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The format and cover of the books deliberately imitate the Little Red Book (officially: Quotations from Chairman Mao), the second most translated book after the Christian Bible. The earlier of the two books, titled The East is Red (placed on the left), was issued by the Committee for the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution at Xi’an Jiaotong University for internal use in February 1967. It contains the melody and lyrics of this hymn to Mao, collections of his sayings from both the Little Red Book and other sources, as well as 34 of Mao’s poems. The other book, Five Philosophical Works of Chairman Mao, published in 1970, assembles key Mao texts tracing the development of his ideology from 1937 to 1963.

The purpose of these books went beyond mere reading. As with the photograph, there was a political symbolism inherent in their materiality. They could be waved at mass rallies to express loyalty to Mao, a gesture adopted in quite different political contexts around the world, from the Black Panthers in the US to the West German and French student movements to the Naxalites in India. The same global moment was also recreated through the remediation of Mao books and images in other forms of propaganda, such as political posters.

These objects touch in my research in two ways. On one level, I am interested in political religions, i.e. in the ways that modern political ideologies have functioned similar to religions in combining, if in a strictly secular context, the dimensions of belief, emotion and practice. On another level, I examine how Mao’s writings, as well as his image, have been used by Chinese propaganda media to present China as an alternative socialist model and thus forge international ties, especially in Africa.