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404 pages, Hardcover
First published December 31, 1976
"The following weeks were filled with directives, all indicating Mao's urgent attention to methods, details, checkups. Wages, supplies, democracy, style of work were to be attentively managed; draft animals must be given sufficient food and rest, 'as otherwise they lose their reproductive powers.' Provincial committees were enjoined that peasants should not be made to work more than eight hours a day ... at the most twelve at the busiest season; there must be food and care; mess halls must give people enough to eat; the private plots which had been abolished in the Communist phase were returned, they were still a necessary supplement to peasants' income. Strict adherence to truth was enjoined."
"Admiration goes to the Chinese working people, who gave all of themselves, in an unbelievable maelstrom of activity, to break the chains of stagnation, misery, and ignorance. Without the Leap, today's China would not be.
And Mao was at one with them. Even in the hard years to come, the people never lost their faith in Mao Tsetung. 'We trust him, because he trusts us.'" (p.142)