In March 60 years ago, Mao Zedong canonized a young Chinese man in the state newspaper People’s Daily. The people, Mao said, must henceforth learn from „Comrade Lei Feng,“ who, as a young tractor driver and soldier in the People’s Liberation Army, had been killed by a telephone pole less than a year earlier. Lei Feng’s selflessness toward his comrades and his revolutionary spirit had been exemplary, Mao explained. The 22-year-old’s diaries, published posthumously, were soon declared required reading by the Party. Lei Feng’s self-sacrifice, celebrated by Mao, is reflected there in sentences like this: „I have only one wish in my heart. I want to devote myself wholeheartedly to the Party, socialism and communism.“