“It was [Mao’s] army that by a combination of guerrilla and conventional tactics went on to defeat the Nationalists in the civil war which followed. No other group of revolutionaries has ever overcome greater handicaps, survived greater defeats, waged a longer struggle, or showed such resourcefulness and fanatical determination in the course of winning power….
“[It convinced the few hundred men who now rule Communist China] that all ‘reactionary’ adversaries, no matter how powerful they may seem, have feet of clay: any revolutionary group, provided it is armed with the correct Marxist-Leninist-Maoist principles and strategy, can eventually beat a stronger enemy. This is the meaning of Mao’s famous and often misunderstood concept of the ‘paper tiger.’ In applying this phrase to the Americans, as he once applied it to the Kuomintang and the Japanese, Mao means not that the enemy is weak but that, in the long run, it can be worn down and overcome.”
—Donald S. Zagoria, “China’s Strategy: A Critique,” Commentary, November 1965
