Mao Zedong’s 12 Time Magazine Covers

Last month, we reported an internet post about Chiang Kai-Shek’s 10 Time Magazine Covers. Now, NetEase has a special feature titled: “Mao Zedong appeared on the cover of Time 12x”. I have included links to the contents of each issue of Time magazine that is shown here. Mao Zedong learned tyranny as a boy?

Comments from NetEase:

网易浙江宁波网友:

The people’s leader, the people’s love. Mao Zedong was truly a theorist, strategist, and thinker. But even immortals make mistakes sometimes, much less humans, but what who is as selfless and fearless a leader as he was in today’s China?

网易陕西西安网友:

The People’s Chairman loves the People, and the Chairman’s People love the Chairman. The Chinese nation only produces one national son like the Chairman every one thousand years. Like everyone, presently bitterly struggling in society, tiny and angry. But it cannot be denied that without the Chairman, we wouldn’t even have the tiny opportunities. Everyone can go take a look at the present Taiwan, do they live on this planet with national pride/honor/dignity? Without the Chairman, how would we dare yell towards England: If you had the balls, let’s have another Opium War? Who gave you these guts??? It was the Chairman. The intention of the Great Revolution [Cultural Revolution] the Chairman started was good, only he was too idealistic and it was made a mess by the people below him. Take a look at the present embezzlement and corruption, the stratified society, and you will know why the Chairman had to start the Great Revolution. With any gain there is loss, and I believe the souls of those people who were suppressed/cracked down upon as a result of the Great Revolution would understand/be forgiving. The only thing I don’t understand are these SBs who appear are highly-educated/cultured and appear to make well-reasoned comments. You guys should truly be ashamed. ///Sons would not call their mothers ugly.///

网易浙江杭州网友:

At least when he was around, no one could bully us like this!

网易北京网友:

We must look at a person in his entirety, as those from different positions with different perspectives will have different results. This is the impression of his opponents, and it can be seen how much those who were defeated by him feared him, so for him being drawn a bit uglier, a bit eviler, can be understood. Just like little children writing this or that on the walls, it is the same idea. No one is perfect, but as for whether he did more good or bad for the entire country helped or hurt, he definitely did far more good. This is also a unanimous understanding after the Cultural Revolution. As to private or public, this is unimportant. His self-reliance is something that must be inherited [learned from]. Such a large country should have some stuff to call its own, whether it is its own spirit, its own technology, or its own system.

网易四川网友:

Mao Zedong used 20 some years to create a new country, tearing up all of the unfair treaties, removed all of the leases, and helped American and United Nation military forces taste their one and only failure, declared the only “long live the People” in China’s history, the only national leader to have given the youth and students unlimited powers, and most importantly, he liberated the entire country’s peasants and workers.

网易北京网友:

To you I express sympathy.

网易欧洲网友:

What is there to be proud of with 12 times [on the cover of Time]? Upon being hung up at Tiananmen Square, he’s been there for decades.

网易北京网友:

TMD Time Magazine, how did they make our Grandpa Mao look so ugly? Slander, pure slander!

网易广东广州网友:

Being able to curse England, curse America, curse this, curse that, what does this all tell us? It tells us that society has improved, and we should learn to be thankful.

网易江苏徐州网友:

Mao Zedong was definitely a great man, but he wasn’t without mistakes.

网易广东佛山网友:

Chairman Mao was very great. Without him, Chinese people would still not have been able to stand up.

网易辽宁本溪网友:

History is a a mirror, it can show us ugly things that happened as well as the beautiful present and future.

It was difficult to find strongly critical comments in this post. Although many Chinese like Mao Zedong, this is still a little unusual. I suspect it is because NetEase knows this can be a sensitive topic and actively harmonized the comments to avoid trouble.

Time Magazine – November 30, 1962 – “India’s Lost Illusions”