Roger Howard - Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese People

I am indebted to the authors and publishers mentioned in my list of references for the use of the material indicated. In particular I must record my thanks for permission to use longer extracts from published works to Lois Wheeler Snow and to Victor Gollancz Ltd. and Random House for Edgar Snows Red Star over China, reprinted by permission of Grove Press, Edgar Snow, 1968; to Monthly Review Press for Agnes Smedleys The Great Road; to Jerome Chen and Oxford University Press for Mao Papers, edited by Jerome Chen, reprinted by permission of the publisher; to Jerome Chen, and the editors of The China Quarterly for the translation of Maos poem Chingkangshan Revisited appearing in Mao (Great Lives Observed), Prentice-Hall, 1969; to Jerome Chen and Prentice-Hall Inc. for Mao (Great Lives Observed), 1969, reprinted by permission of the publisher; to Stuart R. Schram and Praeger Publishers, New York, and Pall Mall Press, London, for Stuart Schrams The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung; to Harvard University Press for Mark Seldens The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China; to International Publishers, New York, for Agnes Smedleys Chinese Destinies.

Acknowledgements are due to Lindsay Drummond Ltd, the publishers of China Fights for Freedom by Anna Louise Strong. Thanks are also due to Eastern Horizon Press, Hong Kong; the Peoples Publishing House, Bombay; Gunther Stein; the editors of Chinese Literature; and the Foreign Languages Press, Peking, for the use of material.

Jerome Chens Mao and the Chinese Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1965) and Stuart R. Schrams Mao Tse-tung (Penguin Books, 1966) remain useful and detailed accounts of Maos life from angles different from my own. Any biographer of Mao must acknowledge a debt to these scholars.

I should also like to acknowledge the help and encouragement of many comrades and friends in both Britain and China in the preparation and writing of this book.

I am concerned in this book with seeing Mao Tse-tung in his relationship to the Chinese people. I have tried to show the closeness which I believe existed between him and the masses of workers and, especially, peasants. But I am aware that what I will reveal is still very much Mao and China as outsiders have seen them. The Chinese people, as distinct from their officials, are even now largely silent on paper: it is their acts that speak.