Quotations from President Liu Shao-Ch'i

LIU SHAO-CH'I. Quotations from President Liu Shao-Ch'i. With an introduction by C P FitzGerald. Melbourne: Paul Flesch & Co., 1968. Photographic portrait frontispiece of Liu Shao-Ch'i, also a facsimile of President Liu's calligraphy. Small 16mo, 223pp + colophon; yellow vinyl lettered in black on front cover and spine, original stiff paper band wrapped around lower binding which has caused small offset of red coloring. Nevertheless, a fine copy.
First edition thus, clearly an imitation of Chairman Mao's 1964/65 Mao Zhu XI Yu Lu (Quotations of Chairman Mao.) issued by the Central Intelligence Bureau of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. The color yellow is intended to represent the warmth and sunshine under the regime of President Liu. By 1968 it was estimated that over 700 million copies of Mao's "Little Red Book" had been printed/distributed. It is believed that the Cultural Revolution began in response to criticism Mao experienced from President Liu; subsequently Liu was condemned, purged and imprisoned where he quietly died in 1969. Deng Xiaoping's government posthumously rehabilitated Liu in 1980 and organized a national memorial to re-establish him as one of the key founders of the PRC. Although published in Australia, this very rare collection of Liu "Quotes" would have been produced at the time he was being severely criticized and seen as a response to Mao's more famous work.