On the subject of totalitarian states, it has been said that the most reliable writers essentially pertain to two categories: those who live outside and are not allowed in—and those who live inside and are not allowed out. In recent …
Our age, which takes pride in the unprecedented scope, speed, and sophistication of its information, will probably go down in history as the Age of Credulity. This is a paradox only in appearance: actually there is a direct relationship that …
Earlier this year, Simon Leys, the distinguished author of Broken Images and Chinese Shadows, led an informal discussion sponsored by the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas. The following passages from a transcript of his remarks have been excerpted and edited …
Without Mao there could have been no Madame Mao. This elementary truism is now being sysematically obliterated by Chairman Hua’s Propaganda Department. In order to legitimize his earlier coup d’etat, Hua must create, against all evidence, a myth according to …
Some misunderstandings do acquire historical dimensions. In the celebrated interview he granted Edgar Snow, Mao Tsetung allegedly described himself as “a lonely monk walking in the rain under a leaking umbrella.” With its mixture of humorous humility and exoticism, this …
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images. . . . T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land In …
At the end of 1974, three young revolutionaries posted on the walls of a busy street of Kwangchow a long and powerful political manifesto. Before it could be suppressed by the authorities, it was immediately reproduced and disseminated by way …
