Word: tse-tung
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What really angered Mao Tse-tung was a secret letter the Russians had sent to most of the pro-Moscow and "neutral" Communist parties of the world. The Soviet slur accused Peking, among other sins, of using "ultra-revolutionary phrasemongering and petty bourgeois revolutionary activities to implement a chauvinistic, hegemonic course." It damned as "adventures" the Red Chinese wars of liberation that have failed, or are failing, in Africa and Southeast Asia. Mao & Co., said the Russians, wish "to represent China as a 'besieged fortress' in hopes of originating a military conflict between Russia and the United States...
...scholars without exception described as unrealistic Fulbright's contention that the U.S. and Red China should agree to "neutralize" Southeast Asia. Samuel B. Griffith, a retired Marine Corps brigadier general and old China hand who holds an Ox ford University doctorate in Chinese military history and translated Mao Tse-tung's key treatise On Guerrilla Warfare, bluntly told the committee: "I don't think the Chinese would place any credibility whatever in any treaty we might sign. We are the demon in Chinese eyes as much as they are the demon in our own eyes...
There is probably no concession the U.S. could make that would mollify aging Mao Tse-tung's strident, frequently hysterical anti-Americanism. Nonetheless, both witnesses argued, Mao's successors-and their successors-might be more amenable to reason, and the U.S. should encourage any sign of mellowing in the Chinese revolution. Though Mao would hardly appreciate the comparison, Fairbank said that the Chinese leader actually more closely resembles the prototypical Chinese emperor than any of his heroes in the Marxist pantheon. Eventually, he said, the better side of the feudal Chinese ruler may reassert itself in his successors...
Though the surreal James Bond would probably stand up and jeer at such criticism, he might agree with pundits who reason that, in an anxiety-ridden age, it is more fun to laugh at Spectre, Thrush, and ZOWIE than to ponder the threats posed by Mao Tse-tung. The Bondsmen seem far too giddy a crew to inflict any permanent injury on young or old, male or female. As art, the spy spoofs have little value, and they lack even true satirical purpose, or what Critic G. K. Chesterton in A Defence of Nonsense called "a kind of exuberant capering...
...restraint," though Watts really boiled over only after Los Angeles police pulled out of the ghetto for hours in hopes that it would cool off. Similarly, in an overlong section on the failings of U.S. policy in Africa, he mentions "the recent visit" of Red China's Mao Tse-tung, though Mao has never been near the place. But Farmer's talent, after all, lies in leading, not writing...