Scott No: 938-948
Serial number: W1
Values in set: 11
Date of issue: April 20, 1967
Denomination: 88 fen
Designer: Wu Jiankun
Size of stamps: 31*52mm
Perforation: 11.5
Sheet composition:
40(10*4) for Value 1;
50(10*5) for Value 2 - 11
Printing process: Photogravure
Printing House: Beijing Postage Stamp Printing Works

Issued on 20 April 1967, the set contains eleven stamps, printed in photogravure, designed by Wu Jiankun and produced by Beijing Stamp Factory. Stamp size: 31mm × 52mm; perforation: 11.5; face value: 8 fen each, with a total set face value of 0.88 yuan. Stamp 1 was printed in sheets of 40 (10 × 4) with a print run of 15 million; the other ten stamps were each printed in sheets of 50 (10 × 5) with print runs of 3 million each.

Main Theme of the Set

After the Cultural Revolution began, people in various places wrote in one after another asking that stamps bearing Mao Zedong quotations be issued. The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications at first declined, out of concern for international reaction, and decided to postpone the matter; later, at the request of mass organizations, it agreed to the issue, and the artwork was finally approved by the office of the Central Cultural Revolution Group. The set was released ahead of schedule on the pretext of celebrating the establishment of the Beijing Revolutionary Committee (20 April 1967); on 19 April the newspapers carried a Xinhua News Agency report announcing that the stamps would go on sale in the capital from the 20th. It is the first set issued after the abolition of C- and S-series serial numbers, and China's first set of joined strips of five; only afterwards were internal designations such as "W1" printed on the margins of full sheets. The set consists of one photograph of the leader plus ten quotations, the ten quotations arranged as two joined horizontal strips of five to form a large picture, with gold characters on a red ground and gold borders, joining into a single "red ocean".

Stamp Designs and Historical Context

Long Live Our Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great Supreme Commander and Great Helmsman Chairman Mao

The design uses the news photograph of 18 August 1966 showing Mao Zedong reviewing the parade of a million people in the capital from the Tiananmen Gate tower; the photographer was Lü Xiangyou. This was Mao Zedong's first review of the Red Guards and of school teachers and students. In the photograph he wears the PLA Type 65 uniform with a Red Guard armband, holding his military cap in his left hand and waving his right hand in greeting to the paraders, while below the gate tower is an ocean of red flags and people. The print run of this stamp was 15 million, considerably larger than those of the ten quotation stamps, making it the highest-circulation stamp of the set.

Quotations from Chairman Mao (Strip of Five with Gold Borders)

The first strip of five consists of five passages of quotations, each with a large gold border; the quotation text is in gold against a red ground, and the five stamps side by side join into a complete picture. The first reads: "The force at the core leading our cause forward is the Chinese Communist Party. The theoretical basis guiding our thinking is Marxism-Leninism." The second reads: "We should trust the masses and we should trust the Party; these are two fundamental principles. If we doubt these two principles, we can accomplish nothing." The third reads: "Policy and tactics are the life of the Party; leading comrades at all levels must give them full attention and must never on any account be negligent." The fourth reads: "The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history." The fifth reads: "You should concern yourselves with the affairs of the state and carry the great proletarian Cultural Revolution through to the end." The five passages deal respectively with the leading core, the masses and the Party, policy and tactics, the historic role of the people and the direction of the movement, forming a set of arguments advancing layer by layer.

Quotations from Chairman Mao (Strip of Five with Red Borders)

The second strip of five likewise contains five passages of quotations, but the borders are changed to a red ground with the quotation framed in gold lines, distinctly different from the large gold borders of the previous group. The first reads: "All erroneous ideas, all poisonous weeds, all ghosts and monsters, must be subjected to criticism; in no circumstances should they be allowed to spread unchecked." The second reads: "The Marxist doctrine has a thousand principles and a myriad of ideas, but in the final analysis it can be summed up in one sentence: 'It is right to rebel.' ... On this basis, then, people rebel, they struggle, they build socialism." The third reads: "To organise the millions and tens of millions of people and bring into play the mighty revolutionary army is what the revolution of today demands in its offensive against the counter-revolution." The fourth reads: "All revolutionary struggles in the world are aimed at seizing power and consolidating it. And the desperate struggles of the counter-revolutionaries against the revolutionary forces are likewise entirely aimed at maintaining their own power." The fifth reads: "We can learn what we did not know before. We are not only good at destroying the old world, we will also be good at building the new world." The five passages move from criticism to rebellion, mobilisation, state power and construction, with the tone advancing step by step, and serve as the close of the set.

Artistic Features of the Design

All eleven stamps use the same vertical format of 31mm × 52mm, and the height of the photograph in the first stamp matches that of the ten quotation stamps, making it convenient to display them joined in a row. The difference in borders between the two strips of five was not part of the original design: at the time of rush printing the stock of imported gold ink ran short, sufficient for only one strip, so the design group and the factory agreed on the spot that the first five stamps should still be printed with large gold borders and the latter five changed to a red border ground with gold line frames. This inadvertently left behind a trace of the printing process and has also become one of the details used to distinguish genuine from forged copies. The "Chinese People's Postal Service" on the stamps is in Mao Zedong's handwriting, the six characters assembled and pieced together from different inscriptions and handwritten texts. The title of the set was changed three times: at the design stage it was *Long Live Chairman Mao*, Group One; on the day before issue, when the newspapers announced it, the title was fixed as *Long Live the Invincible Mao Zedong Thought*. Because the face value was low, philatelic activity was interrupted and postal consumption was enormous, mint copies are scarce today. Forgeries made by perforating full-colour, same-size printed reproductions and applying fake gum are numerous on the market; authentication depends mainly on the printing method and ink colour. Genuine copies are photogravure with brilliant gold ink, while forgeries are multi-colour offset printing, in which the gold ink under magnification is seen to be built up entirely from coloured halftone dots and has no golden lustre at all.