Imaginary interview with Mao Zedong
by Charactorium · Mao Zedong (1893 — 1976) · Politics · 6 min read
It is in a plush salon of Zhongnanhai, in Beijing, that Richard Nixon meets Mao Zedong in this winter of the 1970s. Cigarette smoke rises toward shelves crammed with books, and the old Great Helmsman, his step heavy, greets his visitor with an ironic smile. The two men shook hands before the whole world; they know what separates them and what, strangely, brings them together. Nixon comes that day less as a head of state than as a curious adversary, determined to understand the man behind the portrait of Tiananmen.
—Mr. Chairman, before the revolution, they say you walked across your province of Hunan. What were you looking for on those paths?
I was looking for the real China, the one no book from Moscow described. I walked hundreds of li through Hunan, sleeping in peasants' homes, listening to their debts, their anger, their hopes. The Marxists of Europe swore that the revolution would come from the urban workers; I saw that China's strength lay in the mud of the rice paddies. In 1927, I wrote my Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan to say it: the peasants accomplished in a few months what the smooth talkers had not done in twenty years. They called me a heretic. But a revolution that does not start from the belly of the hungry is just a speech. You, the man of the Midwest farmers, should understand that better than most.
China's strength lay in the mud of the rice paddies, not in the books of Moscow.
—You received me here, in your capital. But in 1949, on the rostrum of Tiananmen, what did you feel when you proclaimed the Republic?
Imagine a country trampled for a century: by European empires, by Japan, by its own warlords. On October 1, 1949, standing on the Gate of Heavenly Peace, before a human tide, I said that the Chinese people had stood up. It was not a formula; it was a fact. A quarter of humanity ceased that day to beg for its place. I felt all the weight of the dead behind me, those of the Long March, those of the ancient famines. You came all the way here, Mr. Nixon, precisely because this China now exists and can no longer be ignored. A man remembers all his life the day his people stop being on their knees.
A quarter of humanity ceased that day to beg for its place.
—You built your doctrine far from the big cities, in Yan'an. Why bet so much on the countryside rather than on the factories?
Because China was not Marx's Germany. We had a handful of factories and an ocean of peasants. In Yan'an, after the Long March, I forged what others have called Maoism: surround the cities from the countryside, as one surrounds a citadel. My comrades trained in Moscow wanted to copy the Russian revolution; they led our men to slaughter. I preferred to listen to the earth. Guerrilla warfare, patience, mass support: that is what defeated a much better equipped army. Your Pacific generals learned what a determined people on its own soil can do. Theory is only valuable if it returns to practice, in the mud, among men.
Surround the cities from the countryside, as one surrounds a citadel.
—You are known as a strategist and statesman. Yet you write poems. How do these two men coexist within you?
They are one. At night, when the house sleeps, I read and write. My library holds tens of thousands of volumes, and I often stay awake until dawn, sometimes watching one of your American westerns, I admit it. I composed verses in classical forms, ci and shi, even in the hardest times of war. My poem Snow speaks of the emperors of old to better say that a new era begins. The calligrapher's brush and the soldier's sword trace the same gesture: both demand a steady hand and a free mind. A leader who has never trembled before a verse will never understand the soul of his people. Politics governs bodies; poetry touches what in them cannot be commanded.
The calligrapher's brush and the soldier's sword trace the same gesture.
—Allow my frankness as an adversary: your Great Leap Forward was supposed to catch up with the West. It caused a massive famine. Do you acknowledge it?
You strike where the wound is raw, and I will not dodge. Between 1958 and 1962, I wanted China, in a few years, to catch up with a century of backwardness. We melted down the people's communes, blazed steel in village furnaces. I believed in it; the momentum was immense. But enthusiasm does not feed a people, and the figures lied as they went up to Beijing. The harvest rotted while they promised me mountains of grain. Men died by the millions, and that, no doctrine can erase. A revolutionary who does not admit his mistakes betrays the mass line he claims to serve. I had to retreat, give ground. You govern too; you know that a decision taken from above can crush those below.
Enthusiasm does not feed a people, and the figures lied as they went up to Beijing.
—After such a disaster, how did you keep power, when even within your own Party some contested it?
Because the revolution is not a dinner party, Mr. Nixon. After the Great Leap, some comrades wanted to relegate me to the rank of helmsman without a rudder, to manage prudently, like accountants. They judged me obsolete. But I never believed that the victory of 1949 ended the struggle; on the contrary, it is in peace that the bourgeoisie is reborn, even in the ranks of the Party. I saw Khrushchev's USSR slide into revisionism, and I refused that fate for China. Keeping power was not my goal: preventing the revolution from hardening into comfort, that is what obsessed me. A river that stops flowing becomes a swamp.
It is in peace that the bourgeoisie is reborn, even in the ranks of the Party.
—In 1966, at seventy-two, you swam the Yangtze before the cameras. What did you want to prove, and to whom?
Rumor had it that old Mao was finished, sick, fit for the mausoleum. So I plunged into the Yangtze and let the river carry me for miles, under the eyes of the whole country. It was not an old man's bravado: it was a signal. I was swimming against the current of those who, in the Party, thought I was out of the game. The river is an old master: it teaches you that you advance only by accepting its force instead of fighting it head-on. At the same time, I was reminding the youth that they must take the revolution back in hand. Coming out of the water that day was entering the last great battle of my life.
I was swimming against the current of those who, in the Party, thought I was out of the game.
—You launched the young Red Guards against the "Four Olds." Did you not fear unleashing uncontrollable violence?
I wanted to entrust the revolution to those who had not known the old world, to this youth that nothing had yet corrupted. The Red Guards were to sweep away old ideas, old customs, everything that weighed on China like a mountain. Yes, once lit, the fire burns wider than intended. Teachers were humiliated, treasures destroyed, families torn apart; I saw chaos rise. You do not steer a storm as you steer an army. I held that a little disorder was better than an order that lulls to sleep. History will judge whether I was wrong to trust the youth rather than the cautious mandarins. But a nation that fears its own youth has already ceased to live.
You do not steer a storm as you steer an army.
—We shook hands, you the communist and I the anticommunist. What, in your opinion, made this meeting possible?
Necessity, Mr. Nixon, that old matchmaker of peoples. We fought each other in Korea, your soldiers against mine, and no one believed we could share tea. But China fell out with Moscow, and your America was looking to loosen another vise. Two lucid adversaries are better than two blind allies. I renounced none of my convictions in receiving you, and you did not either, I suppose. Simply, I always thought one must speak to one's enemy when the people's interest demands it, without naivety or illusion. You came from very far to sit in this smoky salon; that alone proves that no wall is eternal. Geography and History are stronger than ideological oaths.
Necessity, that old matchmaker of peoples.
—One last question, more personal: at night, alone with your books and your brush, what does the Great Helmsman still think about?
About water, always about water and the river that never returns to its source. I think of that kid from Shaoshan who walked barefoot in the rice paddies and who now sees his portrait hanging above Tiananmen. Between the two, there are mountains of dead and mountains of hopes, and I have not always known how to separate them. I reread the ancient poets, trace a few characters, and measure how little a man is before a people on the march. They call me the Great Helmsman; but the helmsman grows old, and the ship continues without him. What will remain of me is not the titles: it is having put China back on its feet, with its faults and its greatness mingled.
The helmsman grows old, and the ship continues without him.
Read further
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Mao Zedong's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.