they do that, they will bring about their own downfall.

Since the emperor was overthrown in 1911, reactionary regimes in China never lasted long, the longest of them lasting a merely twenty years (under Chiang Kai-shek), only to collapse the moment the people rose in rebellion. Chiang Kai-shek exploited Sun Yat-sen’s trust in him to establish the Whampoa Military Academy, gathering a bunch of reactionaries to build his power base. Once he turned against the Communists, nearly all of the landlords and bourgeoisie classes supported him; with the Communist Party still lacking experience at the time, he temporarily gained the upper hand with great relish. But in these twenty years, he never achieved true unification: there was the war between the Kuomintang and the CPC, the war between KMT and various warlord factions, the Sino-Japanese War, and finally the four-year great civil war; after that he scuttled off to a cluster of islands.

If a anti-Communist Rightist coup were to occur in China, I am certain they would find no peace and would be short-lived, for all of the revolutionaries representing more than ninety percent of the people’s interests will not tolerate it. At then the Right might use my words to prevail in a time, and the Left will cite my other words to organise themselves and overthrow them. This Great Cultural Revolution is a serious rehearsal. Some areas (such as Beijing), deeply entrenched, yet collapsed overnight; certain institutions (such as Peking University and Tsinghua University), intricately intertwined, collapsed in an instant. The more arrogant the Right are, the more disastrous their defeat will be, and the more spirited the Left will become. This is a national rehearsal, and all the Left, the Right and the wavering centrists will get their own lessons.

Conclusion: the future is bright, the road is tortuous—the same old two lines as always.

The Resolution of Publishing The Selected Works of Mao Zedong and Preparing for the Publication of The Complete Works of Mao Zedong by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

In more than half a century, the great leader and tutor Chairman Mao Zedong has inherited, defended and developed Marxism-Leninism and has enriched the theoretic treasure-house of Marxism, according to the principles of uniting the universal truths of Marxism-Leninism with the specific practice of revolution, in the great struggle of leading our country to complete the New-Democratic Revolution and carry out the Socialist Revolution and Socialist Construction, in the great struggle of opposing the right-wing and ‘left-wing’ opportunist lines in the Party, and in the great struggle of opposing modern revisionism centred around the Soviet revisionist traitor group and reactionaries in various countries. Publishing the works of Chairman Mao has great realistic significance and far-reaching historical significance both to our country’s people to inherit Chairman Mao’s unfulfilled wish and carry the proletarian revolutionary cause through to the end and to the liberation cause of the world’s proletariats and the oppressed people of oppressed nations. This is a great deed in the developing history of Marxism, and it is a must to carry out the work seriously and diligently with utmost care. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has decided that:

(Ⅰ) Publish the fifth volume of The Selected Works of Mao Zedong as soon as possible, and successively publish further volumes. While publishing The Selected Works, actively prepare for the publication of The Complete Works of Mao Zedong.

(Ⅱ) The publication of The Selected Works of Mao Zedong and The Complete Works of Mao Zedong should be directly led by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China headed by Comrade Hua Guofeng. A Committee of Editing and Publishing the Works of Chairman Mao Zedong should be established under the Political Bureau to be responsible for the specific work of sorting, editing and publishing.

(Ⅲ) All the original copies of Chairman Mao’s works should be collected and preserved by the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

The Central Committee instructs Party Committees at all levels to promptly submit all of Chairman Mao’s manuscripts preserved in their respective regions and units, including original copies of articles, files, telegrams, instructions, letters, poems, inscriptions, and original transcriptions of speeches, to the General Office of the Central Committee.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China calls upon the entire Party, the entire Army, and the people of all nationalities throughout the country to launch a new upsurge in studying Marxist-Leninist works and Chairman Mao’s works, and to vigorously assist in collecting original copies of Chairman Mao’s works. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China hopes that Marxist-Leninist political parties, organisations, progressive groups, and friendly individuals from all countries will assist in the collection of original copies of Chairman Mao’s works.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
8th October, 1976

Publisher’s Note to the Fifth Volume of The Selected Works of Mao Zedong

The works of the great leader and tutor, Chairman Mao Zedong, are immortal contributions to Marxism-Leninism. In the light of the resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the fifth volume of The Selected Works of Mao Zedong is now published; further volumes will also be published in succession.

The first to the fourth volumes of The Selected Works of Mao Zedong published in the past are important works during the New-Democratic Revolution period. The fifth and further volumes are important works during the Socialist Revolution and Socialist Construction period.

In the new historical period after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Comrade Mao Zedong persisted in the consistent principles of uniting the universal truths of Marxism-Leninism with the specific practice of revolution, and led our Party and the people of our country inherit, defend and developed Marxism-Leninism in the struggle of carrying out the Socialist Revolution and Socialist Construction, in the struggle of opposing the revisionist lines of Gao-Rao, Peng Dehuai, Liu Shaoqi, Lin Biao, and Wang-Zhang-Jiang-Yao, in the struggle of opposing imperialism and reactionaries in various countries, and in the struggle of opposing modern revisionism centred around the Soviet revisionist traitor group. In this period, the greatest theoretic contributions of Comrade Mao Zedong is that he systematically summarised the historical experiences of the proletarian dictatorship both international and of our country, applied the basic standpoint of the unity of opposites of materialist dialectics, analysed the laws of development of socialism, and established the great theory of Continuing Revolution Under Proletarian Dictatorship. The new thought and theory of proletarian revolution and proletarian dictatorship by Comrade Mao Zedong, greatly enriched the theoretic treasure-house of Marxism-Leninism in the fields of philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism. It not only points out the fundamental road to consolidating proletarian dictatorship, guarding against restoration of capitalism, and constructing socialism, but possesses great, far-reaching global significance as well.

The fifth volume of The Selected Works of Mao Zedong contains important works from July 1949 to 1957. The scientific thesis of conflicts between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and between the socialist road and the capitalist road still long-lastingly exist after the basic accomplishment of the socialist transformation of the system of ownership of the means of production, the theory of how to distinguish and deal with the two contradictions of different nature, contradictions between ourselves and the enemy and contradictions among the people, correctly, the great theory of Continuing Revolution Under Proletarian Dictatorship, and the basic concept of the general line of socialist construction by Comrade Mao Zedong are first advanced in this volume of works, Later, especially in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Comrade Mao Zedong continually enriched and developed these glorious thoughts according to the experiences of revolutional practice.

Comrade Mao Zedong was the greatest Marxist-Leninist in the contemporary era. Mao Zedong Thought is the victorious flag of the unitedly fighting and continuing revolution of our Party, our Army, and our people, and is the common treasure of international proletariats and each country’s revolutionary people. The thoughts and theories of Comrade Mao Zedong are immortal.

The selected works of Comrade Mao Zedong during the period of the Socialist Revolution and Socialist Construction have part of them publicly issued in the past, the others not, including the files, manuscripts and speeches’ formal transcripts by Comrade Mao Zedong. Speech transcripts were essentially, technically straightened out when editing.

The Committee of Editing and Publishing the Works of Chairman Mao Zedong of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
1st March, 1977

  1. Selected from The Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 7, edited by Jinghuo. ↩︎

  2. This is a letter written by Comrade Mao Zedong to Jiang Qing in Wuhan; after writing it, he showed it to Zhou Enlai and Wang Renzhong (First Secretary of the Hubei Provincial Party Committee). The original manuscript was destroyed by Mao Zedong. ↩︎

  3. Jiang Qing: Mao Zedong’s wife; at the time, she was Deputy Head of the Central Cultural Revolution Group. ↩︎

  4. Comrades Wei and Chen: Wei refers to Wei Wenbo, then Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and Secretary of the East China Bureau; Chen refers to Chen Pixian, then First Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, Secretary of the East China Bureau and concurrently First Political Commissar of the Shanghai Garrison Command. ↩︎

  5. Wulin: a former name of Hangzhou. ↩︎

  6. Refers to the Dishuidong (Dripping Water Cave) in Shaoshan. ↩︎

  7. The land of ‘White Clouds and Yellow Cranes’: Refers to the Yellow Crane Tower in Wuhan. This alludes to the seven-character octave ‘Yellow Crane Tower’ by the Tang Dynasty poet Cui Hao, which contains the line: ‘The yellow crane has flown away and will never return; for a thousand years, the white clouds have drifted idly by.’ ↩︎

  8. My friend’s speech: refers to Lin Biao’s speech at the Enlarged Meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on 18th May, 1966, in which he raised the issue of ‘preventing counterrevolutionary coups’. ↩︎

  9. ‘Yáoyao zhě yì zhé, jiǎojiǎo zhě yì wū. Yángchūn báixuě, hé zhě gài guǎ. Shèngmíng zhī xià, qíshí nán fù’: That which stands tallest is easily broken; that which is purest is easily stained. High classical tunes like ‘Spring Snow’ find few who can sing along; a soaring reputation is difficult to live up to in reality. ↩︎