About the Wise Monkey Who Came Down from the Mountain

... The tigers in the Great Helmsman’s formulation were, of course, Moscow and Washington, and Beijing was the wise monkey. And China was able to play the role of “wise monkey” in its foreign affairs quite successfully for a number of years, skillfully ... ... impulsive and unpredictable behaviour with a penchant for tomfoolery and mockery. Ivan Timofeev: Missouri vs. China: Toward a New Crusade? The Chinese image of the monkey, however, is quite different, and this is the image to which Mao Zedong quite obviously ...