832 pages, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,
ISBN-13: 978-0679422716
I
knew I was in good hands when, upon opening up Mao: The Unknown Story, the first paragraph stated unequivocally
that “Mao Tse-tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of
one-quarter of the world’s population, was responsible for well over 70 million
deaths in peacetime…” There you have it: just a little taste of the
monstrousness you will encounter in Jung
Chang and Jon Halliday’s biography of this wretched man. Their book is
simply breathtaking in its scope and details. I already knew more than a little
about Chinese history when I first opened it (and, indeed, have reviews other
books about Mao on this blog), yet I had no idea about the depths of Mao
duplicity in every single aspect and facet of his life. The authors – the
husband and wife team of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday – have been accused by
other (supposedly respectable) reviewers of representing their opinions as
facts, but this just isn’t so: when they speculate, they freely admit it, and
then prop up their speculations with facts and, in some cases, eyewitness
testimony.
Mao
Tse-tung was utterly loathsome. Every aspect of his personal life was bizarre
and perverse, from his personal hygiene to his collection of nurse-concubines,
to his “longevity program” in which he demanded a teenage virgin be brought to
his bed every night. He called for murders and executions, engaged the entire
country in a mad, destructive effort to produce steel from pots, pans and
scraps, ruined agricultural production and caused a famine (this is without
dispute, only the numbers dead are disputed – 1 million or 30 million – low
figure or high, it was still horrible), exported food as people starved, built
up then ruined the public education system, burnt books, encouraged gangs who
harassed and punished teachers, tried to destroy the country’s cultural
inheritance, tore down historic buildings and monuments, suppressed science,
persecuted the veteran Communists who had brought about his victory, and tried
to supplant Western medicine with the “great storehouse of Chinese medicine”.
But
what of the good he did? We're told by his apologists that he united China.
Well, all the best despots are uniters, aren’t they? Hitler could be said to
have united Western Europe, at least for a time. Stalin united the countries of
the Soviet Union, and later those of Eastern Europe. Tito united Yugoslavia,
and Saddam united Iraq. Is being a “uniter” enough to justify the rest? We’re
also told he thwarted foreign occupation or control of any part of China, but
did he? Colonization was well on the wane by 1949. Japan was in ruins. Britain
had given up India. The Dutch had released Indonesia. The United States had
provided the Philippines with its independence, and the zeitgeist of the post
war world, led by the United States, was to free colonies. No one wanted a
piece of China any more. We’re told that lifespan and literacy increased under
Mao. Perhaps so; perhaps not; Communists were not scrupulous in maintaining
records. If literacy and lifespan did increase, Mao had little to do with it.
Peace has its dividends, including longer life and better education. After 20
years of better schooling, Mao disrupted everything with the Cultural
Revolution and set China back, especially Chinese science and industry. It was
only with his death and the arrest of the Gang of Four that China came right
once more and began to progress rapidly.
This
magnificent book is not without its blemishes; for instance, there is no
discussion of the quality of the sources or how they were used, and the motives
of people in general – and of Mao in particular – are asserted rather than
evaluated (also, there is no introduction or concluding chapter to bring
together the key themes of the book; a small complaint, perhaps, but a giant
irritant). Nevertheless, Mao: The Unknown
Story a stupendous work and one hopes that it will be brought before the
Chinese people, who still claim to venerate the man and who have yet to come to
terms with their own history, even as they require others to do so.
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