
Out of Mao’s Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of New China by Philip Pan
In 1952 the 20-year-old Maoist fanatic, Lin Zhao, ordered that a Chinese landlord be immersed in a vat of icy water overnight. She said this filled her with ‘cruel happiness’. Later she wrote to a friend about how she had helped organise the execution of other landlords, some of the two million killed in those years.

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