World Notes China

In 1972 President Richard Nixon raised his glass in the Great Hall of the People and quoted from the popular poetry of Mao Tse-tung. " 'So many deeds cry out to be done, and always urgently,' " intoned Nixon. " 'Seize the day, seize the hour.' "

Inspiring lines, but were they really Mao's? Maybe, maybe not, suggests China's official English-language weekly Beijing Review, which reported last week that a number of poems once attributed to the Chairman were probably the work of Chen Mingyuan, then a 29-year-old university student.

Chen, now a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, became aware of the misattributions when he saw a copy of Mao's Unpublished Poems. "Not all these poems are written by Chairman Mao," he told a friend. "Many are mine." Chen called the apparent plagiarism to the attention of then Premier Chou En-lai, who was a defender of the people against Maoist radicals. Chou reportedly praised Chen for speaking out and immediately called for circulation of the work to be halted.

Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, had the young poet beaten and thrown into prison for his temerity. While he was in jail, Chen continued to write poems, one of which--a eulogy for Foreign Minister Marshal Chen Yi, who died in 1972--also found its way into a collection of Mao's works.