Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung Vol. VII (PDF)

Note from Foreign Languages Press

It’s with great joy that we release this new printing of Volume VII of the “Unofficial” Selected Works of Mao Zedong. This volume was initially released by our Indian comrades from Kranti Publications in 1991, but was out of stock by the end of the 90s and has since been unavailable in hard copy or online.

This volume covers the period from the founding of the People’s Republic (October 1949) until the Great Leap Forward (1958) and contains 478 documents that are not included in the “Official” Volume V of the Selected Works that covered this period.

While the “Official” Volume V gave us access to documents reflecting Chairman Mao’s philosophy, as well as his ideas regarding the development of the economy, this volume is mainly composed of his letters and telegrams showing all the difficulties that the chairman of the newly founded People’s Republic of China had to face, including the danger of imperialist aggressions as seen during the Korean War (1950-1953), the delicate situation of national minorities in Xinjiang and Tibet and the complexity of diplomacy.

These correspondences also show the challenge of how to treat all Mao’s former neighbors, childhood friends and cousins and their requests for his attention, positions and recognition.

Unlike Volume VI for which we played mostly the role of “re-printer,” this volume is a new edition, with over a thousand typos corrected and names and words changed from the Wade-Giles to the pinyin spelling. This was done both for practicality and readability, but also to uphold the Directive on Language Reform that Chairman Mao promulgated in 1951 (p. 148), which was the starting point of work on the simplification of Chinese characters (adopted in 1952) and the pinyin system (adopted in 1958).

This edition also contains new indexes of Chinese names and places, as well as non-Chinese names, which will allow the reader to navigate the 478 documents with greater ease.

FOREIGN LANGUAGES PRESS