While the world is justifiably focused on Iran, the world remains a dangerous place for the U.S. and its allies on many fronts. I find myself wanting to know more about China, and so on my Easter vacation, I picked up the “light reading” of Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, published in 2005.

As passage on pages 553-554 made me think back to the Covid pandemic:

It was for the sake of this world ambition that Mao had embarked on his Superpower Program in 1953, insisting upon breakneck speed, and taking hair-raising risks in the nuclear field. The most scary of these came on October 27, 1966, when a missile armed with an atomic warhead was launched 800 kilometers (about 500 miles) across northwest China, over sizable towns – the only such test ever undertaken by any nation on earth, and with a missile known to be far from accurate, putting the lives of those in its flight path at risk. Three days beforehand, Mao told the man in charge to proceed, saying that he was prepared for the test to fail. Almost all those involved in the test felt that a catastrophe was likely. The people in the launch control room expected to die. The commander of the target zone was so nervous that he moved his HQ to the top of a mountain, comforting himself and his colleagues with the argument that if the missile went off course, they might be........

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