Letter to Song Qingling

October 10, 1952

[Source: Selections from Mao Zedong's Letters, p.449.]

Vice-Chairman Song:[1]

I am extremely elated by your gift of your masterpiece Wei xin Zhongguo fendou (Struggle for New China), and would like hereby to express my deep gratitude. Your other gifts have also been received and I thank you equally for them.

I wish you healthy and well-being.

Mao Zedong
October 10

NOTES

1. Song Qingling (b.1892) was one of the most prominent women in China's modern and recent history. Born into a family that acquired very considerable wealth and influence, she married Sun Yat-sen in 1914. For the next ten years she was also Sun's confidant in political matters, collaborating with him as a private secretary as well as wife and assistant. After Sun's death, Song Qingling's parting of ways with the rest of her own family came in 1927 when her youngest sister, Meiling married Chiang Kai-shek. Earlier in that year, she had parted ways with the mainstream of the KMT, which Sun had founded — i.e. with both the Nanjing government and the Wuhan government — for its anti-Communist policies and purges. In 1948 she became honorary chairman of an anti-Chiang KMT splinter group, the KMT Revolutionary Committee. This organisation remained active in the PRC after 1949 as one of the "democratic parties".

Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung