Mao - The Unknown Story

Title: Mao – The Unknown Story

Author: Jung Chang, Jon Halliday

Publisher:  Vintage Books, 2007 (First published: 2005)

ISBN: 978-0-099-50737-6

Pages: 764

Mao Tse-tung, the great leader of Chinese revolution is still a well adored figure in many parts of the world where communists continue their armed struggle against the established social order in order to replace it with an economic package proposed by an expatriate German economic thinker in the mid-19^th century, to tide over crises specific to the era in which he lived. Thoughts like whether it is relevant in today’s globalized society, or reviews of what happened in those unfortunate places where ordinary folk had to submit to the inhuman ordeals inflicted on them by communist regimes do not appeal to the violent anarchists who believe in Mao’s dictum that power comes out of the barrel of a gun. Nothing characterises the lust for power, contempt for public opinion and self-centered world view of the person better than this one quoted sentence. The long book is a painfully laid out tirade against Mao and his methods. From cover to cover, the Chinese leader is showered with polemics, accusations and criticisms in a unilateral way. The book begins with the line ‘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, more than any other twentieth-century leader’ and ends with ‘His mind remained lucid to the end, and in it stirred just one thought: himself and his power’, thus achieving the dubious distinction of a totally one-sided view of the proceedings. Objective readers would benefit more from Frank Dikotter’s impressive work, Mao’s Great Famine – The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62, reviewed earlier in this blog.

One of the authors, Jung Chang was born in China and left China in 1978. Her award winning book, Wild Swans, was published in 1991. Jon Halliday, her husband is a senior research fellow at King’s College, University of London.

Mao was born in a middle-income family in a remote backyard of Hunan province in China. After completing his education and training as a teacher, he joined the communist party (CCP) then under the leadership of Prof. Chen Tu-hsiu. Mao approached the professor at the right time and he was in time for participating in the 1^st Congress in 1921. Moscow bankrolled the communists in China by providing money to convene meetings and organisational work. Sensing the ineffectiveness of CCP, Moscow asked them to join Nationalist Party under Sun Yat-sen in its struggle against ruling war lords. Though ideologically bound communists opposed such an unholy nexus, Mao happily worked in the conglomeration. He had moved so well along with the Nationalists that Moscow ousted him from the party in 1925. He patched up, but Sun died soon after. Communists resorted to rural uprisings and killing of landed peasants, with arson and violence closely following. Nationalist army under Chiang Kai-shek refused to toe the line in 1927 and turned against the communists. Mao decided to side with Russia this time.

Mao’s ambition was to control an army of his own. He allied with a bandit force (as claimed by the authors) and carried out raids against local counties. When the split against Nationalists resulted in heavy losses, Mao had to be reinducted on orders from Moscow. Stalin accepted the fact that he needed a winner, even though he may be a little disobedient. By 1929, Mao commanded the largest Red Army unit outside USSR. Based in Jianxi, Mao started the reign of terror he was use frequently when in power. His own comrades who didn’t exhibit slavish loyalty to Mao’s person were tortured and killed in purges, branding them AB (anti bolsheviks). In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria. Nationalist forces fighting communists were called back to fight the foreign foes, which Mao exploited well to declare a communist state on Nov 7, 1931 with Ruijin as its capital.

Chiang Kai-shek’s determined assault in 1934 made life miserable for Mao. He undertook the Long March with 80,000 followers. This was an event glorified and exaggerated to astronomical proportions. Ordinary feats were highly dramatized like the crossing of Dabu bridge in Sichuan, where in fact no one was killed. Mao reached Shaanxi in Oct 1935, with only 4000 troops remaining. During this huge march, Mao’s machinations made him the top boss of CCP and Stalin acquiesced to his leadership after the Long March. Clouds of second world war loomed on the horizon soon thereafter and Russia wanted a United China, otherwise Japan might turn towards them after easily conquering China. CCP was forced to support Chiang Kai-shek. Even though part of a united army, Reds did not participate wholeheartedly in the war against Japan. Nationalist troops perished in huge numbers. Chiang had a superiority of 60:1 in the number of troops when the war started, that dwindled to 3:1 when it ended. Stalin, meanwhile found it opportune to enter into a pact with Hitler and annexed Poland. Mao hoped they would reach such an agreement with Japan, annex China and give it in a platter to him. Chiang was getting more and more sidelined. By 1945, Mao assumed total dominance in the party and the country. With Russian support came arms and manpower. Mao routed the Nationalists and declared People’s Republic of China on Oct 1, 1949.

Mao wanted to make China a superpower during his reign and needed weapons and support. No better way was open for him than to engage in a war. Korean War, Taiwan Strait Crises and Annexation of Tibet were all opportunities to arm twist the Russians into supplying what Mao wanted. Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were events formed out of a narrow minded ideology to extract more from already diminished reservoir of the nation’s human resources. Millions perished in the cruellest famines in China’s history materialized due to fallacious policies during the Great Leap Forward. Mao threatened to wipe out any semblance to culture from the country during the Cultural Revolution. Mao exported huge mountains of grain to fledgling communist countries in order to prop up the regime and also to cultivate alliance with him, while ordinary Chinese folk was dying in millions from hunger.

The book is a biography of Mao and carries narrations during each year of his existence. There are several curious anecdotes about him, but none of them edifying like he was insensitive to suffering even while his own children were killed, he abandoned wives frequently, was a womanizer who once claimed that 40 days was the maximum he could go without conjugal pleasures. Seniority counted for everything in Communist party. When China was reeling under food shortage, the party leaders ate and lived a lavish life. One leading ideologue remarked, “It is the order of the Party. Take Chairman Mao, for example: the Party can order him to eat a chicken a day” (p.293). Mao’s ingenious ways of purges terrified the people like none other.  In Shanghai, many committed suicide by jumping from skyscrapers to the streets below, rather than into the river, because if the body was not recovered, the regime may assume escape and penalize the living family members. Mao and the party’s attitude to peasants were inhuman in the extreme. For raising the output of farms, Mao’s agriculture chief said they depended on the peasants’ ‘two shoulders and one bottom’, that is, manual labour and excrement used as manure (p. 467). Regarding Cultural Revolution, ‘Mao had in mind a completely arid society, devoid of civilization, deprived of representation of human feelings, inhabited by a herd with no sensibility, which would automatically obey his orders’ (p. 594).

The book is totally unilateral and full of narrow criticism of Mao. While it lists the accusations one by one, it fails to account for the legendary status he genuinely obtained from the people. Naturally, it leads to discontinuity in argument. In one page, Mao is a dreaded thug, while in the next, he leads a large uprising. Some accusations appear to be downright false – the alleged poisoning of Wang Ming, a contender of Mao in 1942 by his doctor on Mao’s behest. In the struggle with Nationalist forces, every red victory is accused to be due to moles placed in Chiang’s army. Alleged human flesh banquets during Cultural Revolution are disgusting and may be wild exaggerations (p.661-2).

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star