Mao Zedong’s ‘little red book’ gets modern twist with mobile app for studying ‘Xi Jinping Thought’

Communist Party members using Xuexi Qiangguo at a meeting.

Chinese who lived through the Cultural Revolution will remember the daily ritual of making “morning requests, evening reports”. Holding their copies of Quotations of Chairman Mao – or “the little red book” as it was known in the West – close to their chests, they asked for the Great Helmsman’s instructions at dawn and dutifully reported back to him in the evening.

More than four decades after Mao’s death, a new kind of little red book has emerged in China, this time promoting the thoughts and teachings of the country’s current leader, Xi Jinping.