The World - News from May 10, 1988
Chinese historians attacked Mao Tse-tung, founder of Communist China, as an ultra-leftist utopian who was “divorced from reality” during his last 20 years. The criticism was made at a recent symposium held by the influential Communist Party History Research Center, according to the state-run Guangming Daily. The historians criticized Mao for launching a disastrous peasant commune system in 1956 and for the chaotic purges of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. Western diplomats said the latest criticism was “much stronger” than the official reappraisal in 1981, which described Mao as a founding father who made serious mistakes.
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