the little red book

Mao Tse-Tung's "Little Red Book" is the closest thing to a bible that Marxist-Leninist, materialist and atheist Chinese society can have. By some estimates, five billion copies of The Thoughts of Chairman Mao were published during its heyday, the Cultural Revolution, that violent period of ideological fervour in the 1960s and 1970s. But questions have now been raised about whether the Great Helmsman actually wrote it himself, or got a ghost writer to do it for him.

The book of quotations from communist China's founding father Chairman Mao Tse-tung, was a must-have in the days when Red Guards roamed the streets looking for any signs of ideological wavering. It was also the revolutionary tome of choice for every western Marxist-Leninist hipster on university campuses. Pithy and strident aphorisms such as, "it is the duty of the cadres and the Party to serve the people. Without the people's interests constantly at heart, their work is useless," helped to establish a cult of personality around Mao Tse-tung so powerful that the current leadership of China is still trying to shake it off.

But lately there has been a flurry of online rumours that some of Mao's writings were not written by Mao himself, but by his secretary Hu Qiaomu...

via The Independent.