ALT Mao’s lifelong identification with Qin Shihuang is well-known. The first emperor came from a rural backwater; he trained a highly disciplined army; and he led it through countless bloody campaigns to victory, as did Mao. In 1958, shortly after the ‘Anti-Rightist Campaign’, during which half a million men and women — mostly mild intellectual critics of Communist rule — were persecuted, Mao famously evoked the spectre of Qin Shihuang. ‘Qin Shihuang was nothing compared to us’ 秦始皇算什麼？, Mao told a meeting of the Party elite: He only buried 460 scholars. We have buried forty-six thousand scholars…I’ve debated with those in our democratic parties. “You condemn us as Qin Shihuang. But you’ve got it wrong. We have outdone him a hundredfold. You curse us for being tyrants? We never deny it. It’s a pity that your accusations fall short — invariably we have to fill in the details for you." 他只坑了四百六十八個儒，我們坑了四萬六千個儒……我們與民主人士辯論過，「你罵我們是秦始皇，不對，我們超過了秦始皇一百倍；罵我們是秦始皇，是獨裁者，我們一概承認。可惜的是你們說的不夠，往往要我們加以補充。」（大笑）

ALT In a meeting with the visiting vice-president of Egypt Hussein el-Shafei on 23 September 1973, for example, he remarked: ‘Qin Shihuang was the first and famous emperor of feudal China. I too am a Qin Shihuang. Lin Biao vilified me for being akin to the First Emperor. There’s always been two factions in China, one that extols the First Emperor while the other decries him. I approve of the Qin emperor; I don’t approve of Confucius. That’s because Qin Shihuang was the first ruler to unify China, to standardise the writing system and to build a network of broad roads. He didn’t create a state within a state. He used authoritarian means to rule and he governed through officials dispatched from the central government. They were replaced every few years by other officials; they weren’t hereditary rulers.’ 秦始皇是中國封建社會的第一個有名的皇帝，我也是秦始皇。林彪也罵我是秦始皇。中國歷來分兩派，一派講秦始皇好，一派講秦始皇壞。我贊成秦始皇，不贊成孔夫子。因為秦始皇第一個統一了中國，統一了文字，修築了寬廣的道路，不搞國中有國，而用集權制，由中央政府派人去各地，幾年一換，不用世襲制度。