Chairman Mao Tse-tung is a brilliant example of wholehearted devotion to the interests of the people of China and the world. Chairman Mao dedicated all his energies throughout his life till his last breath to the liberation of the Chinese people, to the emancipation of the oppressed nations and oppressed people the world over and to the cause of communism. A great proletarian revolutionary like Chairman Mao, who weathers all kinds of revolutionary storms, overcomes every difficulty and hardship, and always identifies himself with the workers, peasants and other labouring people and stands in the van of the revolutionary movement to guide it forward, is rare indeed in the annals of the proletarian revolutionary movement. The magnificent contributions Chairman Mao made in revolutionary theory and practice are immortal. Chairman Mao has passed away. This is a loss beyond measure to our Party, our army and the people of all nationalities of our country, to the international proletariat and the revolutionary people of all countries and to the international communist movement.

Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s great merit lies in the fact that he has succeeded in integrating the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution and has enriched and developed Marxism-Leninism by his masterly generalization and summation the experience gained during the Chinese people’s protracted revolutionary struggle.

Chairman Mao Tse-tung was the greatest Marxist of the contemporary era. With the great boldness and vision of a proletarian revolutionary, he launched the great struggle in the international Communist movement to criticize modern revisionism with the Soviet revisionist renegade clique at the core, brought about by the vigorous development of the cause of the world proletarian revolution and the cause of the people of all countries against imperialism and hegemonism, and pushed the history of mankind forward.

The course of the Chinese revolution has not been plain sailing, for in the course of the advance we have had to vanquish many enemies at home at abroad and both inside and outside the Party, overcome various erroneous tendencies within our ranks and solve many new problems that our predecessors never met with. The victories won by our Party during the democratic revolution and the socialist revolution should be all attributed to Chairman Mao’s leadership. History proves that the banner of Chairman Mao is a great banner under which the proletariat leads the people in the united struggle to victory.

Over the last few days, the whole party, the whole army and the people of all nationalities throughout the country have been immersed in boundless sorrow at the passing of Chairman Mao Tse-tung. The cause that our great leader devoted his whole life to is linked by flesh-and-blood ties with the masses of the people. It was under Chairman Mao’s leadership that the Chinese people who had long suffered oppression and exploitation won emancipation and became masters of the country. It was under Chairman Mao’s leadership that the disaster-plagued Chinese nation rose to its feet. The Chinese people love, trust and esteem Chairman Mao from the bottom of their hearts. The international proletariat and progressive mankind all deeply mourn the death of Chairman Mao.

[Written shortly after the death of Mao Zedong (the older Mao Tse Tung transliteration is used in the source)] In my opinion, he will undoubtedly be regarded as one of the greatest — if not the greatest — figures of the twentieth century: a schoolteacher who transformed China, released it from civil war and foreign attack and constructed a new society there. His influence throughout the world has been immense, based to some extent on power I suppose, but also on his tremendous achievements ... [H]e certainly towers above any other twentieth century figure I can think of in his philosophical contribution and his military genius.

Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded, not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering a high morale and cummunity propose... The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao's leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history.

It must be emphasized that Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s theory of the establishment of rural revolutionary base areas and the encirclement of the cities from the countryside is of outstanding and universal., practical importance for the present revolutionary struggles of all the oppressed nations and peoples, and particularly for the revolutionary struggles of the oppressed nations and peoples in Asia, Africa, and Latin America against imperialism and its lackeys.

With the brilliant leadership of Chairman Mao and having mastered Mao Tse-tung’s thought which is the keenest weapon, we will be invincible and all-conquering and will achieve complete victory in the great proletarian cultural revolution!

One thing that Chairman Mao did was to end the appalling foot binding of women. That alone justifies the Mao Tse-tung era.

Mao Zedong was a great leader of the Chinese Revolution and as a result enjoyed an enormous amount of prestige among he ordinary Chinese people. However, Mao, as a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist, had always worked with and relied upon other Party leaders as well had always worked with and relied upon either Party leaders as well as the grass-roots Part members and masses to accomplish political, economic and social goals. Mao never relied upon and never believed in a command hierarchy imposed form above. Within the Chinese Communist Party, Mao had never gained that kind of absolute control that Stalin had over the Soviet Communist Party (and even Stalin could not simply impose his will without the cooperation of much of the Party and state bureaucracy). ON the contrary, on many historical occasions, Mao often found himself in the minority (as Lenin did within the Part leadership. If Mai's intention had eventually become the will of the Party, that took place only after patient and sustained persuasion, difficult and sometimes intense intra-Party struggle, criticism and self-criticisms, and most importantly, after the Party leaders and members had learnt from practice themselves.

Let us hold high the great banner of Chairman Mao and make further efforts to strengthen the great unity of the whole Party, the whole army and the people of various nationalities throughout the country and, under the leadership of the Party Central Committee, strive to overcome all hardships and difficulties on our way forward and win one new victory after another in the socialist revolution and socialist construction.

But… look, Chairman Mao made mistakes, yes. Nonetheless, he was one of the principal founders of the Communist Party of China and the People’s Republic of China. Thus, when we look at his merits together with his mistakes, we think that his mistakes take second place, while his merits take first. And this means that the contribution he made to the Chinese revolution cannot be forgotten and that the Chinese people will always cherish his memory; they will always think of him as one of the founders of the party and of the republic.'''

(In 2021, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party) I was secretary of the Italian Communist Youth, and I was sent by our party secretary, Enrico Berlinguer, to China at the end of 1978. I remember that we were staying at the Beijing Hotel, which was perhaps the largest building in Beijing at the time. I remember the morning rustle of thousands and thousands of bicycles passing through Tiananmen Square, with the occasional car passing by. In a very short period of time, [China] has made an extraordinary leap towards modernity and progress, which will certainly remain the great historical achievement of the Communist Party. I believe that the most important thing China has managed to do is to lift at least 800 million people out of poverty: this is an extraordinary achievement. No country in the history of humanity has ever managed to achieve such an immense transformation in people's lives, in the sense that today China is a country where the scourge of poverty and hunger has been defeated or reduced to a totally marginal phenomenon; and this is an extraordinary historical achievement. Of course, [...] I also appreciate what has happened in recent years, because there has been a significant commitment to changing the Chinese model of development, especially in the sense of a development that is more compatible with the environment, more respectful of the environment, and more attentive to domestic consumption.