Chinese Shadows is a book written by Simon Leys, which is the pseudonym for Belgian Sinologist Pierre Ryckmans.

Leys discusses the cultural and political destruction of the People's Republic of China by Mao Zedong, who was the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party at the time.

[1] He wrote under a pseudonym since, like other academics and journalists who refrained from criticizing China, he did not want to be barred from future visits to Beijing (Peking).

The government has done everything in its power to prevent contact between the foreigner and the native, and there are visitors that live there for a long period of time without forming any real friendships.

Other areas that Leys visited included Tianjin, Beidaihe, Lianzhou, Zhengzhou, Anyang, Hefei, Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou.

When traveling between provinces, foreigners are required to carry a pass that lists the places they are allowed to visit in detail, and the document must be stamped by security officials when you arrive, and when you depart.

[11] If a foreigner was to show up in a province unexpected, they would not be allowed to go and wander the city because they do not have permission to be there, instead they would be encouraged to stay in the hotel until their next train arrived.

In the following chapter, Leys includes A Short Hagiographic Interlude about Shi Chuanxiang, who was an example of one of the individuals the Maoist authorities tried to emulate.

By destroying the history of China, the Maoist government has moved to an age of totalitarian dictatorship and made the younger generation have a loss of culture.

The Papaoshan cemetery is where the officials of the regime are buried, and to show their anger against bureaucrats, the mob started breaking their tombs.

"If the destruction of the entire legacy of China's traditional culture was the price to pay to insure the success of the revolution, I would forgive all the iconoclasms, I would support them with enthusiasm!

What makes the Maoist vandalism so odious and so pathetic is not that it is irreparably mutilating an ancient civilization but rather that by doing so it gives itself an alibi for not grappling with the true revolutionary tasks.

According to Leys, the monument "disrupts and annihilates the energy-field of the old capital in order to give its power a foundation of prestige.

"[27] Leys often quotes George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was written before the Cultural Revolution, but could be used to describe China.

Bookstores were set up like pharmacies with a counter between the customer and employee, and in the National Library of China all literature that did not conform to Maoist orthodoxy was removed.

In order to restore the traditional image, they only needed enough objects to make the foreigners believe that they had enriched the cultural heritage rather than destroyed it.

[33] Chinese traditional opera was very popular in China before Mao's wife Jiang Qing was in charge of production.

[36] Durdin agrees with Leys that the majority of visitors that travel to China do not see how the Chinese people live, and that they are controlled by a small group of men.

"[37] Like Durdin, he recognizes Leys' love of Chinese culture, but finds it difficult that one person is able to easily generalize about a large population in China.

"One of the confusing things about his book is the use of "Maoist" to cover everything the author dislikes, including much to which Mao objected - bureaucratism, for example - and much which was unrelated to him.

"[39] Borthwick believes that the book is stereotyping the country, and that the West needs to have a better relationship with China in order to have an understanding of its people.