Zitat des Tages über Mao:
The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings.
Although my book is banned I am still allowed to go to China and travel. There is no longer the kind of control that Mao used to have-there have been deep fundamental changes in society.
I can understand the Cultural Revolution of Mao Tse-tung.
One word from Chairman Mao is worth ten thousand from others. His every statement is truth. We must carry out those we that understand as well as those we don't.
We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun. And we get it that if you want a friend you should get a dog.
When I was in China, Mao was Chairman, and parents were terrified to tell their children anything that differed from the party line in case the children repeated it and endangered the whole family.
The Korean War, which China entered on the side of North Korea, fixed Mao's image in the United States as another unappeasable Communist.
I was Chairman Mao's dog. What he said to bite, I bit.
It's taken us 10 years, and it was constant excitement. I was constantly shocked by how evil he could be. Mao was very, very shrewd but he didn't have human feeling.
I have been compared to Mao since we were both junior skaters. We've felt the rivalry since then, so we wanted to avoid each other. However, she has been my motivation.
The kleptocracy overseen by Chinese President Xi Jinping is more vicious and brutally anti-democratic than any regime run by any clique the Chinese Communist Party's ruling elite has vomited up since the days of Mao Zedong.
Six decades ago, as Mao's Communists seized power, the question in Washington was, 'Who lost China?' Now, as his capitalist descendants stand astride the world stage and Washington worries about decline, it seems to be, 'Who lost America?'
Although I never marched through the streets shouting for Mao, I do believe that the liberation of China at the end of the 1940s was a wonderful thing and to provide its people with a billion pairs of shoes and trousers was a fantastic achievement.
Yu Na Kim, Mao Asada, Carolina Kostner - all these girls can do triple-triples in their sleep, and they have the skating skills and the spins and the rest of the technical jumps. So I have to have that as well if I want to be able to call myself 'competitive' against them. And when I say 'competitive,' I mean I want to win.
I knew I could not maintain that leadership in open struggle against Moscow influence. Only two Communist leaders in history ever succeeded in doing this - Tito and Mao Tse-tung.
It's much easier to wear a Chairman Mao button and shake your fists in the air and all that, then to actually read the Communist manifesto and things like that and actually become involved in politics.
If children were brought up to become non-conformists it would only ruin their lives. So parents all over China who loved their children told them to do as Chairman Mao said. It was not possible to tell them anything else.
Terrorists are people, too - they are given to error. Naipaul and then DeLillo do a good job in their novels of drawing this out: I'm thinking of DeLillo's contention in 'Mao II' that terrorists have replaced writers as the people who 'alter the inner-life of the culture.' I thought that was marvellous!
Basically no, I mean I think that it's very easy to like I say, smoke a joint or even to wear a Chairman Mao button, or do a lot of these things with out knowing what's behind it, and what it really means.
I no longer have the terrible nightmares that I used to have. Mao had just died in 1976, and China began to open up. For the first time scholarships to go to the West to study were awarded on academic merit.
Domestically, a lot of people think Xi Jinping is becoming Mao Zedong. By giving Hong Kong democracy, people would look at them as enlightened leaders.
There is something deeply disturbing about a popular culture that will not forgive the sins of the Confederacy seven generations past but celebrates the teachings and legacies of Che Guevara, Mao Zhe-Dong, and Jeremy Wright.
On top of my to-do list in preparing for Beijing is 'On China' by Henry Kissinger, who has had firsthand experience with every top Chinese leader since Mao, so his insights are valuable and his access is perhaps unrivaled.
We were for Mao, but when we saw the films he was making, they were bad. So we understood that there was necessarily something wrong with what he was saying.
The Chinese government is quickly losing its ideological legitimacy, maintain its rule with force, but cannot draw strength from the ideology of Marx and Mao.
Mao Zedong was a revolutionary. He made a revolution.
