Mao’s historic Red Book sold for $435m

The original manuscript of the famous “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung“, handwritten by the Chinese leader himself, was sold at auction Monday night, in Hong Kong. The document, a unique artifact of Chinese history, was bought by the Taiwanese billionaire, Tseng Shin-Yi, for 3,375 billion Hong Kong dollars (US$435 million).

It totally smashed the record for the most expensive modern manuscript.

Auctioned by Mao Zedong’s own daughter, Li Na, it attracted thousands of bidders, including many of the richest businessmen in Asia and representatives of the Chinese government.

Written from the hand of Chairman Mao Zedong himself, the manuscript is a work of great historical and political value in China and East Asia.

Mr. Tseng’s victory in the auction created a real scandal in China, and was perceived by many as a betrayal and an insult to national pride. Many politicians and public personalities have called for the auction to be cancelled, and for the document to be rendered accessible to the Chinese public.

There has been no reaction from the Chinese government in the case, however, and it seems that Mr. Tseng will be able to take possession of his new property. He did not specify what he intends to do with his prized document, but many Chinese fear it could become a sort of  “war trophy” in Taiwan or even be destroyed.

The precious document was a draft of the famous “Little Red Book”, written by Mao Zedong between 1961 and 1963.

According to official statistics from departments associated with the PLA General Political Department, from 1964 to 1976, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung was published in over 40 versions, with a total printing of 1,055,498,000 copies.

Some researchers even claim that as many as 5 to 6.5 billion copies of Quotations were printed.

–          Worldnewsdailyreport, May 28, 2015

 

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