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World

How Mao's medicine made modern China

18 March 2020

9:01 PM

18 March 2020

9:01 PM

History repeats itself, said Marx, first as tragedy and then as farce. And when it comes to the world’s latest pandemic, China and the coronavirus are no historical exception. ‘Mao’s Flu Strikes’, The Observer declared in November 1968. ‘200,000 people are ill with Mao’s Flu in Rome’, the paper reported, ‘and the epidemic is expected to grow in the next few weeks.

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