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Part Tiger, Part Monkey: Mao Zedong and China’s Destiny

How do we understand the behaviors and motivations of Mao Zedong, who was at the same time the founder of PRC China and a totalitarian leader responsible for millions of deaths? In a letter to his wife Jiang Qing on 6 July 1968, Mao characterized himself as "having both some of the spirit of the tiger which is dominant, but also some of the spirit of the monkey which is secondary."


Using Mao’s famous self-commentary “part tiger, part monkey,” Prof. Alain Roux will tell us how Mao, an ambitious young man, grew from a rebel to a revolutionary, and later a tyrant during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Based on his lifetime research of Mao and 20th-century Chinese history, Prof. Roux will offer a reliable, convincing, and sophisticated biography of Mao, and share with us his perspectives on China today.


Speakers:

A well-established China expert, Prof. Alain Roux is Emeritus professor at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in France. He has been studying Chinese history and politics for half a century since he first visited Beijing as a foreign student in 1965. His major publications in French include Chiang Kai-shek: Mao’s Great Enemy, China in the 20th Century, Shanghai Workers’ Movement in the 1930s, and The Chinese Puzzle.


Discussants:

Prof. Jan Kiely is Professor and Associate Director at the Centre for China Studies, CUHK; historian of modern China and author of The Compelling Ideal: Thought Reform and the Prison in China, 1901–1956

Prof. Michel Bonnin is Adjunct Professor at the Centre for China Studies, CUHK; author of The Lost Generation: The Rustication of China’s Educated Youth, 1968–1980


Date: 6th November 2017

Time: 16:00–18:00

Venue: Cho Yiu Conference Hall, University Administration Building, the Chinese University of Hong Kong

Host: Dr. Eric Florence (Director of The French Centre for Research on Contemporary China)

Welcome addresses by Prof. Leung Yuen Sang (Dean of Faculty of Arts, CUHK) and Mr. Eric Berti (Consul General of France in Hong Kong & Macau)

Language: French with English simultaneous interpretation

Please visit: https://goo.gl/forms/2Nx6BVEFD4XqRGvH2 for registration. (Free admission on a first come, first served basis.)

Inquiry: The Chinese University Press (Tel: 3943 9806 or Fax: 2603 7355)

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