Study on the Communication of The Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung in India in the New Century

Abstract

The English-language Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung occupies an important place in the People's Republic of China's state-sponsored translation programme and has circulated worldwide for more than half a century. This paper focuses on India—a major post-colonial, English-speaking neighbour whose revolutionary and academic circles have long engaged with Maoist ideas, offering a first systematic study of the work's twenty-first-century communication and reception there. Drawing on data from Indian e-commerce sites, union-catalogue records, university libraries, postgraduate syllabi, doctoral theses, and in-depth faculty interview, the research combines macro-mapping with micro-level discourse analysis. Findings show that: (1) distribution now relies chiefly on non-official "Maoist" reprints and freely shared digital files, while the original Foreign Languages Press edition remains the main scholarly source; (2) the text enters Indian knowledge systems through graduate and undergraduate courses in political science, history, and strategic studies, where guerrilla-warfare and anti-colonial chapters are privileged over other theoretical essays; (3) reception is filtered by ideological repositioning, geopolitical sensitivities, and dependence on western secondary literature interpretation, resulting in both admiration for China's revolutionary model and misconceptions about Mao Zedong Thought's contemporary relevance. To enhance the cultural universality of Chinese discourse, the article proposes three strategies: embedding Chinese scholarship in Indo-Chinese academic partnerships, delivering context-rich digital content on mainstream Indian platforms, and holding joint forums around shared anti-imperialist legacies. These recommendations aim to inform future national translation initiatives and China's effective global cultural communication.