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The difficulty of not falling into the trap of the "biographical utopia" that confers perfect cohesion on such or such a destiny after the fact is exacerbated by the Chinese historical tradition and its distinction between "official history" and "indiscreet history": this is even truer when a personage as important as Mao Tse-tung is concerned, who, as of 1936, was paying attention to building his image. The great progress in the knowledge of Mao Tse-tung’s writings and speeches, driven by Stuart Schram among others, and the liberating shock produced by Simon Leys’ works ( Les Habits Neufs du President Mao) and Li Zhisui’s ( La Vie Privée du Président Mao), as well as China’s political evolution in the last thirty years have made it possible to bring Mao’s biography out of hagiography and make Mao a subject of history. It is now possible to come to grips with the life of this often monstrous despot by placing him in his historical field.