When word came that Chairman Mao Zedong had passed away, Mao Yushi was hand-copying a file in his office at the Ministry of Railways. He heard the sound of hurrying footsteps and people weeping outside his door.
Mao put down his pen and went home immediately. “This was the biggest news I’d heard. I knew China would have a big change,” he recalled. At the same time, he said, he felt “a mixture of hollowness and sadness.”
So begins an interesting profile of free market economist and Unirule Institute of Economics president Mao Yushi appearing in the Economic Observer Online on the occasion of his 80th birthday (January 14th). The Observer also features an extended interview with Mao, discussing his background as a railway engineer, his being branded a Rightist, and his first reading of F.A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom in 1980.
If that’s not enough Mao Yushi for you, a newish magazine, NewsChina features a short and relatively unfocused profile of Mao in its February 5th edition (not online). The article mentions (for no particular reason) that the government-run Xinhua News Agency quoted Internet users who likened Mao to, “An insane guy who is not able to feed his starving belly but craves buying a cell phone.”
The NewsChina leaves aside the fact that Mao Yushi is, arguably, China’s Milton Friedman, and has been a tireless champion of the market reforms that have, with fits and starts, been remarkably effective at lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. Sad that in our time, Che Guevara (the Butcher of La Cabaña) adorns the walls of aspiring leftists everywhere, while the true radicals, such as Prof. Mao, rarely see t-shirts and bumper stickers made in their honor.
Regardless, Happy Birthday, Prof. Mao!
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