Declaration on the Renewal of *New Hunan* Weekly, Issue No. 7[1]

(September 1919)

The aims of this newspaper from Issue No. 7 onward are: 1. To criticize society. 2. To reform thinking. 3. To introduce scholarship. 4. To discuss problems. … From Issue No. 7 onward, we, the colleagues of this newspaper, will exert our utmost efforts to act in accordance with these four aims; “success or failure, advantage or disadvantage” is naturally not our concern. Even all forces and Authority are even less our concern. For our creed is: “Anything may be sacrificed, but our aims absolutely cannot be sacrificed!”

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[1] *New Hunan* was originally the journal of the Student Self-Government Association of the Xiangya Medical School in Changsha. From Issue No. 7, Mao Zedong took charge of its editing. In a letter to Li Jinxi dated September 5, 1919, Mao Zedong wrote: “There is a *New Hunan* here; from Issue No. 7 onward it falls to me to edit it. It is currently undergoing reorganization and can be published in half a month.” According to Zhou Shizhao’s recollections: At the time, the *Xiangjiang Review*, which Mao Zedong had been running, had been banned from publication. The person in charge of the Xiangya Student Self-Government Association obtained Mao Zedong’s consent for him to take over the editing from Issue No. 7. Mao Zedong “was determined to run this journal well” and wrote this “Declaration on the Renewal.” On December 1, 1919, when *New Youth*, Volume 7, Issue No. 1, excerpted this declaration in “Aspects of Changsha Society,” it prefaced it by stating: “The content of *New Hunan* Weekly has been greatly different since Issue No. 7. Please see his declaration on the renewal of Issue No. 7 and you will know.” After the excerpt, it added a further passage: “Look again at the content of his Issue No. 7? There is truly no lack of brilliance in it. The most important pieces, such as ‘What is Socialism? What is Anarchism?’—a lengthy piece of several thousand words, explained very thoroughly. There are also critiques of the *New China* magazine, which falsely sports a new signboard, and a lament for *Weekly Review*, as well as the ‘Work-Study Problem,’ etc., all of which are very good. However, to record them in detail would take too long.”