Mao Zedong is Mao Zedong. This statement may seem to say nothing at all. Yet do modern people not often declare, “I am who I am”? Does that also mean nothing? Clearly not. Therefore, I propose that we view Mao Zedong—who has been dead for forty-three years—from a modern perspective and within historical context: Mao Zedong is Mao Zedong.

In my eyes, Mao Zedong was once a restless young man with his own aspirations—or rather, ambitions. As his political maneuvering brought him to power, he became, in effect, China’s last autocratic emperor. Those who came after him—Hua Guofeng, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and up to the present Xi Jinping—have wielded power not unlike his, yet none truly qualifies for the title of “Red Emperor.”

How, then, did Mao Zedong become a Red Emperor? Essentially, he carried forward all the traditional methods of dynastic change characteristic of China’s imperial autocracy since the Qin dynasty more than two thousand years ago. Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism—in Mao’s hands these were merely tools. Of course, so-called theories are often nothing more than instruments. Only genuine insight and creative thought can become unique spiritual contributions. In this sense, Mao Zedong was simply a successful peasant leader. This “peasant nature” followed him throughout his life and serves as a key to understanding him.

In his youth, however, when he founded the journal Xiang River Review and corresponded with close friends such as Cai Hesen, he did display a certain scholarly passion—bold in words, spirited in tone, eager to comment on the affairs of the world.

Having read Records of the Three Kingdoms extensively, having absorbed Water Margin, and having studied the intrigues of emperors recorded in the Twenty-Four Histories until he mastered them with ease, Mao Zedong inevitably approached even Dream of the Red Chamber as a manual of political strategy. Added to this was the humiliation he never forgot from his days working at Peking University. These experiences nurtured in him a petty-minded sharpness and ruthlessness.

After he rose to prominence, he still mentioned in private letters to old classmates how certain professors had belittled or dismissed him. This only deepened his narrowness. Thus, in his resentment toward the world, the logic became simple: if you were an urban resident, if you were a property owner, if you were an intellectual, you became a target of his hatred. Once he gained power, he poisoned not only his Party but the entire Chinese nation, draining it of integrity and refinement.

It must also be acknowledged that many who shared similar experiences and states of mind did indeed benefit considerably under his authority. These people became the foundation of his rule. They even defended his crimes—crimes that caused the deaths of seventy to eighty million people in peacetime. Even today, those who still revere him largely belong to this same type.

Thus Mao Zedong thrived in such an environment, like a fish in water—and his influence, in some quarters, remains brazen even now.

NEXT: Introduction: A Blood-Tear Testimony of a Cruel and Tyrannical Era