The Chairman’s New Clothes:
Mao and the Cultural Revolution
by Simon Leys
Simon Leys’s Les Habits Neufs du President Mao was originally published by Editions Champ Libre (Paris, 1971). It was translated into English by Carol Appleyard and Patrick Goode as The Chairman’s New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution (Allison & Busby, 1977). That translation has long been out of print and used copies are very difficult to find. I have posted this PDF as a public service, so that more readers can access this truly remarkable historical document, by far the best account of the “Cultural Revolution.”
See also The Explosion Point of Ideology in China, an earlier and much briefer analysis by the Situationist International.