The Idea That All Reactionaries Are Paper Tigers

On August 6, 1946, Mao Zedong put forward this idea when he interviewed with an American journalist Anna Louis Strong. In late June 1946, Chiang Kai-shek tore up the resolutions of the Political Consultative Conference and the armistice agreement, launched a full-scale civil war with the support of the United States, and threatened to wipe out the People's Liberation Army within three to six months.

How do you view the U.S. imperialists and Chiang Kai-shek's army? Can they win a revolutionary war? Dare to wage a revolutionary war? These were the questions that should be answered. The interview was also conducted in this context. Strong asked: “Suppose the United States uses atom bomb? Suppose the United States bombs the Soviet Union from its bases in Iceland, Okinawa and China?”

Mao Zedong answered: “The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the U.S. reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.” “The outcome of a war is decided by the people, not by one or two new types of weaponry.”

Mao went on and said: “All reactionaries are paper tigers.” “It is not the reactionaries but the people who are really powerful.” Really powerful forces do not belong to reactionaries, but to the people. He reviewed the contrast of powers in the history of revolutions in the world and pointed out: “The tsar was just a paper tiger. Wasn't Hitler once considered very strong? But history proved that he was a paper tiger. So was Mussolini, so was Japanese imperialism.” Mao stressed: “Chiang Kai-shek and his supporters, the U.S. reactionaries, are all paper tigers too.”

Speaking of U.S. imperialism, people seemed to feel that it was terrifically strong. Chinese reactionaries were using the "strength" of the United States to frighten the Chinese people. But it would be proved that the U.S. reactionaries, like all the reactionaries in history, did not have much strength. In the United States there are others who were really strong, that is, the American people.

“All reactionaries are paper tigers”, in vivid and concise language, this assertion by Mao Zedong analyzed the essence of reactionaries, armed the people's thoughts, enhanced the people's confidence in daring to resist the strong enemy, fight and win, and cultivated the spirit of revolutionary optimism, and played an extremely important role in the coming War of Liberation and the subsequent anti-imperialist struggle.

"All reactionaries are paper tigers”, just as Lenin considered imperialism a "colossus with feet of clay", was the essence of the matter. Mao Zedong repeatedly pointed out that strategically, with regard to the whole, revolutionaries must despise the enemy, dare to struggle against him and dare to seize victory; at the same time, tactically, with regard to each part, each specific struggle, they must take the enemy seriously, be prudent, carefully study and perfect the art of struggle and adopt forms of struggle suited to different times, places and conditions in order to isolate and wipe out the enemy step by step.

After the founding of New China, Mao Zedong developed this assertion in new ways. In his conversation with former President Arbenz of Guatemala on July 14, 1956, in his speech in the Moscow Meeting of the Representatives of the Communist and Workers' Parties on November 18, 1957, and in his speech during the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eighth CPC Central Committee in Wuchang on December 1, 1958, he discussed the question within the context of the situation at that time.