China/Maoist era (1949-1976)/Posts/Sources/Teaching

Swimming in the Sea of Mao’s Works

Posted on by K. M. Lawson / 0 Comment

There are lots of things to keep in mind when working with texts by Mao Zedong. Many of the works that come to us today were speeches or notes on speeches that have undergone significant changes over time as Mao edited many of his best known works. In research on, say, the 1930s and 1940s, you may well want to know, to the degree this can be determined, what a given text or speech from that period looked like in its original form, or at least the form that was available to actors that are relevant to your research question.1 If, on the other hand, you are mostly interested in the post-1949 Chinese history through the Cultural Revolution, the versions of his works found in the first four volumes of Mao’s Selected Works (《毛泽东选集》) offer you a more stable canon of materials that were read by millions in China and, in Foreign Language Press translations, many others across the world.2 The individual texts in the volumes can be found on marxists.org here as well as downloads of PDFs of the volumes. If you are a student reading these texts because they were so widely circulated and read in Maoist times, quoted in thousands of other texts, and heavily influenced the discourse of the People’s Republic, I think these four volumes are a great place to set your primary focus.

These four volumes add up to a huge amount of material. Most students who encounter Mao’s works in a history class are likely to encounter a few of his texts in isolation in a course reader, online links, or via assigned sourcebooks such as Sources of Chinese Tradition or The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection or Sources in Chinese History: Diverse Perspectives from 1644 to the Present. Beyond Mao’s own work, there is now a wonderful variety of source material on the social and cultural history of modern China available in English translation. Good riddance, I say, to the days when when broader modern survey history classes almost exclusively assigned works by or about political leaders or the machinery of the state.

Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung

When it comes to studying the history of the Maoist period in depth (in, say, an upper year honours module or graduate course with only English language materials), however, I do think there is something valuable to be gained by spending more quality time swimming around in Mao’s world of most circulated texts to get a feel for the language, the repetition, the contradictions (and not just in the texts with that in the title), and the changes over time. Precisely because of the nature of Mao’s regime, and especially in the years of the Cultural Revolution, the discourse represented by this canon of texts echoes throughout Chinese society and many of our sources from the time. So, if the four volumes of the Selected Works are too much to ask but if we wanted to go beyond reading some half a dozen texts by Mao, what might we do? One option is Stuart Schram’s The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung (1969) which has a wonderful array of texts, but besides being out of print, they are often a bit too fragmented. At the bottom of this post you can find other older sourcebooks like it. Of course, another obvious option is just to widen the selection of hand-picked materials based on their importance and build your own reader. But my point here is less about the need to read any particular key text, but to get the feel for the canon.

Another option with some advantages and disadvantages is the Foreign Language Press Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung (1971) which is available as a PDF on Marxists.org. This is a translation of the (A) version (甲种本) from the 1965 second edition of《毛泽东著作选读》. Of course, the works chosen for inclusion and exclusion in this collection, as well as abridgements made of some the texts within are quite revealing of the particular moment in which collection emerged, and has the advantage of being a single volume that can be read in part or as a whole across a semester.

To see the benefits but also the limitations of Selected Readings From the Works of Mao Tsetung as a single volume option, we can consult the table and lists below. First I compare the Selected Readings selection with the Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung and then share a list of English translations of works by Mao found in various historical sourcebooks, many of them now long out of print, which is a shame since they contain a wealth of historical sources on modern China (well beyond the works of Mao listed here). You can browse the results below yourself, and I won’t further lengthen the post with more of my own reflections.

1. Comparing to Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung

First, we can compare Selected Readings to an alternative which would not serve on its own: the famous ‘little red book’ or Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (1966) available online at Marxists.org here.3 This collection of quotations is an absolutely fascinating text and object of worship, which get attention in the wonderful volume Mao’s Little Red Book: A Global History edited by Alexander C. Cook. Daniel Leese captures most concisely one of the biggest shortcomings of the quotes, which applies as well for the classroom as they do for the early opposition to the volume in the historical moment he is describing, “For use in group study and recitation, most quotations were devoid of concrete political analysis, and instead stated moral truths to be learned by heart and “applied” in everyday life. The fragments were not aimed at provoking critical inquiry or analysis and did not add up to a general introduction to Mao Zedong Thought.”4

Instead the quotations are interesting for their own reasons. In the introduction to his edition of the Quotations, Stuart Schram captures the contrast between the Mao we can find in his Selected Works and this collection of snippets, “The transition from the Selected Works to the Quotations can be characterized in three antitheses: from the rewriting of history to a supra-historical view, from political analysis to moralism, and from a Marxist classic to a national-revolutionary litany.”5 While they shouldn’t be the only Maoist work one reads, the Quotations are worth exploring with students, especially when learning about Maoism as a global phenomenon, but also because of the way that on the way to becoming a work similar to quotable scripture, the loss of context enables interesting new things to occur. As Daniel Leese puts it, “Mao’s sayings offered ample opportunities to substantiate opposing viewpoints once they were no longer applied within a hierarchical setting…Since with the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution Mao Zedong Thought had become the only criterion of truth, “quotation wars” turned Mao’s sayings into ideological weapons in ways never intended.”6

The little red book can also offer us one kind of proxy, from a mid-1960s moment, of texts by Mao considered important enough to extract quotes from. Stuart Schram’s introduction to his edition notes that some 303/427 quotations7 are from the four Selected Works volumes (62 from Vol I, 74 from Vol II, 86 from Vol 3, and 81 from Vol 4).8 Scraping the online pages from the online version of the English translation of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse Tung I had Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 3.5 to help write some scripts to process the files and chop up the quotes (I have made all the files and scripts available here on GitHub). The table below lists the number of quotes taken from each source and, in a separate column, whether or not the given source can be found in Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung (1971).

Source Frequency Table for Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung

Quotes Source In Selected Readings
36 On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (February 27, 1957). ✅
25 “On Coalition Government” (April 24, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III. ❌
23 “The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War” (October 1938), Selected Works, Vol. II. ✅
16 Speech at the Chinese Communist Party’s National Conference on Propaganda Work (March 12, 1957). ✅
13 “Methods of Work of Party Committees” (March 13, 1949), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ✅
12 “On Contradiction” (August 1937), Selected Works, Vol. I. ✅
12 “On Protracted War” (May 1938), Selected Works, Vol. II. ❌
10 “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War” (December 1936), Selected Works, Vol. I. ❌
9 “Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership” (June 1, 1943), Selected Works, Vol. III. ✅
9 “Rectify the Party’s Style of Work” (February 1, 1942), Selected Works, Vol. III. ✅
9 “On Practice” (July 1937), Selected Works, Vol. I. ✅
9 “On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party” (December 1929), Selected Works, Vol. I. ❌
8 “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art” (May 1942), Selected Works, Vol. III. ✅
8 “Report to the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China” (March 5, 1949), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ❌
8 “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship” (June 30, 1949), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ✅
8 “On the Chungking Negotiations” (October 17, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ❌
7 On the Question of Agricultural Co-operation (July 31, 1955), 3rd ed. ✅
6 “Opening Address at the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China” (September 15, 1956). ❌
6 “Serve the People” (September 8, 1944), Selected Works, Vol. III. ✅
6 “Get Organized!” (November 29, 1943), Selected Works, Vol. III. ✅
5 “The Situation and Our Policy After the Victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan” (August 13, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ✅
5 “The Present Situation and Our Tasks” (December 25, 1947), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ❌
5 “Problems of War and Strategy” (November 6, 1938), Selected Works, Vol. II. ❌
5 “Combat Liberalism” (September 7, 1937), Selected Works, Vol. II. ✅
5 “A Talk to the Editorial Staff of the Shansi-Suiyuan Daily” (April 2, 1948), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ✅
4 Where Do Correct Ideas Come from? (May 1963). ✅
4 “We Must Learn to Do Economic Work” (January 10, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III. ❌
4 “The Tasks for 1945” (December 15, 1944). ❌
4 “Speech at the Meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in Celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution” (November 6, 1957). ❌
4 “Reform Our Study” (May 1941), Selected Works, Vol. III. ✅
4 “Preface and Postscript to Rural Surveys” (March and April 1941), Selected Works, Vol. III. ✅
4 Speech at the Moscow Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties (November 18, 1957). ❌
4 “Speech at a Conference of Cadres in the Shansi-Suiyuan Liberated Area” (April 1, 1948), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ❌
4 “Be Concerned with the Well-Being of the Masses, Pay Attention to Methods of Work” (January 27, 1934), Selected Works, Vol. I. ❌
3 “The Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains” (November 25, 1928), Selected Works, Vol. I. ❌
3 “The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party” (December 1939), Selected Works, Vol. II. ❌
3 “Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong” (August 1946), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ✅
3 “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan” (March 1927), Selected Works, Vol. I. ✅
3 “Policy for Work in the Liberated Areas for 1946” (December 15, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ❌
3 “Our Study and the Current Situation” (April 12, 1944), Selected Works, Vol. III. ❌
3 “Manifesto of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army” (October 1947), Selected Military Writings, 2nd ed. ❌
3 “In Memory of Norman Bethune” (December 21, 1939), Selected Works, Vol. II ✅
2 To Be Attacked by the Enemy Is Not a Bad Thing but a Good Thing (May 26, 1939). ✅
2 Talk at a meeting with Chinese students and trainees in Moscow (November 17, 1957). ❌
2 Speech at the Supreme State Conference (September 8, 1958). ❌
2 Oppose Book Worship (May 1930). ✅
2 Intro to “A Serious Lesson” (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. I. ✅
2 Interview with a Hsinhua News Agency correspondent (September 29, 1958). ❌
2 Closing speech at the Second Session of the First National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (June 23, 1950). ❌
2 “Win the Masses in Their Millions for the Anti-Japanese National United Front” (May 7, 1937), Selected Works, Vol. I. ❌
2 “The United Front in Cultural Work” (October 30, 1944), Selected Works, Vol. III. ❌
2 “The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains” (June 11, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III. ✅
2 “Statement Supporting the Panamanian People’s Just Patriotic Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism” (January 12, 1964), People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and All Their Lackeys, 2nd ed. ❌
2 “Speech at the Assembly of Representatives of the Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia Border Region” (November 21, 1941), Selected Works, Vol. III. ❌
2 “Introducing a Co-operative” (April 15, 1958). ✅
2 “Cast Away Illusions, Prepare for Struggle” (August 14, 1949), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ❌
2 “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society” (March 1926), Selected Works, Vol. I. ✅
2 “Address to the Preparatory Committee of the New Political Consultative Conference” (June 15, 1949), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ❌
2 Quoted in On Khrushchov’s Phony Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World (July 14,1964) ❌
2 “On the Policy Concerning Industry and Commerce” (February 27, 1948), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ❌
2 Opening address at the First Plenary Session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (September 21. 1949). ❌
2 “Our Economic Policy” (January 23, 1934), Selected Works, Vol. I. ❌
2 “On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism” (December 27, 1935), Selected Works, Vol. I. ❌
2 “On New Democracy” (January 1940), Selected Works, Vol. II. ❌
2 “Interview with the British Journalist James Bertram” (October 25, 1937), Selected Works, Vol. II. ❌
1 Talk with African friends (August 8, 1963). ❌
1 Talk at the reception for the Presidium of the Second National Congress of the Youth League (June 30, 1953). ❌
1 Talk at the general reception for the delegates to the Third National Congress of the New Democratic Youth League of China (May 25, 1957). ❌
1 Speech at the reception given by the Central Committee of the Party for model study delegates from the Rear Army Detachments (September 18, 1944). ❌
1 Speech at the inaugural meeting of the Natural Science Research Society of the Border Region (February 5, 1940). ❌
1 Speech at the Wuchang Meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (December 1, 1958), quoted in the explanatory note to “Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong”, Selected Works, Vol. IV ❌
1 Speech at the Supreme State Conference (January 25, 1956). ❌
1 Speech at the Fourth Session of the First National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (February 7, 1953). ❌
1 Quoted in “Premier Chou Enlai’s Report on the Work of the Government to the First Session of the Third National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China” (December 21-22, 1964). ❌
1 Preface to The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside (December 27, 1955), Chinese ed., Vol. I. ❌
1 Opening address at the First Session of the First National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China (September 15, 1954). ❌
1 Note on “The Seven Well-Written Documents of Chekiang Province Concerning Cadres’ Participation in Physical Labour” (May 9, 1963), quoted in On Khrushchov’s Phony Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World, p.72. ❌
1 Motto for the Anti-Japanese Military and Political College. ❌
1 Message of greetings on behalf of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party to the Meeting of Representatives of National Combat Heroes and Model Workers (September 25, 1950). ❌
1 Intro to “Women Have Gone to the Labour Front” (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. I. ❌
1 Intro to “This Township Went Co-operative in Two Years” (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. II. ❌
1 Intro to “The Party Secretary Takes the Lead and All the Party Members Help Run the Co-operatives” (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. I. ❌
1 Intro to “The Lesson of the ‘Middle-Peasant Cooperative’ and the ‘Poor-Peasant Co-operative’ in Fuan County” (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. II. ❌
1 Intro to “Surplus Labour Has Found a Way Out” (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. II. ❌
1 Intro to “Solving the Labour Shortage by Arousing the Women to Join in Production” (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. II. ❌
1 Intro to “Running a Co-operative Diligently and Frugally” (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. I. ❌
1 Intro to “On Widening the Scope of Women’s Work in the Agricultural Co-operative Movement” (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. I. ❌
1 Intro to “Material on the Hu Feng Counter-Revolutionary Clique” (May 1955). ❌
1 Intro to “How Control of the Wutang Co-operative Shifted from the Middle to the Poor Peasants” (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. II. ❌
1 Intro to “Contract on a Seasonal Basis” (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. III. ❌
1 Intro to “A Youth Shock Brigade of the No. 9 Agricultural Producers’ Co-operative in Hsinping Township, Chungshan County” (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. III. ❌
1 Intro to “A Resolute Struggle Must Be Waged Against the Tendency Towards Capitalism” (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. I. ❌
1 Inscription for the magazine, Women of New China, printed in its first issue, July 20, 1949. ❌
1 Inscription for a production exhibition sponsored by organizations directly under the Central Committee of the Party and the General Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army, Liberation Daily of Yenan, November 24, 1943. ❌
1 “The Turning Point in World War II” (October 12, 1942), Selected Works, Vol. III. ❌
1 “The Tasks of the Chinese Communist Party in the Period of Resistance to Japan” (May 3, 1937), Selected Works, Vol. I. ❌
1 “The Orientation of the Youth Movement” (May 4, 1939), Selected Works, Vol. II. ❌
1 “The Democratic Movement in the Army” (January 30, 1948), Selected Military Writings, 2nd ed. ❌
1 “Statement Supporting the People of the Congo (L.) Against U.S. Aggression” (November 28, 1964), People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and All Their Lackeys, 2nd ed. ❌
1 “Statement Supporting the American Negroes in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism” (August 8, 1963), People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and All Their Lackeys, 2nd ed. ❌
1 “Statement Opposing Aggression Against Southern Vietnam and Slaughter of Its People by the U.S.-Ngo Dinh Diem Clique” (August 29, 1963), People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and All Their Lackeys, 2nd ed. ❌
1 “Spread the Campaigns to Reduce Rent, Increase Production and Support the Government and Cherish the People in the Base Areas” (October 1, 1943), Selected Works, Vol. III. ❌
1 “Speech at the Yenan Rally in Celebration of International Labour Day” (May 1, 1939). ❌
1 “Revolutionary Forces of the World Unite, Fight Against Imperialist Aggression!” (November 1948), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ❌
1 “Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War Against Japan” (May 1938), Selected Works, Vol. II ❌
1 “On the Reissue of the Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points for Attention – Instruction of the General Headquarters of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army” (October 10, 1947), Selected Military Writings, 2nd ed. ❌
1 “On the Great Victory in the Northwest and on the New Type of Ideological Education Movement in the Liberation Army” (March 7, 1948), Selected Military Writings, 2nd ed. ❌
1 “On Strengthening the Party Committee System” (September 20, 1948), Selected Works, Vol. IV ✅
1 “On Production by the Army for Its Own Support and on the Importance of the Great Movements for Rectification and for Production” (April 27, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III ❌
1 “On Policy” (December 25, 1940), Selected Works, Vol. II ❌
1 “On Peace Negotiations with the Kuomintang – Circular of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China” (August 26, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. IV ❌
1 “Message of Greetings on the 60th Birthday of Comrade Wu Yu-chang” (January 15, 1940). ❌
1 “Introducing The Communist” (October 4, 1939), Selected Works, Vol. II. ✅
1 “Interview with Three Correspondents from the Central News Agency, the Sao Tang Pao and the Hsin Min Pao” (September 16, 1939), Selected Works, Vol. II. ❌
1 “In Commemoration of Dr. Sun Yat-sen” (November 1956). ❌
1 “Greet the New High Tide of the Chinese Revolution” (February 1, 1947), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ❌
1 “China’s Two Possible Destinies” (April 23, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III. ❌
1 “Carry the Revolution Through to the End” (December 30, 1948), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ❌
1 “Build Stable Base Areas in the Northeast” (December 28, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ❌
1 “A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire” (January 5, 1930), Selected Works, Vol. I. ❌
1 “A Circular on the Situation” (March 20, 1948), Selected Works, Vol. IV. ❌

Note: Schram groups all the texts from sub-sections of The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside and counts 15, while I count 14.

Some of the omissions represent important texts that are often discussed and often quoted. For convenience, below is a more compact list of the works that are not found in the Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung but which are quoted three or more times in Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. Among them I have bolded texts that I think the absence of in this volume is particularly unfortunate:

  • On Coalition Government (25 quotes)
  • On Protracted War (12 quotes)
  • Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War (10 quotes)
  • On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party (9 quotes)
  • Report to the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (8 quotes)
  • On the Chungking Negotiations (8 quotes)
  • Opening Address at the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (6 quotes)
  • The Present Situation and Our Tasks (5 quotes)
  • Problems of War and Strategy (5 quotes)
  • We Must Learn to Do Economic Work (4 quotes)
  • The Tasks for 1945 (4 quotes)
  • Speech at the Meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in Celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution (4 quotes)
  • Speech at the Moscow Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties (4 quotes)
  • Speech at a Conference of Cadres in the Shansi-Suiyuan Liberated Area (4 quotes)
  • The Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains (3 quotes)
  • The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party (3 quotes)
  • Policy for Work in the Liberated Areas for 1946 (3 quotes)
  • Our Study and the Current Situation (3 quotes)
  • Manifesto of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (3 quotes)

To this list it is probably worth adding that the well-known and often discussed On New Democracy is both missing from the Selected Readings and has only two quotes in the little red book. Understandably also not included in either are important texts from the Cultural Revolution itself that are often found in sourcebooks, such as Mao’s “Bombard the Headquarters – My Big Character Poster”, “Just a Few Words” or the 1956 On the Ten Major Relationships which was published in the 1977 fifth volume of the Selected Works.

2. Translated Works by Mao in Historical Sourcebooks

There are now quite a few great document collections related to the PRC and, revisiting some of the oldest of these, I’ve listed a selection of these are below in order of publication. Since I only list texts they contain that are attributed to Mao, they don’t give a sense of how rich some of these edited document collections are. This is arguably even more true for the ones that have few or no works by Mao since they often reach well beyond the usual suspects to find interesting new perspectives on Chinese society during the period. ✅ indicates that the text is in Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung.

Brandt, Conrad, Benjamin Schwartz, and John K. Fairbank, eds. A Documentary History of Chinese Communism (1952)

  • #7. Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan (February, 1927) ✅
  • #19. Report to the Second All-China Soviet Conference (January 22, 1934)
  • #22. Urgent Tasks of the Chinese Revolution since the Formation of the KMT-CCP United Front (September 29, 1937)
  • #24. On New Democracy (January 19, 1940)
  • #27. On Coalition Government (April 24, 1945)
  • #34. Correcting Unorthodox Tendencies in Learning, the Party, and Literature and Art (February 1, 1942) p372
  • #35. Opposing Party Formalism (February 8, 1942) (this is “Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing”) ✅
  • #36. Speech Made at the Forum on Literature and Art at Yenan (May 1942) ✅
  • #39. On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship (July 1, 1949) ✅

Compton, Boyd ed. Mao’s China: Party Reform Documents, 1942-44. (1952)

  • Reform in Learning, the Party and Literature (Feb 1 1942) ✅
  • In Opposition to Party Formalism (Feb 2 1942) ✅
  • Second Preface to “Village Investigations” (Mar 17 1941)
  • The Reconstruction of Our Studies (Feb 1 1942) ✅
  • In Opposition to Liberalism (Sep 7 1937) ✅
  • In Opposition to Several Incorrect Tendencies Within the Party (Dec 1929)
  • Address to the Shen-Kan-Ning Border Region Assembly (Dec 22 1941)

William Theodore de Bary ed. Sources of Chinese Tradition 1st edition (1960)

  • Report on an Investigation of the Hunan Peasant Movement ✅
  • The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party
  • On New Democracy
  • The Dictatorship of the People’s Democracy ✅
  • On Contradiction ✅
  • On Practice ✅
  • Combat Liberalism ✅
  • On Art and Literature ✅
  • On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People ✅

Fairbank, John King, and Robert R. Bowie, eds. Communist China 1955-1959: Policy Documents with Analysis. (1962)

  • The Question of Agricultural Cooperation (1955) ✅
  • Preface to Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside (1955)
  • On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People (1957) ✅
  • Speech at Moscow Celebration Meeting (1957)

Milton, Nancy and Franz Schurmann eds. The China Reader: Republic of China: Nationalism, War, and the Rise of Communism; 1911-1949 (1967)

  • The Peasant Movement in Hunan (Mar 1927) ✅
  • The Struggle in Chingkang Mountains (1928) – in Selected Works vol I

Schurmann, Franz, and Orville Schell. The China Reader: Communist China: Revolutionary Reconstruction and International Confrontation. (1967).

  • On Contradiction ✅
  • On the Correct Handling of Contradictions (1957) ✅
  • From the Poems of Mao Tse-tung (Nineteen Poems 1958)

Schurmann, Franz, and Orville Schell. The China Reader: People’s China: Social Experimentation, Politics, Entry onto the World Scene 1966 through 1972. (1974)

  • Instructions on Public Health Work (Jun 25, 1965)
  • Selections from the Quotations of Mao Zedong
  • Chairman Mao’s Conversations with his Niece, Wang Hai-jung (1970)
  • Chairman Mao Discusses Education (Feb 13, 1964)
  • Chairman Mao Discusses Twenty Manifestations of Bureaucracy (1970)
  • A Talk by Chairman Mao with a Foreign [Albanian] Military Delegation (1968)
  • Chairman Mao Talks to Central Committee Leaders (Jul 21, 1966)
  • Bombard the Headquarters – Mao’s Big-Character Poster (Aug 5, 1966)
  • Chairman Mao’s Speech to the Cultural Revolution Group of the Central Committee (Jan 9, 1967)
  • Chairman Mao’s Instruction to Comrade Lin Piao (1967)
  • People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and All Their Running Dogs (May 20, 1970)

Immanuel C. Y. Hsü ed. Readings in Modern Chinese History (1971)

  • #37. “On New Democracy” (1940)
  • #38. “Rectify the Party’s Style of Work” (February 1, 1942) ✅
  • #40. “The Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People” – this section is taken from Quotations from Mao Tse-tung (1966), and passages from “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People” (1957), “On Contradiction”, and “Talks at Yenan Forum on Literature and Art” (1942) ✅
  • #43. “Chairman Mao on People’s War” – this section pp614-620 is a compilation of short quotes from over a dozen documents.

J. Mason Gentzler Changing China: Readings in the History of China from the Opium War to the Present (1977)

  • #74. Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan (1927) in Selected Works vol I ✅
  • #78. Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art (1942) – from Mao Tse-tung on Literature and Art ✅
  • #79. On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship (Jun 30 1949) in Selected Works vol IV ✅
  • #80. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People (Feb 27, 1957) ✅
  • #86. The Question of Agricultural Cooperation (1956) ✅
  • #87. A Serious Lesson (1955)
  • #108 Breaking Down the Division of Labor – Mao directive (May 7, 1966)

Mark Selden ed. The People’s Republic of China: A Documentary History of Revolutionary Change (1979)

  • IA1 * The Present Situation and Our Tasks (1947)
  • IA2 * The People’s Democratic Dictatorship (1949) ✅
  • IA3 * From the Countryside to the City (1949)
  • IB4 Problems of Land Reform (1947)
  • IC1B The New Democratic Urban Policy in Telegram to the Headquarters of the Loyang Front (Apr 18, 1948)
  • IIA6 * On the Ten Major Relationships (Apr 25, 1956)
  • IIA7 * On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (Feb 27, 1957) ✅
  • IIB3 * On Agricultural Cooperation (Jul 31, 1955) ✅
  • IIIA1 The Vision of the Great Leap (Jan 18, 1958)
  • IIIA1B Talks at Ch’engtu (Mar, 1958)
  • IIIA1C * On Uninterrupted Revolution (Jan, 1958)
  • IVA1 * The Great Leap Forward and the “Communist Wind” (Feb 27, 1959)
  • IVA2B The Great Leap Assessed (Jul 23, 1959)
  • IVA4 * Critique of Soviet Economics (1977)
  • IVB1 Letter to Team Leaders (Nov 29, 1959)
  • VB3 On the Anshan Constitution (Apr 1, 1977)

Patricia Buckley Ebrey ed. Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook (1993 [1981]) 2nd Ed.

  • #85. “The Communist Party” speech by Liu Shaoqi from Selected Works of Liu Shaoqi )
  • #87. Preface and Editor’s Notes to Material on the Counter-Revolutionary Hu Feng Clique in Selected Works vol V

Schoenhals, Michael. China’s Cultural Revolution, 1966-1969: Not a Dinner Party. (1996)

  • #1. Just a Few Words
  • #57. Seal the Coffin and Pass the Final Verdict

Saich, Tony, and Benjamin Yang, eds. The Rise to Power of the Chinese Communist Party: Documents and Analysis. (1996)

  • B20 Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan (Mar 28, 1927) ✅
  • C5 Comments on the Report of the Comintern Representative (Aug 7, 1927)
  • C25 A Single Spark can Start a Prairie Fire – A Letter to Lin Biao (Jan 5, 1930)
  • E28 On the New Stage (1938)
  • F2 Outline for Opposing Capitulation (Jun, 1939)
  • F8 New Democratic Politics and New Democratic Culture (Jan 15, 1940)
  • F10 On the Question of Political Power in the Anti-Japanese Bases (Mar 6, 1940)
  • F16 Talk by Spokesperson for the CC on the Southern Anhui Incident (Jan 18, 1941)
  • G2 Reform our Studies (1941, 1942) ✅
  • G4 Oppose Subjectivism and Sectarianism (Sep 10, 1941)
  • G7 Economic and Financial Problems (Dec, 1942)
  • G10 Correcting Unorthodox Tendencies in Learning in the Party, and Literature and Art (Feb 1, 1942)
  • G19 Speech at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art (May, 1942) ✅
  • H4 On Coalition Government (Apr 24, 1945)
  • H5 Speech to the Seventh Party Congress (Apr 24, 1945)
  • H11 Build Stable Base Areas in the Northeast (Dec 28, 1945)
  • H15 Strategy for the Second Year of the War (Sep 1, 1947)
  • H20 Directive of the CCP CC Concerning the Work of Land Reform and Party Consolidation in 1948 (May 24, 1948)
  • H21 Circular of the CCP CC on the September Meeting (Oct 10, 1948)
  • H28 On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship (Jun 30, 1949)

William Theodore de Bary ed. Sources of Chinese Tradition 2nd edition (1999)

  • “Report on an Investigation of the Hunan Peasant Movement” (1927) in Selected Works vol I ✅
  • “The Question of Land Redistrubution” in Mao’s Report from Xunwu
  • “The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party” in Selected Works vol III
  • ( “The Mass Line” CCP central committee directive attributed to Mao )
  • “On New Democracy” in Selected Works vol III
  • “The Dictatorship of the People’s Democracy” ✅
  • Report of the Propaganda Bureau of the Central Committee on the Zhengfeng Reform Movement (April 1942)
  • “Combat Liberlism” in Selected Works vol II ✅
  • “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art”? (1942) in Selected Works vol III (wrongly cites volume 4, but page numbers are correct for volume 3) ✅
  • “Leaning to One Side”
  • “Stalin is Our Commander”
  • “The Question of Agricultural Cooperation” (1955) ✅
  • “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People” ✅
  • Mao’s Remarks at the Beidaihe Conference (August, 1958)
  • “The Sixteen Points: Guidelines for the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”
  • Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (collection of quotes from the little red book cites Scrham’s Quotations from Chairman Mao)

Pei-kai Cheng & Michael Lestz with Jonathan D. Spence The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection (1999)

  • #18.4 “Order to the Army for the Country-wide Advance (April 21, 1949) in Selected Works vol IV
  • #18.5 “Proclamation of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (April 25, 1949) in Selected Works vol IV
  • #18.6 “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship” (June 30, 1949) in Selected Works vol IV ✅
  • #20.1 “The Chinese People Cannot be Cowed by the Atom Bomb” (January 28, 1955) in Selected Works vol V
  • #20.2 “U.S. Imperialism is a Paper Tiger” (July 14, 1956) in Selected Works vol V

Keith Schoppa The Columbia Guide to Modern Chinese History (2000)

  • #9 “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan” (1927) ✅
  • #11. “Talks at the Ye’nan Forum on Literature and Art” (1942) ✅
  • #12. “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship” (1949) ✅
  • #15. Big Character Poster “Bombard the Headquarters” (1966)

Cheek, Timothy. Mao Zedong and China’s Revolutions: A Brief History with Documents (2002)

  • #1. Report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan (1927) ✅
  • #2. On New Democracy (1940)
  • #3. Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art (1942) ✅
  • #4. Resolution of the Central Committee of the CCCP on Methods of Leadership (1943)
  • #6. The Chinese People Have Stood Up (1949)
  • #7. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People (1957) ✅
  • #8. Talks at the Beidaihe Conference (1958)
  • #9. American Imperialism is Closely Surrounded by the Peoples of the World (1964)
  • #10. Bombard the Headquarters (1966)
  • #10. Selection of Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (1968)
  • #10. Just a Few Words (1966)

Benson, Linda. China Since 1949. Routledge, 2016.

  • #9. A selection of a dozen or so quotes from Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (1967)
  • #10. “The 16-Point Directive on the Cultural Revolution” (1966)

David Atwill, Yurong Atwill Sources in Chinese History: Diverse Perspectives from 1644 to the Present (2021 [2009]) 2nd Edition

  • #7.9 Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan (March, 1927) – in Selected Works vol I ✅
  • #7.11 “Three Main Rules of Discipline and Six Points for Attention” (1928) – in Selected Works vol IV
  • #8.10 Mao Zedong “Statement on Chiang Kai-shek’s Statement” (December 28, 1936) – in Selected Works vol I
  • #10.3 “U. S. Imperialism is a Paper Tiger” – in Selected Works vol V
  • #11.5 Mao’s Bombard the Headquarters – My Big Character Poster (August 5, 1966)
  • #11.6 The Sixteen Points: Decision of the Central Committee of the CCP Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (August 8, 1966)
  • #11.9 Mao’s Statement in Support of Black Americans’ Struggle Against Violent Repression! (April 16, 1968)

Fordham Internet East Asian History Sourcebook

Asia for Educators – China

  • Mao Zedong on War and Revolution
  • Quotations from Chairman Mao on Being a Communist in China (1937-1938)
  • Report on the Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan ✅
  • Selection from On Guerilla Warfare
  • The Question of Agricultural Cooperation ✅
  • The Sixteen Points: Guidelines for the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

Other Works

Here are a few more sourcebooks of interest:

Mao, Zedong. Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings 1912-1949 Edited by Stuart R Schram for many of the volumes then as a team. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 1992. – A fantastic collection of 10 volumes of carefully compiled translations with notes.

Schram, Stuart. The Political Thought of Mao Tse-Tung. Enlarged and Revised ed. (1969) – A really rich and often cited collection of documents, with an detailed over 130 page introduction.

MacFarquhar, Roderick, Eugene Wu, and Timothy Cheek, eds. The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao. Harvard University Press, 1989.

Benton, Gregor, and Alan Hunter, eds. Wild Lily, Prairie Fire: China’s Road to Democracy, Yan’an to Tian’anmen, 1942-1989 (1995) – No Mao documents but rich collection of 68 documents worth being aware of.

Knight, Nick, ed. Mao Zedong on Dialecitcal Materialism: Writings on Philosophy, 1937 (1990)

Schram, Stuart, ed. Chairman Mao Talks to the People: Talks and Letters: 1956-1971. Pantheon Books, 1974. – This also goes by the title Mao Tse-Tung Unrehearsed: Talks and Letters: 1956-71

  1. For this, the many volumes of the Japanese scholar 竹内実’s 《毛泽东集》or, in English translation, the ten volumes of Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings 1912-1949 have been most useful to me.  ↩

  2. Volume V was published in 1977 after Mao’s death and publication of it discontinued in the 1980s ↩

  3. One of the quotes in Ch 4 should be split into two as of this writing. I’ve emailed them to ask if this can be fixed.  ↩

  4. Alexander C. Cook, ed. Mao’s Little Red Book: A Global History p. 31.  ↩

  5. Mao, Tse-tung. Quotations from Chairman Mao-Tse-Tung. Edited by Stuart R. Schram. Bantam Books, 1967. p. xiii  ↩

  6. Ibid., p. 37.  ↩

  7. Schram says 426, but I wonder if this is a typo? Everywhere else I see 427 as the number listed.  ↩

  8. Schram ed., Ibid., p. xv  ↩

K. M. Lawson

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