Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong or Mao Tse-Tung (TV: The Mind of Evil) 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)

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) Years later, he mentioned this to Sarah Jane Smith as well. (PROSE: Interference - Book One)

By the late 1960s, Mao was highly paranoid and the Eighth Doctor doubted he'd listen to him. (PROSE: Revolution Man)

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) The Eighth Doctor remarked he was just on friendly terms with the man before his rise to power. (PROSE: Revolution Man) The Second Doctor considered Mao a tyrant on the level of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. (PROSE: World Game)

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)

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)

Behind the scenes[[edit] | edit source]

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 (though Alan Barnes noted that the Doctor never outright says they're friends. (DWM 451) Clements noted the Cultural Revolution was ongoing on at the very time the episode was written and aired, although he also notes that the reality of conditions under Mao were not widely known in the West when The Mind of Evil aired in 1971.^[1] In World Game, a novel released in 2005, the Second Doctor describes Mao as a brutal dictator.

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, 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)