Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong
Main aliases:	Mao Tse-Tung Chairman Mao
Species:	Human
Job:	Chairman, politician
Affiliated with:	Chinese Communist Party
Place of origin:	China, Earth
First mentioned in:	The Mind of Evil [+]Loading...["The Mind of Evil (TV story)"]

Mao Zedong (PROSE: Revolution Man ^[+]Loading...["Revolution Man (novel)"], Tricky Dicky ^[+]Loading...["Tricky Dicky (short story)"] etc.) or Mao Tse-Tung (TV: The Mind of Evil ^[+]Loading...["The Mind of Evil (TV story)"], Interference - Book One ^[+]Loading...["Interference - Book One"] etc.) was Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and de facto ruler of China in the 20th century. During his reign, he annexed Tibet and established 're-education' camps. One camp, the Chairman Mao Ideal Collective, was named after him. (PROSE: Revolution Man ^[+]Loading...["Revolution Man (novel)"])

Biography

Sometime before the Doctor's third incarnation, he encountered Mao. During the preparations for the World Peace Conference, the Third Doctor mentioned to the Chinese delegate Fu Peng that he remembered having a conversation in Hokkien with Mao, at which time the Chairman allowed the Doctor to call him by his personal name, "Tse-Tung". (TV: The Mind of Evil ^[+]Loading...["The Mind of Evil (TV story)"]) Years later, he mentioned this to Sarah Jane Smith as well. (PROSE: Interference - Book One ^[+]Loading...["Interference - Book One"])

By the late 1960s, Mao was highly paranoid and the Eighth Doctor doubted he'd listen to him. (PROSE: Revolution Man ^[+]Loading...["Revolution Man (novel)"]) Fitz Kreiner described his own time in China as "bang[ing] a tambourine and [singing] songs in praise of Chairman Mao". (PROSE: Unnatural History ^[+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"])

At one point, Mao wrote The Thoughts of Chairman Mao, also known as the "Little Red Book". (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell ^[+]Loading...["The Ancestor Cell (novel)"], Frontier Worlds ^[+]Loading...["Frontier Worlds (novel)"]) The book was typically carried around and quoted by the Communist Party faithful. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell ^[+]Loading...["The Ancestor Cell (novel)"], Unnatural History ^[+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"])

Richard Nixon visited China and met with Mao in 1972, becoming the first US President to visit the country since its communist revolution. It was considered one of Nixon's greatest achievements. (PROSE: Tricky Dicky ^[+]Loading...["Tricky Dicky (short story)"])

In the City of the Saved, Mao governed a District in the Chinatowns. (PROSE: The Night is Long, and Dreams Are Legion ^[+]Loading...["The Night is Long, and Dreams Are Legion (short story)"])

Other realities

In the Unbound Universe, where the Third Doctor didn't land on Earth until 1997, when the Master sneered how Mao had spoken "ever so highly of you", the Doctor defensively said he'd met Mao when he was just a librarian. (AUDIO: Sympathy for the Devil ^[+]Loading...["Sympathy for the Devil (audio story)"])

References

Different incarnations of the Doctor have had greatly differing opinions on Mao. The Seventh Doctor would claim he'd been on Mao's Long March. (PROSE: Shadowmind ^[+]Loading...["Shadowmind (novel)"]) The Eighth Doctor remarked he was just on friendly terms with the man before his rise to power. (PROSE: Revolution Man ^[+]Loading...["Revolution Man (novel)"]) The Second Doctor considered Mao a tyrant on the level of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. (PROSE: World Game ^[+]Loading...["World Game (novel)"])

Writing in her autobiography, Christine Summerfield imagined a scenario involving London full of carefully chosen madmen including Mao, Ian Brady, John Christie, Charles Manson, and Jack the Ripper, with spectators placing bets on who would be the last man standing. (PROSE: Dead Romance ^[+]Loading...["Dead Romance (novel)"])

Behind the scenes

• The Discontinuity Guide, DWM 451, and Jonathan Clements, the writer of Sympathy, have all remarked that it's odd for the Doctor to have been on friendly terms with Mao, a totalitarian leader, a man who killed more people than Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin combined - probably more than 70 million people died in Mao's famines, wars, purges and campaigns. Far from being the "scientific socialist", he saw himself as, Mao was a feudal despot, ruled by mysticism, paranoia, lust, greed and sadism (though Alan Barnes noted that the Third Doctor never outright says they're friends. (DWM 451) Clements noted the Cultural Revolution was ongoing on at the very time the serial was written and aired, although he also notes that the reality of conditions under Mao were not widely known in the Western world when The Mind of Evil aired in 1971. In World Game ^[+]Loading...["World Game (novel)"], a novel released in 2005, the Second Doctor describes Mao as a brutal dictator.
  • Writer Jonathan Clements notably also wrote a biography of Mao.
• The fact that the Doctor suggests he spoke Hokkien with Mao suggests a difference between the real world and the DWU. In real life, Mao did not speak Hokkien, as he came from deep within rural Hunan Province in northern China, far away from the reach of Hokkien. This error is due to the Chinese actors coming from China's diaspora and not speaking standard Mandarin. (DWM 451)