Mao Zedong's folly known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a tragic period for the Chinese people and their civilization. The Cultural Revolution was designed to destroy the culture of pre-Communist China, to shake up the ranks of the party cadre from their positions of rank and privilege, to punish the cadre for the criticisms that were lodged against Mao's failed Great Leap Forward experiment, and to continue attacks against the intelligentia. Leaders from Peng Zhen to Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping all suffered during the Cultural Revolution, now just as the intelligentia and those who didn't fit within the grand plan of Mao Zedong Thought had for the previous decade and a half of communist rule in China. Mao's voracious appetite for Chinese historical texts on political strategem was left unabated as was his own substantive position of power. In fact Mao's power reached its apex during this period when a cult of personality was born in the symbolism of a little red book consisting of his quotations, ubiquitous buttons that bore his portrait, and statues edifying him that were raised near any buildings of social significance across the land. Indeed the depredations that were committed upon the land and its people during this period were all done in the name of Mao Zedong.  

These artifacts from that era were witness to the travesty which humanity can enact upon itself. To say it was a Chinese phenomenon suggests that it is something that could never occur some place else, but the excesses of humanity are often opportunistic and not confined by geography alone. 

"The New English-Chinese Dictionary, under the wonderful circumstance of the deepening development of the Anti-Lin Biao, Anti-Confucius Movements, is edited and published by[sic] the encouragement of the Cultural Revolution of the Proletariat.  

"The great revolutionary teacher, Marx, pointed out: 'Foreign language as a weapon of the human struggle.' Since the rapid development of the domestic and international revolutionary momentum, the number of people learning foreign languages among the industrial and agricultural soldiers, and revolutionary population are increasing daily. They are urgently hoping to grasp foreign languages as a weapon of struggle so that they can better serve the undertaking of our country's three great revolutionary movements; so that they can better serve the International Anti-Imperialists, Anti-Revisionists struggle; and so they can further promote unity of the world's people.  

"...Realizing that this dictionary has the responsibility to aid readers to read and understand Anglo-American books and periodicals as well as to understand Anglo-American social conditions, within our collection of phrases and colloquialisms there are certain words that reflect capitalist, social decadence and declining social phenomenon, and in addition carry some reactionary political proclivities especially Anglo-American jargon and idiom propagating 'humanism'; and 'religious faith'; 'those who are on the top are smart and intelligent, those who are on the bottom are dumb and stupid'; 'temperance'; as well as egoism, et al; the world view and philosophy of class exploitation. When we try to translate several Anglo-American phrases which contain the poisonous ideas of class exploitation, we seek to utilize ancient Chinese clichés in order to point out the commonality of thought foundation between the ancient Chinese and foreign reactionary class ideology. In regard to certain phrases that have subtle or malicious meaning, when we translate we try to add brief critical explanations, but we don't criticize them individually."