The Little Red Book Is Way In The Black

By Chi-Chu Tschang

Mao Zedong abolished literary royalties as “bourgeois” during China’s Cultural Revolution. Now there’s a new debate over royalties—those arising from Mao’s collected writing and speeches. The issue is who should get the money—about $17 million as of 2001. Since Mao’s death in 1976, China’s Communist Party has claimed the payments, saying Mao’s words stem from its “collective wisdom.” China’s 1992 copyright law gives rights to a deceased writer’s heirs for 50 years, but when Mao’s daughters, Li Min and Li Na, asked for the royalties, the party said no. (Instead, it gave them money to buy houses.)
Many Chinese are learning about all this for the first time, as writers and bloggers respond to a December article on the royalties in a small party journal. Most side with the heirs. “We should view Mao Zedong’s royalties from a legal perspective and not politicize this problem,” writes Xu Youyu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Science’s Institute of Philosophy.