Mao in Mufti: newly identified works by Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong was a prominent Guomindang (GMD) official in Guangdong for about a year between September 1925 and mid-1926, but little has been revealed about his activities during this period because his association with Chiang Kai-shek has remained a source of some embarrassment to historians on both sides of the Taiwan Straits. As the relevant files in the archives of both the GMD and the Communist Party of China (CPC) are closed to researchers, progress in mapping Mao's early years has inevitably taken the form of discoveries of his speeches and writings in places readily accessible, but hitherto overlooked. It is well known that during his stay in Guangdong Mao edited the GMD magazine Zhengzhi zhoubao (Political Weekly), from which a number of articles have been culled for inclusion in compendia of his collected works. I shall argue that Mao's most important contributions to this magazine have, however, been overlooked to date through failure to recognise that five additional articles published in this magazine under the name Ziren were also written by Mao Zedong.