More than 600 pages, plus another 200 pages of copious notes… Well researched; based on interviews with hundreds of Chinese (especially) and foreigners who have been somehow associated with Mao and survived him (the book was published in 2005); plus a long bibliography of Chinese and non-Chinese books and documents they would have consulted. 10 years in the making - a “work of love”…of sorts! No dispute about the extent of the research; one wonders though how much Chang’s personal experience (she lived in China during Mao’s time and through the Cultural Revolution – I have not read her account in Wild Swans, but I suspect it has not been a pleasant experience!) is not tainting her view of Mao which would lead to such a negative view of the protagonist…
Mao comes out as a manipulator “par excellence”, totally self-centered and pitiless, cruel (very) and crude in his ways, always calculating – he is no less than a monster, on the scale of a Stalin or Hitler, even more hideous if you go by the number of deaths these characters have to account for! Not a single redeeming feature I can think of! What is striking though, in the second part for instance, is the way Mao would have single-mindedly pursued his objective to militarize China (with relative success), so that it has “a voice” in the world. That at the (terrible) expense of his own people, imposing immense sufferance on them, working and starving them to death (38 million of them during the great famine of 1959-61 – the Great Leap Forward episode – according to the book – other sources do corroborate), to pay in food exports for foreign (mostly Russian) technology and expertise. It was really, in his mind (and that of the authors!), the Party against the peasants, the Party against the country! His disdain for peasants and their survival, throughout his life, the way they put it, is abysmal and frightening!
And then the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” starting in 1966, that other episode where Mao regains power through terror (a constant it seems throughout his life, whenever necessary), purges and “elimination” of people (some 30 million victims according to the book over a period of 10 messy and confused years), using first the “Red Guards”, then more professionally-organized “Rebels”, to instil chaos in the country, followed by assuming control of the army and re-establishing his “order” of things…
His personal hatred and vengeance against Liu Shao-chi, the purged President and Party/Government Number 2, who died alone, in 1969, sick and imprisoned in Kaifeng, gives a measure of the man… (I remember meeting Liu’s widow, Wang Guang-mei, at a small dinner party in 1980 or 1981 at the Ambassador’s, in Beijing; still a beautiful woman).
The book aims at destroying every possible myth that may have been built around Mao, including that of the Long March (a fraud!) – Not much is left for his cult to stand on when the authors are finished with him! It does not “excuse” either Chou En-lai, who they hold responsible, as (politically surviving) Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs minister, for enforcing the most damaging policies and cruel decisions of Mao, especially during the Cultural Revolution. No less than a slave-lackey to his master…
What the book does is offering a strategic explanation for every move and policy Mao made – the war in Korea, the relations with Stalin and other soviet leaders, foreign aid, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, Nixon’s visit, etc. One may not always agree with the explanation, but the authors are as single-minded in putting it forward – the constant search for power, domination and supremacy – as Mao may have been in such a pursuit!
A great read, if at times painful! One way to reconnect with China’s history of the last century, at least until 1976…
The many reviewers of the book around the world were no less virulent in embracing this demystification of Mao – e.g. Michael Yahuda’s review, while a professor at the LSE, in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jun/04/featuresreviews.guardianreview10). The book enjoyed less credibility amongst academics who faulted it on many accounts. I must admit that at times the authors seem to draw ghastly conclusions on very short evidence (circumstantial, as some would put it). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao:_The_Unknown_Story for an account of critics, for or against.
Fort-Chambray, Malta, June 25, 2011
