Mark Gayn
Essay
Jan
1973
The great hurrahs of the Cultural Revolution, the slogans, the messianic fervor, the public humiliation of the heretics are all gone. A visitor to Peking is impressed by nothing so much as by the return to normalcy, by pragmatism and-if one could imagine it in a Spartan land-a feeling of relaxation. Indeed, one might easily think that there had never been the awesome upheaval of 1966-69 "to change men's souls." Human frailty is once again understood, and there is at least an implied recognition that man does not live by faith alone.
Essay
Jan
1967
Mao Tse-tung's latest battle is almost certainly his last. It will also probably lead to his first major and irreversible defeat. A superb political tactician, he should be able to destroy his old companions who have turned against him. But this will not attain for Mao what he set out to achieve with his "cultural revolution." For he seeks nothing less than the rejuvenation of a great revolution, the rebirth in middle age of the drive, the passion, the selflessness and the discipline it had in its youth a third of a century ago. But the clock can hardly be turned back, and a nation in the age of nuclear bombs and computers cannot behave as if this were still the age of millet and rifles.
