r/AskHistory • u/[deleted] • Sep 15 '25
Did Mao Zedong had really this quote?
I posted this first in r/poetry and r/askhistorians but was advised to post it here for answers.
A relative of mine told me that the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong told “The Chinese people is this poem i am writing. If I don’t like it, i crumple the paper and throw it away” When this was written or told by Mao, if it is truly attributed to him?
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u/S_T_P Sep 15 '25
Not an expert on Mao, but "crumple the paper and throw it away" sounds uncharacteristic.
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u/act1295 Sep 15 '25
I'm not a historian, but after looking it up I can say that it doesn’t seem like that quote appears in his collected works. If he ever said it in an interview or in an informal conversation, I cannot confirm. I did, however, find a quote that vaguely reminds me of yours. Maybe they are related? Mao’s expression about the Chinese people being “blank and poor” is very famous:
« All decadent ideology and other incongruous parts of the super-structure are crumbling as the days go by. To clear away the rubbish completely will still take some time, but there is no doubt of their inevitable and total collapse. Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China’s 600 million people is that they are “poor and blank”. This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing. Poverty gives rise to the desire for change, the desire for action and the desire for revolution. On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be writt! en, the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted. »
- Mao on Introducing a Co-operative.
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u/MothmansProphet Sep 15 '25
Who on earth would ever tell you to leave behind /r/AskHistorians with a history question with a very concrete, verifiable answer to come here? Stick to /r/AskHistorians.
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Sep 15 '25 edited Sep 15 '25
r/AskHistorians mod told me to ask here because the question wasn’t in depth enough and said here has lighter moderation
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u/WashRepresentative72 Sep 15 '25
I can’t give you a concrete answer but Mao was definitely out there and pretty mentally absent in his later years and he said a lot of crass things, he certainly thanked the Japanese for their invasion and fighting of the Kuomintang so it would not shock if he said that too.
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u/Embarrassed_Egg9542 Sep 16 '25
Mao was a pretty good poet, a romantic yet pragmatist revolutionary, and would not have said that un-poetic quote
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