Here I wish to answer the question of whether imperialism and all reactionaries are real tigers.
My answer is that they are both real tigers and paper tigers, and this is a question of the process by which the real turns into the paper.
Change means transformation; real tigers turn into paper tigers and move toward their opposite.
This holds true for all things, not only social phenomena.
I answered this question several years ago: strategically we should despise them, but tactically we should take them seriously.
If they were not real tigers, why should we take them seriously? It seems some people still do not understand this, and we must do more explanatory work.

Just as all things in the world invariably possess a dual nature (that is, the law of the unity of opposites), so imperialism and all reactionaries possess a dual nature—they are both real tigers and paper tigers.
In history, before they gained ruling power and for a period after they gained it, the slave-owning class, the feudal landlord class, and the bourgeoisie were vigorous, revolutionary, progressive—they were real tigers.
In the subsequent period, because their opposites—the slave class, the peasant class, and the proletariat—gradually grew in strength, waged struggles against them, and became increasingly fierce, these ruling classes gradually transformed into their opposites, becoming reactionaries, backward people, paper tigers, and in the end they were or will be overthrown by the people.
Even when reactionary, backward, and decadent classes face a life-and-death struggle with the people, they still possess this dual nature.
On the one hand, they are real tigers that devour people, devouring them by the millions and tens of millions.
The cause of the people’s struggle has gone through times of great hardship and followed many tortuous paths.
To eliminate the rule of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism in China, the Chinese people spent over a hundred years and lost probably tens of millions of lives before winning victory in 1949.
Look, were these not living tigers, iron tigers, real tigers? Yet in the end they turned into paper tigers, dead tigers, bean-curd tigers.
These are historical facts.
Have people not seen or heard of these things? Truly, by the thousands and tens of thousands! By the thousands and tens of thousands! Therefore, viewed in essence, over the long term, and from a strategic perspective, we must truthfully regard imperialism and all reactionaries as paper tigers.
On this point, we build our strategic thinking.
On the other hand, they are also living, iron, real tigers that can devour people.
On this point, we build our tactical thinking and operational thinking.
This is true in the struggle against class enemies, and it is also true in the struggle against nature.

The Twelve-Year Program for Agricultural Development in forty articles and the Twelve-Year Program for Scientific Development, both issued by us in 1956, were formulated on the basis of this fundamental Marxist viewpoint—the viewpoint of the unity of opposites—concerning the dual nature of the development of the universe, the dual nature of the development of things, and the fact that things always appear as processes and that every process invariably contains a dual nature.
On the one hand, we despise them—they are easy, they do not count, we need not worry, they can be accomplished, we can win victories.
On the other hand, we take them seriously—they are not easy, they do count, we must never treat them lightly; without arduous struggle, without bitter struggle, we cannot win.
Fear and fearlessness are a law of the unity of opposites.
There has never been anyone who is completely fearless, free from all care and worry, a truly pure god of joy.
Everyone is born with cares and troubles.
Students fear examinations, children fear their parents’ favoritism, there are the three calamities and eight disasters, the five consumptions and seven injuries, fevers of forty-one degrees, and “unexpected changes in the weather and sudden fortunes or misfortunes befalling people overnight”—such things are countless.
The difficulties encountered in class struggle and in the struggle against nature are even more countless.
Yet the great majority of humanity, first of all the proletariat, and first of all the Communists—except for those who are afraid of death and the gentlemen of opportunism—always place despising all difficulties and optimism in the foremost place in their minds.
Only then do they take things seriously, take every task seriously, attach importance to scientific research, analyze every contradictory aspect of things, delve deeply into them, and gradually come to understand the laws of the movement of nature and the laws of the movement of society.
Then it becomes possible to master these laws, to apply them with relative freedom, to solve one by one the problems people face, to handle contradictions, to fulfill tasks, to transform difficulties into advantages, to transform real tigers into paper tigers, to transform the primary stage of revolution into a higher stage, to transform the democratic revolution into the socialist revolution, to transform socialist collective ownership into socialist ownership by the whole people, to transform socialist ownership by the whole people into communist ownership by the whole people, to transform an annual steel output of several million tons into tens of millions of tons or even hundreds of millions of tons, and to transform a grain yield of over one hundred jin or several hundred jin per mu into several thousand jin or even tens of thousands of jin per mu.
Comrades, we are the ones doing this work of transformation.

Comrades, possibility and reality are two different things, two opposites in a unity.
False possibility and real possibility are also two different things, two opposites in a unity.
The mind must be both cool and hot—again, two opposites in a unity.
Soaring enthusiasm is heat.
Scientific analysis is cool.
In our country, at present, some people are a bit too hot.
They do not want to allow their minds a period of coolness, they are unwilling to do analysis, they only love heat.
Comrades, this attitude is not conducive to leadership work; they may stumble and fall, and such people should be reminded to pay attention to their own minds.
There are others who love coolness and do not love heat.
They are unaccustomed to some things and cannot keep up.
For these people, we should gradually warm up their minds.

December 1, 1958, in Wuchang
Printed based on the *Renmin Ribao* of September 11, 1977.

Notes
〔1〕 This is an article written by Mao Zedong during the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held in Wuchang.
〔2〕 Refers to the *National Program for Agricultural Development, 1956–1967 (Draft)*. See note 〔4〕 on p. 3 of this volume.
〔3〕 Refers to the *Outline of the Long-Range Plan for the Development of Science and Technology, 1956–1967 (Draft)*. This draft was formulated under the State Council, based on the directive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to rapidly change China’s backwardness in the economic, scientific, and cultural fields. Beginning in April 1956, over six hundred Chinese scientific and technical experts were organized, and more than twenty Soviet experts were invited; after half a year of research and discussion, the plan was drawn up. The plan set forth fifty-seven important scientific and technical tasks and 616 central problems urgently needed for national construction, and indicated the development directions for various branches of science. The implementation of this plan promoted the rapid development of China’s scientific and technical undertakings.
〔4〕 After this sentence, the original text also contained the words: “The tide-watchers and the account-settlers belong to this category.” On September 16, 1961, when Mao Zedong reviewed this passage included in a cadre study material, he deleted these eleven characters.