Re Chairmen (I)

India has a saying that goes back to Mogul days: “Delhi dur ast”—“Delhi is far away.” China has a not dissimilar proverb: “Heaven is high and the Emperor is far away.” In ancient China and India the government was a remote entity. To some extent the feeling persists in India; but it does not prevail in China. There is no sphere of public life, private or public, into which Mao’s government does not intrude. As Dr. Hu Shih remarked in another context: “The individual is denied even his right of silence.”

- Frank Moraes, Report on Mao’s China. New York: Macmillan, 1953, p. 146