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682 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2002
1,811 people are currently reading
21.3k people want to read
About the author
Jung Chang
11?books1,737?followersJung Chang (Chinese: ÕÅÈÖ) is a Chinese-British writer now living in London, best known for her family autobiography Wild Swans, selling over 10 million copies worldwide but banned in the People's Republic of China.
Her 832-page biography of Mao Zedong, Mao: The Unknown Story, written with her husband, the Irish historian Jon Halliday, was published in June 2005.
Her 832-page biography of Mao Zedong, Mao: The Unknown Story, written with her husband, the Irish historian Jon Halliday, was published in June 2005.
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July 30, 2022
¡°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. He was born into a peasant family in a valley called Shaoshan, in the province of Hunan, in the heartland of China. The date was 26 December 1893. His ancestors had lived in the valley for five hundred years. This was a world of ancient beauty, a temperate, humid region whose misty, undulating hills had been populated ever since the Neolithic age¡¡±
- Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story
Mao Tse-Tung ¨C popularly known as Chairman Mao ¨C was one of the titanic figures of the twentieth century, if not all of history. From humble beginnings, he rose rapidly in a time of chaos, war, and revolution, taking control of the Chinese Communist Party, wresting one of the world¡¯s great nations from Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek, and birthing the People¡¯s Republic of China, which is today the most populous ¨C and one of the most powerful ¨C countries on earth.
This accomplishment did not come without costs. Mao was a brutally-focused leader who pursued his superpower goals without regard to human lives. He is responsible for tens of millions of deaths, many from enforced famines that came not from bad harvests, storms, or droughts, but because he was willing to trade needed food for weapons and technology that would allow him to achieve his dreams of global force projection.
The consequences of his actions ¨C not just deaths, but enslavement, imprisonment, and the destruction of historical and cultural artifacts ¨C puts Mao in certain rarefied and dubious company. Nonetheless, despite being comparable to only Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin in terms of grave-making, Chairman Mao lived a charmed life, and has enjoyed an equally-charmed afterlife.
During his reign, Mao had a broad base of international support, from the American journalist Edgar Snow, to the French writer Jean Paul Sartre, who called Mao¡¯s ¡°revolutionary violence¡± a thing that was ¡°profoundly moral.¡±
Today, at a time when even revered historical figures like Abraham Lincoln and Mohandas Gandhi are being critically reinterpreted, Mao remains startlingly impervious. He stares eternally out from his famed portrait on the Tiananmen Gate, a strange Mona Lisa smile on his lips, guarding the entrance to Beijing¡¯s Forbidden City.
In Mao, authors Jung Chang and Jon Halliday try to change all that on their own, and all at once. The result is a vigorous attack on the Chairman that works better as a polemic than as a biography.
***
Structurally speaking, Mao is superb. Having never read about the man before, and having only just begun studying Chinese history, I found this incredibly user-friendly. The authors employ the Table of Contents as an outline, dividing the book into 6 parts, further subdivided into 58 chapters, many of them quite short, assuring that the reader never gets bogged down. Most of the chapters have pedantic names that tell you exactly what you are about to read. For example, there is no mystery about what¡¯s to come in a section called ¡°Takeover Leads to Death of Second Wife,¡± or ¡°Chiang Kai-Shek Kidnapped.¡±
Providing further assistance, each chapter has a date-range, and provides Mao¡¯s ages during that particular period. This allows Chang and Halliday to intersperse strictly chronological chapters, with those that are more thematic, without risking confusion.
Judged as a purely literary artifact, Mao is forgettable. The best that can be said of the prose is that it¡¯s clear and grammatically sound. While this isn¡¯t nothing, it would have been nice ¨C at some point in this doorstopper ¨C to have come across an evocative scene or passage.
***
In terms of scope, this is a literal cradle-to-grave bio. On the first page, Mao is born, and on the last page, Mao finally dies. Between those two markers, Chang and Halliday tend to stay very close to their subject.
The advantage of this tight focus is that Chang and Halliday can streamline the material a bit, condensing ten volumes¡¯ worth of coverage into 617 pages.
The downside is that a lot of context is lost. Little effort is made at explaining the bigger picture. The authors also assume a lot of foreknowledge, so that instead of properly introducing the ¡°Long March,¡± they just jump right into revising it. Additionally, fascinating supporting actors ¨C such as Chou Enlai ¨C never become definable personages in their own right. The authors spend an entire chapter discussing the worldwide failure of Maoism, without ever defining Maoism in the first place.
Depending on how much you already know about Mao and China, this might not be a big deal. As a newcomer, I probably should have started elsewhere.
***
Chang has a PhD in linguistics, and Halliday is a historian, and together, they compose a charming husband-and-wife team.
It¡¯s worth noting that Chang was born in China, and her parents were Communist officials, meaning that for her, this is personal. This background gives her an advantage over western historians looking outside-in. Throughout Mao, the authors correct ¨C or at least alter ¨C certain translations, mention speaking to many Chinese men and women who lived through Mao¡¯s rule, and personally consulted Chinese-language sources.
***
The research here seems enormous. The authors claim to have worked on this for ten years, and it¡¯s believable. There is a fourteen-page list of interviews, and eighty-five pages of notes.
For all that work, Mao was sharply criticized and quite controversial when it was published in 2005. I started to explore this aspect, then quit, realizing that much of the tempest is lost behind internet paywalls and dead links, while some of it seems like sour-grapes from professors upset that Chang and Halliday made the bestseller lists, while their monographs languish in library basements.
As best I can tell, most of the contretemps has to do with certain specific allegations, such as Chang and Halliday¡¯s argument that Chiang Kai-Shek allowed Mao to escape during the Long March, as part of a longer game. While they have cited numerous sources for this contention, the authors fail to specify what each source actually provided, making it hard to verify.
I don¡¯t know enough to have a strong opinion either way, but as an attorney, I¡¯m not unfamiliar with arguments. To that end, I found Chang and Halliday to be irritatingly certain of their conclusions, and frustratingly peremptory in their deductions. There were times I wanted to believe what they were saying, but found myself unable, without better evidentiary support.
Still, none of the criticisms I saw of Mao ever challenged the notion that he did really bad things.
And that¡¯s why my main issue with this book is hard to explain.
***
The devastation that Mao wrought is vast. Chang and Halliday do a good job of finding ordinary people caught in the bloody churn of his wake. His spirit should not be allowed to float free and unencumbered by the psychic weight of his self-created calamities. Western academics who think the deaths of a few tens of millions of people is okay, as long as it¡¯s for a good cause, need to recalibrate. College students ¨C including my sophomore-year roommate ¨C should probably think deeper about what it means to celebrate Mao and the CCP, because that¡¯s a tenuous ethical position.
With that said, the battering tone that Chang and Halliday employ actually undercuts their position. They are so relentlessly negative ¨C Mao was a sexual predator; Mao was a bad husband; Mao was a hypocrite; Mao had terrible hygiene and probably stank ¨C that it becomes distracting.
Meanwhile, they never settle on who Mao was, or what drove him to his ends. They often contradict themselves, sometimes stressing Mao¡¯s imbecilic ideas, other times treating Mao as the grand puppet-master, denying others any agency while they dance on his string. Though I spent six-hundred pages with the man, I have little notion about his motivations, his personality, or why so many willingly followed him. Before he got to the top, he had to get to the top, and nothing in Mao demonstrates why this happened.
In short, Mao is probably one of humanity¡¯s alpha criminals, yet Mao is somehow too harsh to be entirely credible.
***
When Mao finally passed from the scene, Deng Xiaoping undid many of his works, leading China to superpower status not by toppling monuments or giving away its grain, but by introducing a socialist market economy, where private ownership exists alongside state enterprises.
In that sense, Mao¡¯s legacy is being left behind. But while current President Xi Jinping is unlikely to revert to the Chairman¡¯s crude economic system, he shares Mao¡¯s love for the concentration of power into fewer hands, and in his belief of a globally-influential nation. Thus, one cannot understand China without attempting to understand Mao, just as one cannot understand our modern world without understanding China.
- Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story
Mao Tse-Tung ¨C popularly known as Chairman Mao ¨C was one of the titanic figures of the twentieth century, if not all of history. From humble beginnings, he rose rapidly in a time of chaos, war, and revolution, taking control of the Chinese Communist Party, wresting one of the world¡¯s great nations from Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek, and birthing the People¡¯s Republic of China, which is today the most populous ¨C and one of the most powerful ¨C countries on earth.
This accomplishment did not come without costs. Mao was a brutally-focused leader who pursued his superpower goals without regard to human lives. He is responsible for tens of millions of deaths, many from enforced famines that came not from bad harvests, storms, or droughts, but because he was willing to trade needed food for weapons and technology that would allow him to achieve his dreams of global force projection.
The consequences of his actions ¨C not just deaths, but enslavement, imprisonment, and the destruction of historical and cultural artifacts ¨C puts Mao in certain rarefied and dubious company. Nonetheless, despite being comparable to only Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin in terms of grave-making, Chairman Mao lived a charmed life, and has enjoyed an equally-charmed afterlife.
During his reign, Mao had a broad base of international support, from the American journalist Edgar Snow, to the French writer Jean Paul Sartre, who called Mao¡¯s ¡°revolutionary violence¡± a thing that was ¡°profoundly moral.¡±
Today, at a time when even revered historical figures like Abraham Lincoln and Mohandas Gandhi are being critically reinterpreted, Mao remains startlingly impervious. He stares eternally out from his famed portrait on the Tiananmen Gate, a strange Mona Lisa smile on his lips, guarding the entrance to Beijing¡¯s Forbidden City.
In Mao, authors Jung Chang and Jon Halliday try to change all that on their own, and all at once. The result is a vigorous attack on the Chairman that works better as a polemic than as a biography.
***
Structurally speaking, Mao is superb. Having never read about the man before, and having only just begun studying Chinese history, I found this incredibly user-friendly. The authors employ the Table of Contents as an outline, dividing the book into 6 parts, further subdivided into 58 chapters, many of them quite short, assuring that the reader never gets bogged down. Most of the chapters have pedantic names that tell you exactly what you are about to read. For example, there is no mystery about what¡¯s to come in a section called ¡°Takeover Leads to Death of Second Wife,¡± or ¡°Chiang Kai-Shek Kidnapped.¡±
Providing further assistance, each chapter has a date-range, and provides Mao¡¯s ages during that particular period. This allows Chang and Halliday to intersperse strictly chronological chapters, with those that are more thematic, without risking confusion.
Judged as a purely literary artifact, Mao is forgettable. The best that can be said of the prose is that it¡¯s clear and grammatically sound. While this isn¡¯t nothing, it would have been nice ¨C at some point in this doorstopper ¨C to have come across an evocative scene or passage.
***
In terms of scope, this is a literal cradle-to-grave bio. On the first page, Mao is born, and on the last page, Mao finally dies. Between those two markers, Chang and Halliday tend to stay very close to their subject.
The advantage of this tight focus is that Chang and Halliday can streamline the material a bit, condensing ten volumes¡¯ worth of coverage into 617 pages.
The downside is that a lot of context is lost. Little effort is made at explaining the bigger picture. The authors also assume a lot of foreknowledge, so that instead of properly introducing the ¡°Long March,¡± they just jump right into revising it. Additionally, fascinating supporting actors ¨C such as Chou Enlai ¨C never become definable personages in their own right. The authors spend an entire chapter discussing the worldwide failure of Maoism, without ever defining Maoism in the first place.
Depending on how much you already know about Mao and China, this might not be a big deal. As a newcomer, I probably should have started elsewhere.
***
Chang has a PhD in linguistics, and Halliday is a historian, and together, they compose a charming husband-and-wife team.
It¡¯s worth noting that Chang was born in China, and her parents were Communist officials, meaning that for her, this is personal. This background gives her an advantage over western historians looking outside-in. Throughout Mao, the authors correct ¨C or at least alter ¨C certain translations, mention speaking to many Chinese men and women who lived through Mao¡¯s rule, and personally consulted Chinese-language sources.
***
The research here seems enormous. The authors claim to have worked on this for ten years, and it¡¯s believable. There is a fourteen-page list of interviews, and eighty-five pages of notes.
For all that work, Mao was sharply criticized and quite controversial when it was published in 2005. I started to explore this aspect, then quit, realizing that much of the tempest is lost behind internet paywalls and dead links, while some of it seems like sour-grapes from professors upset that Chang and Halliday made the bestseller lists, while their monographs languish in library basements.
As best I can tell, most of the contretemps has to do with certain specific allegations, such as Chang and Halliday¡¯s argument that Chiang Kai-Shek allowed Mao to escape during the Long March, as part of a longer game. While they have cited numerous sources for this contention, the authors fail to specify what each source actually provided, making it hard to verify.
I don¡¯t know enough to have a strong opinion either way, but as an attorney, I¡¯m not unfamiliar with arguments. To that end, I found Chang and Halliday to be irritatingly certain of their conclusions, and frustratingly peremptory in their deductions. There were times I wanted to believe what they were saying, but found myself unable, without better evidentiary support.
Still, none of the criticisms I saw of Mao ever challenged the notion that he did really bad things.
And that¡¯s why my main issue with this book is hard to explain.
***
The devastation that Mao wrought is vast. Chang and Halliday do a good job of finding ordinary people caught in the bloody churn of his wake. His spirit should not be allowed to float free and unencumbered by the psychic weight of his self-created calamities. Western academics who think the deaths of a few tens of millions of people is okay, as long as it¡¯s for a good cause, need to recalibrate. College students ¨C including my sophomore-year roommate ¨C should probably think deeper about what it means to celebrate Mao and the CCP, because that¡¯s a tenuous ethical position.
With that said, the battering tone that Chang and Halliday employ actually undercuts their position. They are so relentlessly negative ¨C Mao was a sexual predator; Mao was a bad husband; Mao was a hypocrite; Mao had terrible hygiene and probably stank ¨C that it becomes distracting.
Meanwhile, they never settle on who Mao was, or what drove him to his ends. They often contradict themselves, sometimes stressing Mao¡¯s imbecilic ideas, other times treating Mao as the grand puppet-master, denying others any agency while they dance on his string. Though I spent six-hundred pages with the man, I have little notion about his motivations, his personality, or why so many willingly followed him. Before he got to the top, he had to get to the top, and nothing in Mao demonstrates why this happened.
In short, Mao is probably one of humanity¡¯s alpha criminals, yet Mao is somehow too harsh to be entirely credible.
***
When Mao finally passed from the scene, Deng Xiaoping undid many of his works, leading China to superpower status not by toppling monuments or giving away its grain, but by introducing a socialist market economy, where private ownership exists alongside state enterprises.
In that sense, Mao¡¯s legacy is being left behind. But while current President Xi Jinping is unlikely to revert to the Chairman¡¯s crude economic system, he shares Mao¡¯s love for the concentration of power into fewer hands, and in his belief of a globally-influential nation. Thus, one cannot understand China without attempting to understand Mao, just as one cannot understand our modern world without understanding China.
September 29, 2023
???? ?????? ???????? ?? ???? ???? ?????? 1000 ???? ?? ?? ???? ???? ????????? ?????? ??? ??? ? ??? ?? ???????? ?????????? ??? ????? ?? ???? ? ????????? ??? ???? ?? ?? ??? ???? ?? ???? ???? ???? ?? ???? ???? ???? ??? : ?? ???? ? ??? ??? ? ????? ? ?? ???? ?? ? ????? ? ????? ????? ???? ? ???? ? ????? ???? ?? ??? ???? . ?? ????? ??? ??? ????? ?? ???? ?? ?????? ????????? ???? ???? ????? ? ????? ????? ?????? ?? ???? ???? ?? ?? ???? ???????? ???? ???? ??? ??? ?? ????? ?? ???????? ????? ? ??????? ????? ???? ??? ? ???? ??? ????? ???? ?? ???? ???? ??? ????? ????? .
???? ?? ???? ???? ? ???? ????? ?????? ??? ?? ?? ??? 1920 ?? ??? 1980 ?? ?? ????? : ?????? ?? ?? ?? ??? ?? ?? ??? ???????? ? ??? ? ?????? ? ???? ?? ??? ?? ???? ? ??? ??? ???? ??????? ??? ??? ????? ????? ??? ? ???? ???? ????? ?? ?? ??????? ???? ??????? ?????? ?? ?? ?? ??????? ?? ?? ??? ??? ???? ? ?? ????? ????????? ???? ???? ?????? ??? ???? ?? ?? ?? ???? ?????? ? ?? ?? ????? ? ????? ????? ??? ??? ?? ???? ???? ??? ? ???? ???? ?? ?? ?? ????? ???? ??? !
??? ????????? ??? ???? ???? ?? ??? ?????? ???? ???? ??? ???? ? ??? ?????? ?? ?? ??? ??? ???? ? ????? ???? ?? ?? ??? ??????? ????? ??? ? ?? ??? ??? ???? ! ??? ?? ??? ??? ????? ??? ? ???? ? ??? ?? ????? ???? ????? ??? ?? ? ??? ??? ?? ???? ?? ???? .( ????? ??? ????? ??? ??? 8 ?? 10 ?????? ??? ???? ? ??? ?? ???? ?? ?????? ?? ???? 22 ?????? ????? ??? ) . ??? ?? ??? ??? ?? ??? ??? ???? ?? ?? ????? ?????? ( ????? ?? ????? ??? ?????????? ??? ???? ???? ?? ???? ??? ? ?? ?? ???? ??? ??? ?? ??????? ???? ??? ?? ????? ??? ) ? ??? ??? ??????? ?? ? ??? ?????? ?????? ????? ????? ?? ??????? ??? ????? ?? ?????? ???? ????? ????? ??? ?? ?? ?????? ?? ????? ?? ??? ? ???? ?? ???????? ? ??? ???? ????? ? ??? ???? ???? ??????? :
???? ?? ?? ????? ? ?? ??????? ?? ?? ????? ????? ????? ?? ???? ?? ????? ???????? ???? ??? ? ??? ?? ????? ??? ????? ??? ?? 55 ?????? ??? ?? ??? ?????? ? ????? ??? ?? ????? ???? ?? ??? 45 ?? 70 ?????? ??? ????? ??? ??? . ?? ????? ?????? ???? ? ??? ?? ??? ??? ? 38 ?????? ????? ?? ??? ???? ? ?????? ? ??? ???? ??? ??? ??? ????? . ???? ???? ?????? ???? ???? ??? ???? ??????? ??? ! ?? ????? ? ????? ? ??? ??? ??????? ?? ???? ??? ????? ???? ??? ? ?????? ??? ????? ??? ?????? ?? ?? ??? ???????? ( ?? ????? ??? ?? ? ??? ?? ?????? ?? ??? ???? !) . ?????? ??????? ???? ???? ?? ?? ???? ???? ??? ??? ???? ?? ??????? ?? ??? ???? ????? ?? ???? ?? ??? ?????? ???? ????? ??? ? ?? ???? ?? ?? ??? ?? ??? ???? ??? ?? ????????? ???? ?? ??? ???? ?? ???? ? ????? ???? ??? ?? ?? ?? ???? ????? ????? .
??? ??? ???? ????? ????? ?? ??? ?
???? ?? ???? ??????? ?? ???? ?????????? ????? ?? ???? ???? ????? ??? ????? ? ?? ???? ???? ????? ?? ? ????? ??? ???? ???? ?? ??? ????? ???? ? ???? ??? ?? ?? ?????? ??? ? ??? ???? ??? ?? ????? ??????????? ????? ? ????? ???? ??? ????? ? ????? ? ???? ???? ?? ???? ? ?????? ???? ?? ??????? ???? ?? ???? ??? . ??????? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ???? ??? ??? ???? ? ????? ? ??? ????? ???? ???? ???? ??? ? ??? ???? ?? ?? ??? ?? ?????? ?? ?? ???? ????? ????? ?? ????? ?? ? ???? ????? ???? ???? ?? ???? ?? ?????? ????? ???? .
????? ????? ?? ?? ???? ?? ?? ????? ?? ?????? ???? ??? ???? ???? ?????? ???????? ??? ??? . ???? ??? ?? ???? ????? ???? ??? ? ?????? ? ?? ?????? ?????? ?? ?? ??? ???? ?? ???? ???? ??? . ?? ????? ???? ??? ?????? ??? ???????????? ??? ?? ???? ????? ? ?? ?????? ??? ??? ??????? ????? ???? (???? ??? ??? ?? ????? ????? ?????? ????? ??? ???? ???? ??? ??? ??? ? ???? ????? ??? ???? ?? ?? ??? ??? ??? ) ???? ??? ?? ?? ????? ???? ??? ??? ??? ? ??????? ?? ????? ??? . ?? ??? ???? ????????? ???? ???? ??? ?? ???? ??? ??? ?? ? ????? ??? ???? ??? ?? ???? ?? ??? ????? ??? ??? ?? ???? ¨C ?? ??? ?? ?? ??? ????? ??? ?? ??? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ?? ???? ???? ??? - ???? ???
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???? ?? ??????? ???? ??? ? ????? ??????? ??? ?? ???? ??? ? ?? ????? ??? ? ??????? ? ????? ?????? ???? ??? ?? ?????? ???? ??? ???? ????? ?? (?? ??? ???? ?? :?? ????? ?????? ???? ?? ???? ??????. ???? ??????? ???????. ??? ??? ?? ?? ?? ????)
??? ???? ?? ???? 1000 ???? ?? ???? ???? ??? ? ??? ????? ?? ??? ?? ??? ? ???? ??????? ?? ? ???? ??? ????? ????? ? ??? ??? ?? ??? ????? ? ???? ??? ??? ????? ???? ??? ?? ?????? ???? ??? ????? ?? ???? ??? .
*
???? ?????? ???????? ? ????? ???? ?? ???? ???? ?? ????? ???? ??? ???? ??? ?????? ?? ???? ????? ???? ????? ? ?? ?? ?????? ????? ???? ?? ???? ???? ????? ? ??? ?????? ???? ??? ???? ? ??? ????? ???? ???? ?? ?? ????? ???? ???? ? ???? ???? ?????? ???????? ?? ???? ?? ???? ????? ????? .
???? ?? ???? ?? ????? ????? ?? ?????? ????????? ? ???? ?? ???? ?????? ???? ???? ??? .
???? ?? ???? ???? ? ???? ????? ?????? ??? ?? ?? ??? 1920 ?? ??? 1980 ?? ?? ????? : ?????? ?? ?? ?? ??? ?? ?? ??? ???????? ? ??? ? ?????? ? ???? ?? ??? ?? ???? ? ??? ??? ???? ??????? ??? ??? ????? ????? ??? ? ???? ???? ????? ?? ?? ??????? ???? ??????? ?????? ?? ?? ?? ??????? ?? ?? ??? ??? ???? ? ?? ????? ????????? ???? ???? ?????? ??? ???? ?? ?? ?? ???? ?????? ? ?? ?? ????? ? ????? ????? ??? ??? ?? ???? ???? ??? ? ???? ???? ?? ?? ?? ????? ???? ??? !
??? ????????? ??? ???? ???? ?? ??? ?????? ???? ???? ??? ???? ? ??? ?????? ?? ?? ??? ??? ???? ? ????? ???? ?? ?? ??? ??????? ????? ??? ? ?? ??? ??? ???? ! ??? ?? ??? ??? ????? ??? ? ???? ? ??? ?? ????? ???? ????? ??? ?? ? ??? ??? ?? ???? ?? ???? .( ????? ??? ????? ??? ??? 8 ?? 10 ?????? ??? ???? ? ??? ?? ???? ?? ?????? ?? ???? 22 ?????? ????? ??? ) . ??? ?? ??? ??? ?? ??? ??? ???? ?? ?? ????? ?????? ( ????? ?? ????? ??? ?????????? ??? ???? ???? ?? ???? ??? ? ?? ?? ???? ??? ??? ?? ??????? ???? ??? ?? ????? ??? ) ? ??? ??? ??????? ?? ? ??? ?????? ?????? ????? ????? ?? ??????? ??? ????? ?? ?????? ???? ????? ????? ??? ?? ?? ?????? ?? ????? ?? ??? ? ???? ?? ???????? ? ??? ???? ????? ? ??? ???? ???? ??????? :
???? ?? ?? ????? ? ?? ??????? ?? ?? ????? ????? ????? ?? ???? ?? ????? ???????? ???? ??? ? ??? ?? ????? ??? ????? ??? ?? 55 ?????? ??? ?? ??? ?????? ? ????? ??? ?? ????? ???? ?? ??? 45 ?? 70 ?????? ??? ????? ??? ??? . ?? ????? ?????? ???? ? ??? ?? ??? ??? ? 38 ?????? ????? ?? ??? ???? ? ?????? ? ??? ???? ??? ??? ??? ????? . ???? ???? ?????? ???? ???? ??? ???? ??????? ??? ! ?? ????? ? ????? ? ??? ??? ??????? ?? ???? ??? ????? ???? ??? ? ?????? ??? ????? ??? ?????? ?? ?? ??? ???????? ( ?? ????? ??? ?? ? ??? ?? ?????? ?? ??? ???? !) . ?????? ??????? ???? ???? ?? ?? ???? ???? ??? ??? ???? ?? ??????? ?? ??? ???? ????? ?? ???? ?? ??? ?????? ???? ????? ??? ? ?? ???? ?? ?? ??? ?? ??? ???? ??? ?? ????????? ???? ?? ??? ???? ?? ???? ? ????? ???? ??? ?? ?? ?? ???? ????? ????? .
??? ??? ???? ????? ????? ?? ??? ?
???? ?? ???? ??????? ?? ???? ?????????? ????? ?? ???? ???? ????? ??? ????? ? ?? ???? ???? ????? ?? ? ????? ??? ???? ???? ?? ??? ????? ???? ? ???? ??? ?? ?? ?????? ??? ? ??? ???? ??? ?? ????? ??????????? ????? ? ????? ???? ??? ????? ? ????? ? ???? ???? ?? ???? ? ?????? ???? ?? ??????? ???? ?? ???? ??? . ??????? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ???? ??? ??? ???? ? ????? ? ??? ????? ???? ???? ???? ??? ? ??? ???? ?? ?? ??? ?? ?????? ?? ?? ???? ????? ????? ?? ????? ?? ? ???? ????? ???? ???? ?? ???? ?? ?????? ????? ???? .
????? ????? ?? ?? ???? ?? ?? ????? ?? ?????? ???? ??? ???? ???? ?????? ???????? ??? ??? . ???? ??? ?? ???? ????? ???? ??? ? ?????? ? ?? ?????? ?????? ?? ?? ??? ???? ?? ???? ???? ??? . ?? ????? ???? ??? ?????? ??? ???????????? ??? ?? ???? ????? ? ?? ?????? ??? ??? ??????? ????? ???? (???? ??? ??? ?? ????? ????? ?????? ????? ??? ???? ???? ??? ??? ??? ? ???? ????? ??? ???? ?? ?? ??? ??? ??? ) ???? ??? ?? ?? ????? ???? ??? ??? ??? ? ??????? ?? ????? ??? . ?? ??? ???? ????????? ???? ???? ??? ?? ???? ??? ??? ?? ? ????? ??? ???? ??? ?? ???? ?? ??? ????? ??? ??? ?? ???? ¨C ?? ??? ?? ?? ??? ????? ??? ?? ??? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ?? ???? ???? ??? - ???? ???
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???? ?? ??????? ???? ??? ? ????? ??????? ??? ?? ???? ??? ? ?? ????? ??? ? ??????? ? ????? ?????? ???? ??? ?? ?????? ???? ??? ???? ????? ?? (?? ??? ???? ?? :?? ????? ?????? ???? ?? ???? ??????. ???? ??????? ???????. ??? ??? ?? ?? ?? ????)
??? ???? ?? ???? 1000 ???? ?? ???? ???? ??? ? ??? ????? ?? ??? ?? ??? ? ???? ??????? ?? ? ???? ??? ????? ????? ? ??? ??? ?? ??? ????? ? ???? ??? ??? ????? ???? ??? ?? ?????? ???? ??? ????? ?? ???? ??? .
*
???? ?????? ???????? ? ????? ???? ?? ???? ???? ?? ????? ???? ??? ???? ??? ?????? ?? ???? ????? ???? ????? ? ?? ?? ?????? ????? ???? ?? ???? ???? ????? ? ??? ?????? ???? ??? ???? ? ??? ????? ???? ???? ?? ?? ????? ???? ???? ? ???? ???? ?????? ???????? ?? ???? ?? ???? ????? ????? .
???? ?? ???? ?? ????? ????? ?? ?????? ????????? ? ???? ?? ???? ?????? ???? ???? ??? .
February 3, 2012
I was very much looking forward to this highly touted book, as it's widely considered to be the most thorough and in depth study of Mao ever done. It's true, actually. The amount of detail is pretty incredible.
The thing that has been turning me off of this book is that it falls victim a little too much to the author's personal feelings for Mao. I understand that a lot of what he did was atrocious. I just wish that I didn't feel like I was being force fed the author's point of view quite so blatantly.
The thing that has been turning me off of this book is that it falls victim a little too much to the author's personal feelings for Mao. I understand that a lot of what he did was atrocious. I just wish that I didn't feel like I was being force fed the author's point of view quite so blatantly.
May 8, 2010
This isn't balanced biography. This is more like character assassination. It reminded me of the harsh biographical treatment Albert Goldman gave Elvis Presley some years ago. Whatever detail of Mao's life Chang writes about, the negative aspects are emphasized. The facts of his marriages are glued together with the ways he crippled them and damaged the wives. Writing about his children, the author underlines the ways he mistreated them. Every lash of the whip is here: not writing to his children or neglecting a wife during childbirth. All the family dirt is reported here, just as it's reported that he controlled and abused political allies and colleagues. Many he tortured and had killed when he no longer had use for them. The harsh lives of the Chinese people in general, even starvation, were sometimes caused by Mao's policies. It's estimated his years of government were responsible for 70 million deaths. Was he a monster? Sure, I suppose so, as much as Stalin and Hitler and Pol Pot and others. But he was also a man. He was a husband, a father, and a friend to someone. He loved someone, sometime. It's okay to picture a leader's policies and direction as monstrous, but I believe at some level he's still a human being. Just as Hannah Arendt saw and pointed out the banal in Adolph Eichmann, Chang should have been willing and able to show the same banality in Mao. But she fails to allow him that. In my mind it makes for unbalanced, incomplete biography. The life and events punctuating that life are here--the young communist, the Long March, the Civil War, the Korean War, Chairman, the Cultural Revolution. I was surprised to learn how important Soviet help was to the Chinese Communist Party during the 30s. And also at how instrumental Moscow's steps were in keeping the Japanese bogged down so that they wouldn't be able to attack north into the Soviet Union. I also thought the analysis of Sino/Soviet motivations in Korea in the 50s interesting, if chilling. Some of the story is well-told. But because I feel Chang's over-emphasis on the negative approaches expose and polemic rather than comprehensive, complete biography, I wonder if exaggerations aren't present in accounts of Mao's administration of the country as a whole. Mao isn't a fun read--it's relentlessly negative. It's biased and imperfect because of that and because it leaves out part of the man.
November 4, 2014
¡°Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun¡±
Quote of Mao Tse-tung
¡°Long Live Chairman Mao¡±
¡°Chairman Mao Tse-tung is the Saviour of the Chinese People¡±
During the 1960¡¯s and ¡®70¡¯s Mao was a much revered world leader ¨C particularly adored by the college crowd (I know I was one of them) who put Mao on a pedestal. He was placed among the great leaders of the 20th century like Gandhi. His stature in Western society was likely similar to that of Stalin who was also glorified during the 1930¡¯s and 1940¡¯s.
The authors of this book do much to disabuse us of this notion ¨C in fact Mao is vilified on almost every page.
We come away with a portrait of a megalomaniac who did very little to help China. The man was conniving and devious. For instance he instituted a short period in 1957 called ¡°Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom¡± where he invited the people to speak out. They did. And Mao took notes.
Page 419 (my book)
Mao ordered an editorial for People¡¯s Daily to be broadcast that evening, saying that challenging the Party was forbidden. Once he pressed this button, the persecution machine started rolling... As a result at least 550,000-plus people were labelled as ¡°Rightists¡±... To Mao, writers, artists and historians were superfluous.
Mao was obsessed with making China a world power, with himself at the helm. Being a superpower to Mao meant acquiring military hardware and first-most - the Atomic bomb. In order to attain this he traded much needed food to the U.S.S.R. for their expertise and knowledge of the bomb. This was called the ¡°Great Leap Forward.¡±
Page 438
Close to 38 million people died of starvation and overwork in the Great Leap Forward and the famine, which lasted four years [starting in 1958]. ..Had this food not been exported (and instead been distributed according to humane criteria), very probably not a single person in China would have had to die of hunger.
So much for the myth of Mao helping the Chinese peasant.
Mao¡¯s struggle to attain power in the 1920¡¯s and 1930¡¯s was also a product of help from Stalin¡¯s Russia. Stalin wanted to spread the gospel of Marx and communism to the world; eventually Mao wanted to do the same.
There are many similarities between Mao and Stalin - in the way they made their underlings cringe before them (Chou En-lai was a prime example); both created a cult of personality with abundant images and placards; there was censorship and immobility in that travel within and without the country was prohibited.
But there were differences. Mao created many vast villas for himself across China, which were sealed off from the general population.
Page 333
Mao was the only millionaire created in Mao¡¯s China.
Mao also used public violence. Denunciations were followed by public beatings and executions with the people being encouraged to participate. This instilled a ¡°cult of terror¡± and fear ¨C as in who is to be next. This started in the areas Mao¡¯s army occupied in the 1920¡¯s ¨C and never stopped evolving.
During the long war with Japan Mao did little to attack the Japanese. He saw advantageously that Japan could do his work in defeating his arch-rival Chiang Kai-shek (leader of the Nationalist side). Also Mao allowed Nationalist forces to destroy rival communist groups. This allowed him to become the sole communist leader by the end of World War II. Mao¡¯s primary goal was power for himself only.
The authors erroneously claim that after the conclusion of the war the U.S., under their emissary General George Marshall, could have prevented Mao¡¯s communists from winning the Civil War against the Nationalists by providing more aid. Chiang Kai-shek Nationalists¡¯ were extremely inept and corrupt, and the U.S. had already provided millions of dollars in aid to them that was largely wasted. In essence Mao was too smart, and thoroughly outplayed Chiang Kai-shek, much like he did with his rivals in the Communist Party.
This book gives us an alternate view of Mao than that provided by earlier historians ¨C it lays waste to by Edgar Snow which eulogized Mao. It chronologically gives us Mao¡¯s acquisition to power from the 1920 ¡®s to 1947; and then how he relentlessly wielded it after. It¡¯s a sobering read of a 20th century tyrant.
Page 525 (the 1960¡¯s)
Leisure disappeared. Instead, there were endless mind-numbing ¨C but nerve-racking ¨C meetings to read and reread Mao¡¯s works and People¡¯s Daily articles. People were herded into numerous violent denunciation rallies against ¡°capitalist-roaders¡± and other appointed enemies. Public brutality became a part of daily life...Moreover, there were no ways to relax, as there were now virtually no books to read, or magazines, or films, or plays, opera; no light music on the radio. For entertainment there were only Mao Thought Propaganda Teams, who sang Mao¡¯s quotations set to raucous music, and danced militantly waving the Little Red Book.
Mao by Warhol
Shelved as 'aborted-efforts'
December 21, 2015I can't decide whether to keep going with this book, which is one of the most annoying biographies I've ever read. The tabloidish whiff of the subtitle -- The Unknown Story! -- is misleading: this book should have been called Mao: What a DICK! Its tone is bizarrely vitriolic and hysterical, as the authors take every single conceivable opportunity to spell out after each example that, see, look, Mao was a real DICK.
Here's the thing: we already know that Mao was a dick! And if we somehow didn't, simply giving us evidence of his dickishness -- e.g., the time he starved 38 million people to death? -- would do an infinitely more effective job of convincing us. This is really an instance where the hated writing advice to "show" and "not tell" should've been heeded, because somehow all the authorial raging about what a dick he was makes Mao seem almost sympathetic. More to the point, it makes him seem like a flattened cartoon character and cuts off any speculation about why he was such a dick. He's presented as a kind of Damian hellchild who just pops out of his seemingly very nice mother filled with all this bloodthirsty ambition, and there's no exploration of where his immense dickishness came from, or how it might have either derived or deviated from the society he lived in. This did the opposite of what a biography is supposed to do, and made the question of why Mao was who he was moot by just painting him as so inherently, insanely evil and awful and bad that there was no point trying to understand anything else about him. Of course I think it's perfectly reasonable to be astounded by the horrible acts and low character of a person responsible for so much death and suffering, but I still think you need to be able to modulate your tone when you're writing a book like this, or you just wind up undermining the power of all your points.
BUT! Except for this very annoying tic, the book is well-written, clear, interesting, and easy to follow for someone with almost no knowledge of any of the history being described. Maybe I'll return to it again at some point...?
Here's the thing: we already know that Mao was a dick! And if we somehow didn't, simply giving us evidence of his dickishness -- e.g., the time he starved 38 million people to death? -- would do an infinitely more effective job of convincing us. This is really an instance where the hated writing advice to "show" and "not tell" should've been heeded, because somehow all the authorial raging about what a dick he was makes Mao seem almost sympathetic. More to the point, it makes him seem like a flattened cartoon character and cuts off any speculation about why he was such a dick. He's presented as a kind of Damian hellchild who just pops out of his seemingly very nice mother filled with all this bloodthirsty ambition, and there's no exploration of where his immense dickishness came from, or how it might have either derived or deviated from the society he lived in. This did the opposite of what a biography is supposed to do, and made the question of why Mao was who he was moot by just painting him as so inherently, insanely evil and awful and bad that there was no point trying to understand anything else about him. Of course I think it's perfectly reasonable to be astounded by the horrible acts and low character of a person responsible for so much death and suffering, but I still think you need to be able to modulate your tone when you're writing a book like this, or you just wind up undermining the power of all your points.
BUT! Except for this very annoying tic, the book is well-written, clear, interesting, and easy to follow for someone with almost no knowledge of any of the history being described. Maybe I'll return to it again at some point...?
August 28, 2016
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August 18, 2007
This is a comprehensive hatchet job on the Western myth of Mao's "making of modern China". It should be read by everyone who grew up in the post-war years, with the recurrent fascination our society had with the internal convulsions of the "People's Republic" and its growing influence on its neighbours.
It is well written - I noticed a few repetitions, but nothing annoying, and it kept my interest throughout.
I'm sure the passion that comes through the book's relentless examination of Mao's behaviour and its consequences comes from Jung Chang's experiences (read "Wild Swans"), and of course it makes for a one-sided picture. Maybe examples of statesmanship and concern for the welfare of the Chinese people, or even of individual colleagues, are to be found in Mao's past, and have been omitted because they didn't fit the picture. But after reading this book, frankly, I doubt it - there doesn't seem to have been any time for good deeds.
I am not a historian, and historians are divided on some of the claims (see Wikipedia), but the authors do give extensive references and have interviewed many participants in the events, some very close to Mao. The details are given in appendixes, which make the book look even longer than it is, and maybe give it a scholarly appearance that isn't borne out by its tone. But they do show the authors' seriousness of purpose and willingness to expose their work to examination and criticism.
It is well written - I noticed a few repetitions, but nothing annoying, and it kept my interest throughout.
I'm sure the passion that comes through the book's relentless examination of Mao's behaviour and its consequences comes from Jung Chang's experiences (read "Wild Swans"), and of course it makes for a one-sided picture. Maybe examples of statesmanship and concern for the welfare of the Chinese people, or even of individual colleagues, are to be found in Mao's past, and have been omitted because they didn't fit the picture. But after reading this book, frankly, I doubt it - there doesn't seem to have been any time for good deeds.
I am not a historian, and historians are divided on some of the claims (see Wikipedia), but the authors do give extensive references and have interviewed many participants in the events, some very close to Mao. The details are given in appendixes, which make the book look even longer than it is, and maybe give it a scholarly appearance that isn't borne out by its tone. But they do show the authors' seriousness of purpose and willingness to expose their work to examination and criticism.
July 4, 2007
How do I review a book like this? I don't know, because I have decidedly mixed feelings about Mao myself. Jung Chang wrote the amazing "Wild Swans" biography/autobiography, but her voice there falls far short of the voice here. I'll be honest. It's very, very biased. She presents the work as *factual* when it's not actually quite that factual. Much of her interpretation and statements are based off of things like, "a dear friend of Mao's said..." and yet, the friend is *not* named or referenced. Just that alone made me uneasy.
It was an interesting read, don't get me wrong. I felt it was worth the time I spent on it, but I can't say that Jung did the best she could have. Her biases and hatred for Mao was all-too clear and for any book that claims to be a 'true' story, that makes it wrong in my books. Obviously, others will disagree with me and I know many people who find it a brilliant piece of work. The amount of work Jung put into it is admirable, but I can't say that this didn't bother me.
Overall? I'd say read it and judge for yourself.
It was an interesting read, don't get me wrong. I felt it was worth the time I spent on it, but I can't say that Jung did the best she could have. Her biases and hatred for Mao was all-too clear and for any book that claims to be a 'true' story, that makes it wrong in my books. Obviously, others will disagree with me and I know many people who find it a brilliant piece of work. The amount of work Jung put into it is admirable, but I can't say that this didn't bother me.
Overall? I'd say read it and judge for yourself.
Shelved as 'did-not-finish'
November 14, 2014Okay, I put my hands up...this book has me defeated. At page 228 I am giving up. It is just too dense, and too filled with battle and political strategy to be my cup of tea.
I have however gleaned some interesting points from what I have read.
Those of you who have read the spoiler may well think "Why has she stopped reading this book? She is obviously getting something constructive from it." Well, I stopped because it was a jolly hard slog to wade through all that detail. All the time I was reading I was aware that 99% of the information was just slipping away from me. I am not going to give the book any rating though. Were I an academic doing research on Mao's life I am sure it would be an invaluable resource; it just totally defeated me. (Sorry Mikey!)
I have however gleaned some interesting points from what I have read.
Those of you who have read the spoiler may well think "Why has she stopped reading this book? She is obviously getting something constructive from it." Well, I stopped because it was a jolly hard slog to wade through all that detail. All the time I was reading I was aware that 99% of the information was just slipping away from me. I am not going to give the book any rating though. Were I an academic doing research on Mao's life I am sure it would be an invaluable resource; it just totally defeated me. (Sorry Mikey!)
March 29, 2018
I should clarify my review; I majored in Chinese modern history and did my thesis on historical revisionism and historiography of the Nanjing Massacre (from both Chinese and Japanese perspectives). I loved Chang¡¯s book Wild Swans, but too much of this ¡®biography¡¯ is filled with personal invective with questionable evidence. Mao was certainly a monster, and a perpetrator of genocide, but too much of the author¡¯s personal bias (and she does have some very serious personal tragedy relating to Mao¡¯s rule) shows through that impedes her scholarship. There are many more genuine portrayals of Mao, as the genocidal, misguided, womanizing tryrant that he was without some of the more questionable and poorly documented atrocities that Jung Chang alleges. Let the evidence stand for itself.
June 9, 2021
Mao the unknown story - Jung Chang Jon holliday.
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February 12, 2023
I think this book is wonderful, it may have flaws but the passion is both true and understandable. It is probably hard for those who did not grow up in the 1960s or 70s to understand just what a commanding figure Mao was, so many reporters, academics, left leaning philosophers, literatures and others watched and knew of the horrors of Mao's rule and ignored them as they trumped the so called accomplishments of his mass murdering regimen. Rather like the same people did for Stalin. It is extraordinary the benefit of the doubt that Western 'intellectuals' have given to left wing dictatorships. Although they would never have accepted, or survived, the systems they so lavishly praised and supported they always thought they were what other, foreign, poor, uneducated people
needed. Their hypocracy and double standards are shocking.
That is the background to what Chang and Halliday wrote. They wanted to topple an idol and in that they succeeded. Although it may be true that the uncritical hagiography that Mao received earlier was no longer the line most academics took there was still a massive misunderstanding of Mao's personality and lifestyle (the amount of crap poured out back in the past about the aesthetic simplicity of Mao when he was in fact grotesque sybarite is impossible to imagine. He was presented as st Francis of Assisi figure while all the time he was debauching young girls) and about the destructive, murderous awfulness of the regimen he created amongst the general public. This book shattered those illusions forever.
Of course there are newer books on Mao and this one has flaws. But he was a monster and deserved to be described as such. Those who covered up for him are the ones who committed crimes against truth. If this book fails in details the overall portrait is true.
A stunning book about a horrible man.
needed. Their hypocracy and double standards are shocking.
That is the background to what Chang and Halliday wrote. They wanted to topple an idol and in that they succeeded. Although it may be true that the uncritical hagiography that Mao received earlier was no longer the line most academics took there was still a massive misunderstanding of Mao's personality and lifestyle (the amount of crap poured out back in the past about the aesthetic simplicity of Mao when he was in fact grotesque sybarite is impossible to imagine. He was presented as st Francis of Assisi figure while all the time he was debauching young girls) and about the destructive, murderous awfulness of the regimen he created amongst the general public. This book shattered those illusions forever.
Of course there are newer books on Mao and this one has flaws. But he was a monster and deserved to be described as such. Those who covered up for him are the ones who committed crimes against truth. If this book fails in details the overall portrait is true.
A stunning book about a horrible man.
June 9, 2024
Beyond Your Wildest Nightmares.
Review to follow.
Review to follow.
March 2, 2022
This book is a catalog of a dirty criminal. It felt at times like I was reading about ancient Roman emperors.
November 23, 2017
Along with Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein, Mao Tse Tung was one of the most evil men of the 20th century, as anyone with respect for human life will attest.
The auhtors illustrate how Mao's thirst for blood is what led him to choose the Communist Party, over the Nationalists because the Nationalists put limits on the brutality their forces allowed and only the Communists could provide him with a means to assuage his mania for murder and destruction.
From even before his participation in the civil war, he showed a great almost sexual love of murder-'it is wonderful, it is wonderful' he enthused in 1927, during one of the Communists destruction of an entire city and it's population during the Chinese Civil War.
A revolution needed blood he told the local population of Hunan that year, "It is necessary to bring about a reign of terror in every country"
The authors point out how the Communists under Mao during the Sino-Japanese War saw the Nationalists as the main enemy and not the Japanese, and refused a united front with the Nationalists against the Japanese, later when a front was set up Mao ensured it was sabotaged and worked to make sure that the Japanese advanced deep into China.
The authors effectively debunk the myth that the Communists were the main force in resisting Japanese aggression. Mao had hoped for a deal between Stalin and Japan similar to the 1939 deal between Stalin and Hitler-the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact.
During the civil war, and after Mao took control of the country in 1949, the main target of Mao's killing machine was the peasants. Mao saw the peasants as beneath contempt and worth no mercy.
He died production and success in industrialization to a high death rate of the rural masses.
All the granaries were shut down in rural areas and massive quantities of food allowed to rot rather than to feed the starving masses.
In his dream to dominate the world Mao created the greatest famine in world history that killed over 38 million people.
He saw reducing the peasants to starvation as a virtue, and refused to take any measures to improve their well being.
The authors cover the horrors of the Hundered Flowers Campaign, the Great Leap Forward and most horrific of all the Cultural Revolution. It is harrowing to read of tortures and murders of millions of entire families from the oldest to youngest were killed, babies still on milk torn grabbed and torn apart at the limbs or just thrown into wells. His fascination with spreading death can be captured in his words about the famine "A few children die in the kindergarten, a few old men die in the happiness court, if there is no death human beings can't exist".
Mao's aim of world domination lead to the Korean and Vietnam wars.
In 1975 a year before his death, Mao congratulated Pol Pot on his slave labour state. 'You have scored a splendid victory' he just one blow and no more classes'. What Mao meant is that everyone had become a slave.
Mao's 27 year rule brought death to more than 70 million Chinese-in peacetime.
It is mind blowing that so many on the Left did and still do worship him.
It is this same cult of worshipping murder and evil that leads Leftist radicals to laud Saddam Hussein, the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran , terror outfits like Hamas and Hezbollah, and the Taliban.
Merged review:
Along with Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein, Mao Tse Tung was one of the most evil men of the 20th century, as anyone with respect for human life will attest.
The auhtors illustrate how Mao's thirst for blood is what led him to choose the Communist Party, over the Nationalists because the Nationalists put limits on the brutality their forces allowed and only the Communists could provide him with a means to assuage his mania for murder and destruction.
From even before his participation in the civil war, he showed a great almost sexual love of murder-'it is wonderful, it is wonderful' he enthused in 1927, during one of the Communists destruction of an entire city and it's population during the Chinese Civil War.
A revolution needed blood he told the local population of Hunan that year, "It is necessary to bring about a reign of terror in every country"
The authors point out how the Communists under Mao during the Sino-Japanese War saw the Nationalists as the main enemy and not the Japanese, and refused a united front with the Nationalists against the Japanese, later when a front was set up Mao ensured it was sabotaged and worked to make sure that the Japanese advanced deep into China.
The authors effectively debunk the myth that the Communists were the main force in resisting Japanese aggression. Mao had hoped for a deal between Stalin and Japan similar to the 1939 deal between Stalin and Hitler-the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact.
During the civil war, and after Mao took control of the country in 1949, the main target of Mao's killing machine was the peasants. Mao saw the peasants as beneath contempt and worth no mercy.
He died production and success in industrialization to a high death rate of the rural masses.
All the granaries were shut down in rural areas and massive quantities of food allowed to rot rather than to feed the starving masses.
In his dream to dominate the world Mao created the greatest famine in world history that killed over 38 million people.
He saw reducing the peasants to starvation as a virtue, and refused to take any measures to improve their well being.
The authors cover the horrors of the Hundered Flowers Campaign, the Great Leap Forward and most horrific of all the Cultural Revolution. It is harrowing to read of tortures and murders of millions of entire families from the oldest to youngest were killed, babies still on milk torn grabbed and torn apart at the limbs or just thrown into wells. His fascination with spreading death can be captured in his words about the famine "A few children die in the kindergarten, a few old men die in the happiness court, if there is no death human beings can't exist".
Mao's aim of world domination lead to the Korean and Vietnam wars.
In 1975 a year before his death, Mao congratulated Pol Pot on his slave labour state. 'You have scored a splendid victory' he just one blow and no more classes'. What Mao meant is that everyone had become a slave.
Mao's 27 year rule brought death to more than 70 million Chinese-in peacetime.
It is mind blowing that so many on the Left did and still do worship him.
It is this same cult of worshipping murder and evil that leads Leftist radicals to laud Saddam Hussein, the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran , terror outfits like Hamas and Hezbollah, and even the Taliban.
The auhtors illustrate how Mao's thirst for blood is what led him to choose the Communist Party, over the Nationalists because the Nationalists put limits on the brutality their forces allowed and only the Communists could provide him with a means to assuage his mania for murder and destruction.
From even before his participation in the civil war, he showed a great almost sexual love of murder-'it is wonderful, it is wonderful' he enthused in 1927, during one of the Communists destruction of an entire city and it's population during the Chinese Civil War.
A revolution needed blood he told the local population of Hunan that year, "It is necessary to bring about a reign of terror in every country"
The authors point out how the Communists under Mao during the Sino-Japanese War saw the Nationalists as the main enemy and not the Japanese, and refused a united front with the Nationalists against the Japanese, later when a front was set up Mao ensured it was sabotaged and worked to make sure that the Japanese advanced deep into China.
The authors effectively debunk the myth that the Communists were the main force in resisting Japanese aggression. Mao had hoped for a deal between Stalin and Japan similar to the 1939 deal between Stalin and Hitler-the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact.
During the civil war, and after Mao took control of the country in 1949, the main target of Mao's killing machine was the peasants. Mao saw the peasants as beneath contempt and worth no mercy.
He died production and success in industrialization to a high death rate of the rural masses.
All the granaries were shut down in rural areas and massive quantities of food allowed to rot rather than to feed the starving masses.
In his dream to dominate the world Mao created the greatest famine in world history that killed over 38 million people.
He saw reducing the peasants to starvation as a virtue, and refused to take any measures to improve their well being.
The authors cover the horrors of the Hundered Flowers Campaign, the Great Leap Forward and most horrific of all the Cultural Revolution. It is harrowing to read of tortures and murders of millions of entire families from the oldest to youngest were killed, babies still on milk torn grabbed and torn apart at the limbs or just thrown into wells. His fascination with spreading death can be captured in his words about the famine "A few children die in the kindergarten, a few old men die in the happiness court, if there is no death human beings can't exist".
Mao's aim of world domination lead to the Korean and Vietnam wars.
In 1975 a year before his death, Mao congratulated Pol Pot on his slave labour state. 'You have scored a splendid victory' he just one blow and no more classes'. What Mao meant is that everyone had become a slave.
Mao's 27 year rule brought death to more than 70 million Chinese-in peacetime.
It is mind blowing that so many on the Left did and still do worship him.
It is this same cult of worshipping murder and evil that leads Leftist radicals to laud Saddam Hussein, the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran , terror outfits like Hamas and Hezbollah, and the Taliban.
Merged review:
Along with Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein, Mao Tse Tung was one of the most evil men of the 20th century, as anyone with respect for human life will attest.
The auhtors illustrate how Mao's thirst for blood is what led him to choose the Communist Party, over the Nationalists because the Nationalists put limits on the brutality their forces allowed and only the Communists could provide him with a means to assuage his mania for murder and destruction.
From even before his participation in the civil war, he showed a great almost sexual love of murder-'it is wonderful, it is wonderful' he enthused in 1927, during one of the Communists destruction of an entire city and it's population during the Chinese Civil War.
A revolution needed blood he told the local population of Hunan that year, "It is necessary to bring about a reign of terror in every country"
The authors point out how the Communists under Mao during the Sino-Japanese War saw the Nationalists as the main enemy and not the Japanese, and refused a united front with the Nationalists against the Japanese, later when a front was set up Mao ensured it was sabotaged and worked to make sure that the Japanese advanced deep into China.
The authors effectively debunk the myth that the Communists were the main force in resisting Japanese aggression. Mao had hoped for a deal between Stalin and Japan similar to the 1939 deal between Stalin and Hitler-the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact.
During the civil war, and after Mao took control of the country in 1949, the main target of Mao's killing machine was the peasants. Mao saw the peasants as beneath contempt and worth no mercy.
He died production and success in industrialization to a high death rate of the rural masses.
All the granaries were shut down in rural areas and massive quantities of food allowed to rot rather than to feed the starving masses.
In his dream to dominate the world Mao created the greatest famine in world history that killed over 38 million people.
He saw reducing the peasants to starvation as a virtue, and refused to take any measures to improve their well being.
The authors cover the horrors of the Hundered Flowers Campaign, the Great Leap Forward and most horrific of all the Cultural Revolution. It is harrowing to read of tortures and murders of millions of entire families from the oldest to youngest were killed, babies still on milk torn grabbed and torn apart at the limbs or just thrown into wells. His fascination with spreading death can be captured in his words about the famine "A few children die in the kindergarten, a few old men die in the happiness court, if there is no death human beings can't exist".
Mao's aim of world domination lead to the Korean and Vietnam wars.
In 1975 a year before his death, Mao congratulated Pol Pot on his slave labour state. 'You have scored a splendid victory' he just one blow and no more classes'. What Mao meant is that everyone had become a slave.
Mao's 27 year rule brought death to more than 70 million Chinese-in peacetime.
It is mind blowing that so many on the Left did and still do worship him.
It is this same cult of worshipping murder and evil that leads Leftist radicals to laud Saddam Hussein, the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran , terror outfits like Hamas and Hezbollah, and even the Taliban.
September 27, 2014
I am giving this book four stars for two reasons. The first is that the research effort by Ms. Chang was extraordinary. The second is that her husband conducted exhaustive research in the Russian archives something that I suspect no other Western academic following China would have been able to do. The result is a book which is rich in detail on Mao and which presents the best description of Mao's relations with the Russians thus providing the best explanation of how the communists were able to seize power in China.
Ms. Chang talked to great many sources which is commendable. However, she appears to have taken all stories at face value. Thus along with the credible material, the reader is bombarded with a great deal of highly improbable stories. Ms. Chang is right to have a personal dislike of Mao. Most sources estimate that his disastrous agricultural policies, work camps and cultural revolution were responsible for roughly 30 million deaths. However, evil the man may have been, a historian must take a more critical stance towards the quality of the nasty stories related to her about Mao's personal life than Ms. Chang has.
Nonetheless there is great value to the book's analysis of Russia's role in the success of the Chinese Communist revolution. Chang Kai Shek never captured Mao because the Russians made it clear that they would end their subsidies to him if they did. The legendary long march is nothing more than that. Mao did not come to power because he mobilized the peasants. He always hated them and they always hated him. Mao came to power because the Russians captured Japan's Manchurian army after Japan surrendered and handed it over to Mao. Moreover the Russians had bribed or kidnapped close relatives of most of Chang Kai Shek's generals to that they all switched sides when ordered.
This is an extremely valuable book that could have been a great book if Ms. Chang had been more critical in judging her sources.
Ms. Chang talked to great many sources which is commendable. However, she appears to have taken all stories at face value. Thus along with the credible material, the reader is bombarded with a great deal of highly improbable stories. Ms. Chang is right to have a personal dislike of Mao. Most sources estimate that his disastrous agricultural policies, work camps and cultural revolution were responsible for roughly 30 million deaths. However, evil the man may have been, a historian must take a more critical stance towards the quality of the nasty stories related to her about Mao's personal life than Ms. Chang has.
Nonetheless there is great value to the book's analysis of Russia's role in the success of the Chinese Communist revolution. Chang Kai Shek never captured Mao because the Russians made it clear that they would end their subsidies to him if they did. The legendary long march is nothing more than that. Mao did not come to power because he mobilized the peasants. He always hated them and they always hated him. Mao came to power because the Russians captured Japan's Manchurian army after Japan surrendered and handed it over to Mao. Moreover the Russians had bribed or kidnapped close relatives of most of Chang Kai Shek's generals to that they all switched sides when ordered.
This is an extremely valuable book that could have been a great book if Ms. Chang had been more critical in judging her sources.
August 20, 2022
a remarkably forthright and brutal portrayal of Mao, including his relationship with Zhou Enlai and the visit of Richard Nixon to China ... nobody is truthful ... everyone cares only for their own status and power ... (so what else is new?) ... a few excerpts give the flavor
... the real Zhou was not the suave diplomat foreigners saw, but a ruthless apparatchik, in thrall to his Communist faith. Throughout his life he served his Party with a dauntless lack of personal integrity.
... A secret agreement was reached for the CCP to send Russia one million tons of food every year. The result was famine and deaths from starvation in some areas of China occupied by the Communists. ... Few knew that the famine in Red areas in those years was largely due to the fact that Mao was exporting food; the shortage was put down to ¡°war.¡± Here was a foretaste of the future Great Famine, which was likewise Mao¡¯s creation: again the result of his decision to export food to Russia.
... Kissinger returned to China in November (now as secretary of state), bringing a terminal blow to Mao¡¯s ambitions. Nine months before, Kissinger had promised that Washington would move towards full diplomatic relations ¡°after the 1974 [mid-term] elections.¡± Now he said that the US ¡°domestic situation¡± precluded severing relations with Taiwan ¡°immediately¡±¡ªwhich Peking had insisted on as a prerequisite for diplomatic relations.
... Mao intended to let the tumor eat Zhou to death unimpeded.
... Mao did not care one iota what happened after his death
... primal myth about the Long March¡ªthe crossing of the bridge over the Dadu River ... This bridge is the center of the Long March myth,* fed to the journalist Edgar Snow in 1936. Crossing the bridge, Snow wrote, ¡°was the most critical single incident of the Long March" ... This is complete invention. There was no battle at the Dadu Bridge
... the real Zhou was not the suave diplomat foreigners saw, but a ruthless apparatchik, in thrall to his Communist faith. Throughout his life he served his Party with a dauntless lack of personal integrity.
... A secret agreement was reached for the CCP to send Russia one million tons of food every year. The result was famine and deaths from starvation in some areas of China occupied by the Communists. ... Few knew that the famine in Red areas in those years was largely due to the fact that Mao was exporting food; the shortage was put down to ¡°war.¡± Here was a foretaste of the future Great Famine, which was likewise Mao¡¯s creation: again the result of his decision to export food to Russia.
... Kissinger returned to China in November (now as secretary of state), bringing a terminal blow to Mao¡¯s ambitions. Nine months before, Kissinger had promised that Washington would move towards full diplomatic relations ¡°after the 1974 [mid-term] elections.¡± Now he said that the US ¡°domestic situation¡± precluded severing relations with Taiwan ¡°immediately¡±¡ªwhich Peking had insisted on as a prerequisite for diplomatic relations.
... Mao intended to let the tumor eat Zhou to death unimpeded.
... Mao did not care one iota what happened after his death
... primal myth about the Long March¡ªthe crossing of the bridge over the Dadu River ... This bridge is the center of the Long March myth,* fed to the journalist Edgar Snow in 1936. Crossing the bridge, Snow wrote, ¡°was the most critical single incident of the Long March" ... This is complete invention. There was no battle at the Dadu Bridge
February 2, 2009
Man, this was a 2 1/2 month project to slog through. That's not to say it isn't a good book, I just had a hard time in the first half when we just have example after example of Mao killing thousands of his own men because he's either scared of losing power, scared of Stalin, scared of Chiang Kai-Shek, or greedy for something or other. It actually gets sort of redundant.
The book really picks up in the second half when things get considerably more interesting with the Russians and when, little by litte, every single ally he ever had turns against him (and Mme. Mao) and eventually kick him around a bit like an old dog. Not nearly the punishment he deserves for eventually starving millions of his own people (because of exporting all their food to Russia in exchange for weapons technology), but somewhat satisfying.
I can see how some would take issue with the editorial license of the authors, as they do take things a bit too far and state (not speculate) what Mao was thinking at various times with various decisions. I don't think there's any need for that and it somewhat compromises the otherwise rigorously well-researched feeling you get when reading the book (and when looking at the list of interviews in the back, man).
Also, I agree with what someone else said that to understand Russia you should read this book. I think this book makes me want to do some more reading on Stalin.
The book really picks up in the second half when things get considerably more interesting with the Russians and when, little by litte, every single ally he ever had turns against him (and Mme. Mao) and eventually kick him around a bit like an old dog. Not nearly the punishment he deserves for eventually starving millions of his own people (because of exporting all their food to Russia in exchange for weapons technology), but somewhat satisfying.
I can see how some would take issue with the editorial license of the authors, as they do take things a bit too far and state (not speculate) what Mao was thinking at various times with various decisions. I don't think there's any need for that and it somewhat compromises the otherwise rigorously well-researched feeling you get when reading the book (and when looking at the list of interviews in the back, man).
Also, I agree with what someone else said that to understand Russia you should read this book. I think this book makes me want to do some more reading on Stalin.
May 4, 2011
I'm going to have to come back to this; it's an exhaustive read. I will say this: I would have given it five stars but for the fact that the writing itself is extremely textbookish. At times, reading it was a chore that ranks up there with getting through John Galt's 60-page speech in Atlas Shrugged. But Mao is so well researched and such an interesting topic, covering a fascinating period in Chinese history ...
Update: If you really are a glutton for punishment and want to read what I really think about this book, you can go here [link: ]
And if anyone knows of a less retarded way to insert a link here (I tried all the coding tricks I could think of -- not sure what version of html/php is going on here), please contact me ...
Update: If you really are a glutton for punishment and want to read what I really think about this book, you can go here [link: ]
And if anyone knows of a less retarded way to insert a link here (I tried all the coding tricks I could think of -- not sure what version of html/php is going on here), please contact me ...
February 5, 2008
This book is anti-Mao, for sure, but from what I've read in other books, that seems to be justified. Mao is responsible for the worst man-made famine in all of history--30 million people died. He caused the deaths of more people than Hitler and Stalin put together. A lot of people don't know that because it isn't part of Western history, but it is true. My only problem with the book was the exhaustive detail. Sometimes it was just too much. But I found it well-researched and informative.
August 23, 2020
I was given a copy of 'Mao: The Unknown Story' for Christmas in 2016. I read 200 pages during January 2017, found the Long March so depressing that I put the book aside for more than three and half years, then read the remaining 600 pages in two days. This isn't atypical behaviour for me and also reflects the nature of the book. It is written in highly readable and involving style, yet the content is horribly depressing. I have been very fond of Jung Chang's writing since I came across as a teenager and was astounded. I reread it repeatedly and became fascinated by China's 20th century history. I even tried to read a hagiography of Deng Xiao Ping by his daughter when I was 16 or 17 (). This is nonetheless the most comprehensive biography of Mao that I've ever read and an unsurprisingly chilling indictment of the privations and horrors that he put China through. I was already aware of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, but knew very little about Mao's foreign policy, relationship with Stalin, and nuclear armament programme. Chapters dealing with these issues were thus the most intellectually interesting.
The most memorable and horrifying parts, though, concerned Mao's systems of repression and control of China's population, which has the major consequence of mass starvation. I had not realised that while China went through the largest known famine in human history from 1958 to 1961, Mao's regime was selling and gifting food products abroad in an effort to build international status. Previous reading ascribed the famines more to disruption and loss of agricultural productivity due to reorganisation of communal farms and senseless pursuit of steel production during the Great Leap Forward. However, it seems that these were minor problems compared with the mass requisitions of food for export. It was not that food production didn't happen, but that the food was then taken away for political uses rather than basic subsistence. This book estimates that around 38 million people died in the 1958-61 famine, a simply unimaginable number. Once the famine abated due to policy changes, food security in rural areas remained very fragile. Food was still used as a political tool, rather than for subsistence.
When explaining Mao's systems of repression, it is impossible to avoid comparisons with other totalitarian regimes. I found some striking passages doing just that:
The orchestration of fear under Mao's regime is extraordinary in its distinctiveness. During the Cultural Revolution, he unleashed an army of indoctrinated teenagers and students (the Red Guards and Rebels) against the educational and cultural sectors of the country and then against his own party. Once these persecutions had served his purpose, he replaced the purged cadres with army personnel and exiled the Red Guards and Rebels to the labour in the countryside. Secret police had a much less significant role under his regime than in Soviet states; oppression was visible and crowd-sourced, to use a 21st century term.
Throughout the biography, the overwhelming impression the reader gets of Mao is a combination of narcissism and callousness. Obviously these are traits shared by just about every authoritarian ruler, yet they seem to reach particular extremes in Mao. I could not help thinking of Donald Trump when reading about Mao's utter disregard for human lives, paranoia, cruelty towards rivals, and nepotism spurred not by love but by fixation on personal loyalty. Mao also lied constantly and refused to ever accept responsibility for anything. Such similarities should not be overstated, of course. While their political programmes are both characterised by narcissistic equating of self- and national interest, Mao wanted China to be recognised as a world power by other nations. Trump appears wholly disinterested in America's international reputation. This paragraph about legacy nonetheless made me wonder what Trump's death will leave behind:
This also marks a contrast to the totalitarian dynasty in North Korea.
After a very detailed start that spends 400 pages recounting how Mao came to power in China, the book ends extremely abruptly with his death. There is a two sentence epilogue stating that China's communist party still promulgates the myth of Mao as a great leader. I'd expected a chapter on the immediate aftermath of his death, but to be fair this is already a thorough and extensive biography. I found it an informative and devastating insight into China's history from the 1920s to 70s, 25 years of it shaped to a great extent by one man. 'Mao: The Unknown Story' is not interested in Mao's ideology and gives the impression he had little interest in it himself, except as a tool to promote his interests. What it seeks to document are his actions and choices in pursuit of power and prestige, which were consistently cruel, violent, and ruthless.
The most memorable and horrifying parts, though, concerned Mao's systems of repression and control of China's population, which has the major consequence of mass starvation. I had not realised that while China went through the largest known famine in human history from 1958 to 1961, Mao's regime was selling and gifting food products abroad in an effort to build international status. Previous reading ascribed the famines more to disruption and loss of agricultural productivity due to reorganisation of communal farms and senseless pursuit of steel production during the Great Leap Forward. However, it seems that these were minor problems compared with the mass requisitions of food for export. It was not that food production didn't happen, but that the food was then taken away for political uses rather than basic subsistence. This book estimates that around 38 million people died in the 1958-61 famine, a simply unimaginable number. Once the famine abated due to policy changes, food security in rural areas remained very fragile. Food was still used as a political tool, rather than for subsistence.
When explaining Mao's systems of repression, it is impossible to avoid comparisons with other totalitarian regimes. I found some striking passages doing just that:
Mao intended most of the population - children and adults alike - to witness the killing [during the 1950 'campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries']. His aim was to scare and brutalise the entire population, in a way that went much further than Hitler or Stalin, who largely kept their foulest crimes out of sight.
The orchestration of fear under Mao's regime is extraordinary in its distinctiveness. During the Cultural Revolution, he unleashed an army of indoctrinated teenagers and students (the Red Guards and Rebels) against the educational and cultural sectors of the country and then against his own party. Once these persecutions had served his purpose, he replaced the purged cadres with army personnel and exiled the Red Guards and Rebels to the labour in the countryside. Secret police had a much less significant role under his regime than in Soviet states; oppression was visible and crowd-sourced, to use a 21st century term.
Throughout the biography, the overwhelming impression the reader gets of Mao is a combination of narcissism and callousness. Obviously these are traits shared by just about every authoritarian ruler, yet they seem to reach particular extremes in Mao. I could not help thinking of Donald Trump when reading about Mao's utter disregard for human lives, paranoia, cruelty towards rivals, and nepotism spurred not by love but by fixation on personal loyalty. Mao also lied constantly and refused to ever accept responsibility for anything. Such similarities should not be overstated, of course. While their political programmes are both characterised by narcissistic equating of self- and national interest, Mao wanted China to be recognised as a world power by other nations. Trump appears wholly disinterested in America's international reputation. This paragraph about legacy nonetheless made me wonder what Trump's death will leave behind:
Mao was not interested in posterity. Back in 1918, he had written, 'Some say one has a responsibility for history. I don't believe it... People like me are not building achievements to leave for future generations...' These remained his views throughout his life. In 1950, after visiting Lenin's mausoleum, Mao said to his entourage that the superb preservation of the corpse was only for the sake of others; it was irrelevant to Lenin. Once Lenin died, he felt nothing, and it did not matter to him how his corpse was kept.
When Mao died, he left neither a will nor an heir - and, in face, unlike most Chinese parents, especially Chinese emperors, he was indifferent about having an heir, which was extremely unusual.
This also marks a contrast to the totalitarian dynasty in North Korea.
After a very detailed start that spends 400 pages recounting how Mao came to power in China, the book ends extremely abruptly with his death. There is a two sentence epilogue stating that China's communist party still promulgates the myth of Mao as a great leader. I'd expected a chapter on the immediate aftermath of his death, but to be fair this is already a thorough and extensive biography. I found it an informative and devastating insight into China's history from the 1920s to 70s, 25 years of it shaped to a great extent by one man. 'Mao: The Unknown Story' is not interested in Mao's ideology and gives the impression he had little interest in it himself, except as a tool to promote his interests. What it seeks to document are his actions and choices in pursuit of power and prestige, which were consistently cruel, violent, and ruthless.
March 9, 2025
I could not put this book down, despite it being an absolute tome! (1050 pages of matter!!!) Chang (and Halliday) do a fantastic job recounting Mao¡¯s life, which is well sourced but negatively biased. I don¡¯t say that as a complete criticism, their bias adds life to what could have been a very dry book, and a lens which helps the reader keep perspective as to the many atrocities that he committed, but nevertheless I didn¡¯t need the Authors to make quite so many qualitative statements on how people supposedly felt.
This book was entertaining in the sense that Mao was completely insane, and it¡¯s fascinating to see his life. If one believes in evil, I think they would be hard pressed to find a man more evil than him, capable of complete cruelty while exhibiting total hypocrisy in his rule mandates (outlawing books while printing his own copies of banned ones so that he could read them). Some of the stories in this are absolutely horrific, and to think of how many people were forced to endure such terrorising conditions hurts me. The scar that this left on the (mainland) Chinese psyche helps inform at least some of the reasons modern China was what it was, and is what it is now.
Chang did a great job interweaving his life with the political events of the time, and relaying stories about ordinary Chinese at those times. As I said earlier, she and Halliday make a few too many judgements that, while I agree with them, I don¡¯t like too much in a historical biography. That being said, it is well sourced and a great, if long, read. 4.2/5!
This book was entertaining in the sense that Mao was completely insane, and it¡¯s fascinating to see his life. If one believes in evil, I think they would be hard pressed to find a man more evil than him, capable of complete cruelty while exhibiting total hypocrisy in his rule mandates (outlawing books while printing his own copies of banned ones so that he could read them). Some of the stories in this are absolutely horrific, and to think of how many people were forced to endure such terrorising conditions hurts me. The scar that this left on the (mainland) Chinese psyche helps inform at least some of the reasons modern China was what it was, and is what it is now.
Chang did a great job interweaving his life with the political events of the time, and relaying stories about ordinary Chinese at those times. As I said earlier, she and Halliday make a few too many judgements that, while I agree with them, I don¡¯t like too much in a historical biography. That being said, it is well sourced and a great, if long, read. 4.2/5!
June 7, 2021
Mao Zedong is alone among the major tyrants of the 20th century never to have faced a historical reckoning. While the crimes of Adolf Hitler¡¯s regime have been well documented and the Russians have at various times acknowledged the famines and purges under Josef Stalin, the full extent of the suffering inflicted by Mao remains uncertain. This is largely due to the degree to which the Communist government in China today zealously protects his image, as though to question it is to undermine the foundations of their state. As a result, many of the details about his life remain overlaid by myth, while his culpability in China¡¯s misery during the quarter of a century he ruled it remains under-explored.
To rectify this, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday spent over a decade combing through archives and interviewing people who knew Mao. Their book embodies the sum of their efforts, offering an comprehensive examination of Mao, his rise to power, and his actions as the leader of the most populous nation on the planet. It¡¯s an impressive work, but also a deeply flawed one that often reads more like a prosecutor¡¯s brief than it does a historical study designed to illuminate the life of the man and how he came to exert such an outsized role in China¡¯s history.
These flaws become evident early in the book when the authors set out to explain how Mao rose to power. As they make clear, Mao was hardly destined for greatness. Not only was his background relatively humble, but Mao lacked the oratorical or organizational skills that have been the path of many to power. Nor was he an energetic go-getter, as he preferred an indolent lifestyle. What Chang and Halliday demonstrate Mao possessed in abundance was an eye for the main chance and a ruthlessness in destroying anyone who he perceived as a competitor. Time and again Mao outmaneuvered more capable colleagues and competitors, steadily accruing power even at the cost of thousands of lives.
Mao did little to endear himself to his contemporaries or his superiors in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Yet as Chang and Halliday argue, their opinions mattered less than those of the Soviet advisers aiding the Communists in the 1920s and their superiors in Moscow. The authors¡¯ description of the role the Soviet Union played in Chinese politics during this period is one of the main features of this book, and reflects their extensive work in Russian archives. Impressed with reports of Mao¡¯s effectiveness, time and again they favored him over their rivals ¨C and with Moscow¡¯s continuing support for the CCP vital to its survival, their preferences could not be ignored. As Chang and Halliday demonstrate, their support was a key factor in Mao¡¯s rise to the leadership of the CCP and the war against the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek.
Once in command, however, Mao hardly distinguished himself as a general against the Nationalists or the Japanese then occupying large portions of China, and by 1946 his forces were on the verge of being crushed by the Nationalists. Then how did the Communists ultimately triumph over Chiang¡¯s forces? Here Chang and Halliday credit two factors: an untimely American intervention for a cease-fire, and the planting of moles within the Nationalist military command. The former gave Mao¡¯s forces a much-needed breathing space and an opportunity to rearm with Soviet aid, while the latter often spared threatened Communist forces while leading their own men into traps. The result was Nationalist collapse and Mao¡¯s victorious declaration of the People¡¯s Republic in 1949, beginning his long and disastrous reign over China.
Yet ruling over China was not enough for Mao, as he aspired to nothing less than global domination. In this he was restrained by both the devastated condition of his country and Stalin¡¯s reluctance to support the development of an indigenous arms industry. Mao sought to overcome both through a combination of adroit diplomacy and a callous exploitation of his people. Leveraging Nikita Khrushchev¡¯s need for allies, Mao from him won the technical advice and resources he needed to develop an atomic bomb program. This he paid for by requisitioning enormous amounts of agricultural produce from the peasantry, beggaring the populace in order to support his ambitions. When others in the CCP leadership pushed back against the cost of this, Mao solidified his power with the Cultural Revolution, which threw the nation into chaos and inflicted yet further trauma upon the people. Their suffering continued largely unabated until Mao¡¯s death in 1976, at which point his successor Deng Xiaoping soon began to reverse his policies and launch China onto the path that has brought it to the present day,
Chung and Halliday¡¯s book is a damming indictment of its subject. Yet in painting such a uniformly negative portrait of Mao what they produce is a caricature. Nowhere in it do they consider why many people chose to follow him absent some form of compulsion, or why his second and third wives ¨C the former of whom refused to renounce Mao even under torture, the latter a capable guerrilla leader in her own right ¨C fell in love with him. Equally problematic is the authors¡¯ overreliance on Soviet sources, which results in a very Russian-centric view of Mao¡¯s life that, in the absence of similar materials from Chinese archives, likely exaggerates the Soviet Union¡¯s influence in Communist Party politics in the 1920s and 1930s. Not that the authors allow the absence of archival material to prevent them from engaging in speculation about some of the shadowier aspects of Chinese history (such as the possibility of Nationalist moles sabotaging their war effort), provided that it fits their interpretation of Mao. Taken together, these issues make Chang and Halliday¡¯s book one that should be treated with caution, and that for all of its research should not be regarded as the final word on Mao¡¯s life and career.
To rectify this, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday spent over a decade combing through archives and interviewing people who knew Mao. Their book embodies the sum of their efforts, offering an comprehensive examination of Mao, his rise to power, and his actions as the leader of the most populous nation on the planet. It¡¯s an impressive work, but also a deeply flawed one that often reads more like a prosecutor¡¯s brief than it does a historical study designed to illuminate the life of the man and how he came to exert such an outsized role in China¡¯s history.
These flaws become evident early in the book when the authors set out to explain how Mao rose to power. As they make clear, Mao was hardly destined for greatness. Not only was his background relatively humble, but Mao lacked the oratorical or organizational skills that have been the path of many to power. Nor was he an energetic go-getter, as he preferred an indolent lifestyle. What Chang and Halliday demonstrate Mao possessed in abundance was an eye for the main chance and a ruthlessness in destroying anyone who he perceived as a competitor. Time and again Mao outmaneuvered more capable colleagues and competitors, steadily accruing power even at the cost of thousands of lives.
Mao did little to endear himself to his contemporaries or his superiors in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Yet as Chang and Halliday argue, their opinions mattered less than those of the Soviet advisers aiding the Communists in the 1920s and their superiors in Moscow. The authors¡¯ description of the role the Soviet Union played in Chinese politics during this period is one of the main features of this book, and reflects their extensive work in Russian archives. Impressed with reports of Mao¡¯s effectiveness, time and again they favored him over their rivals ¨C and with Moscow¡¯s continuing support for the CCP vital to its survival, their preferences could not be ignored. As Chang and Halliday demonstrate, their support was a key factor in Mao¡¯s rise to the leadership of the CCP and the war against the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek.
Once in command, however, Mao hardly distinguished himself as a general against the Nationalists or the Japanese then occupying large portions of China, and by 1946 his forces were on the verge of being crushed by the Nationalists. Then how did the Communists ultimately triumph over Chiang¡¯s forces? Here Chang and Halliday credit two factors: an untimely American intervention for a cease-fire, and the planting of moles within the Nationalist military command. The former gave Mao¡¯s forces a much-needed breathing space and an opportunity to rearm with Soviet aid, while the latter often spared threatened Communist forces while leading their own men into traps. The result was Nationalist collapse and Mao¡¯s victorious declaration of the People¡¯s Republic in 1949, beginning his long and disastrous reign over China.
Yet ruling over China was not enough for Mao, as he aspired to nothing less than global domination. In this he was restrained by both the devastated condition of his country and Stalin¡¯s reluctance to support the development of an indigenous arms industry. Mao sought to overcome both through a combination of adroit diplomacy and a callous exploitation of his people. Leveraging Nikita Khrushchev¡¯s need for allies, Mao from him won the technical advice and resources he needed to develop an atomic bomb program. This he paid for by requisitioning enormous amounts of agricultural produce from the peasantry, beggaring the populace in order to support his ambitions. When others in the CCP leadership pushed back against the cost of this, Mao solidified his power with the Cultural Revolution, which threw the nation into chaos and inflicted yet further trauma upon the people. Their suffering continued largely unabated until Mao¡¯s death in 1976, at which point his successor Deng Xiaoping soon began to reverse his policies and launch China onto the path that has brought it to the present day,
Chung and Halliday¡¯s book is a damming indictment of its subject. Yet in painting such a uniformly negative portrait of Mao what they produce is a caricature. Nowhere in it do they consider why many people chose to follow him absent some form of compulsion, or why his second and third wives ¨C the former of whom refused to renounce Mao even under torture, the latter a capable guerrilla leader in her own right ¨C fell in love with him. Equally problematic is the authors¡¯ overreliance on Soviet sources, which results in a very Russian-centric view of Mao¡¯s life that, in the absence of similar materials from Chinese archives, likely exaggerates the Soviet Union¡¯s influence in Communist Party politics in the 1920s and 1930s. Not that the authors allow the absence of archival material to prevent them from engaging in speculation about some of the shadowier aspects of Chinese history (such as the possibility of Nationalist moles sabotaging their war effort), provided that it fits their interpretation of Mao. Taken together, these issues make Chang and Halliday¡¯s book one that should be treated with caution, and that for all of its research should not be regarded as the final word on Mao¡¯s life and career.
March 25, 2020
Very much a history not only of China, but also of the West.
The Vintage edition (2007) seems somewhat shortened in comparison to that of A. Knopf (2005). Mostly ¡ª a number of footnotes have not been reprinted/been omitted (e.g. p. 225 with p.185, 247 with 203 ... respectively).
The Vintage edition (2007) seems somewhat shortened in comparison to that of A. Knopf (2005). Mostly ¡ª a number of footnotes have not been reprinted/been omitted (e.g. p. 225 with p.185, 247 with 203 ... respectively).
August 4, 2023
This is a thicc-ass book, at between 800 to 1000 pages, depending on which printed version you get, and damn, there's a LOT of juicy shit here.
This is my third biography by this author - 4th if you also include her bio/autobiography The first two bios I read were of the Soong sisters and of Empress Dowager Cixi
In her bios of the Soong sisters and Cixi, Jung is more flattering/sympathetic to them. Which does make some sense, as these women were frequently demonized/belittled/portrayed unflatteringly by others simply for being women in power. Here in Mao's biography, Chang does the opposite - which also makes sense given Mao's cult of personality and the propaganda machine that practically deified him despite all the suffering that he was responsible for, directly or indirectly.
In here, Chang portrays Mao as all too human - and all too selfish and greedy. It certainly was interesting to read about Mao's early days and how he treated his wives and his soldiers and subjects, and how as he amassed more and more power he got more selfish and worse. He didn't truly care about the people but he could act like he did when it suited him.
Some people have an issue with the bias in this book against him and I understand why - but at the same time I also enjoyed this book and learning all this juicy shit about Chairman Mao and why he should NOT have been deified/lionized as he was in China. It makes me think of Hitler/the Nazi Party, the Kims of North Korea, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Pol Pot in Cambodia, and so on, and how these awful people could present a pleasing image when it suited them while at the same time being responsible for the deaths of countless people.
4/5 stars for a juicy but entertaining and hella informative read.
This is my third biography by this author - 4th if you also include her bio/autobiography The first two bios I read were of the Soong sisters and of Empress Dowager Cixi
In her bios of the Soong sisters and Cixi, Jung is more flattering/sympathetic to them. Which does make some sense, as these women were frequently demonized/belittled/portrayed unflatteringly by others simply for being women in power. Here in Mao's biography, Chang does the opposite - which also makes sense given Mao's cult of personality and the propaganda machine that practically deified him despite all the suffering that he was responsible for, directly or indirectly.
In here, Chang portrays Mao as all too human - and all too selfish and greedy. It certainly was interesting to read about Mao's early days and how he treated his wives and his soldiers and subjects, and how as he amassed more and more power he got more selfish and worse. He didn't truly care about the people but he could act like he did when it suited him.
Some people have an issue with the bias in this book against him and I understand why - but at the same time I also enjoyed this book and learning all this juicy shit about Chairman Mao and why he should NOT have been deified/lionized as he was in China. It makes me think of Hitler/the Nazi Party, the Kims of North Korea, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Pol Pot in Cambodia, and so on, and how these awful people could present a pleasing image when it suited them while at the same time being responsible for the deaths of countless people.
4/5 stars for a juicy but entertaining and hella informative read.
July 12, 2013
Mao
Shocking, traumatizing, depressing, text-bookish but brilliant. This is the sequal to Jung Chang's first international best seller, "Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China".
It was not an easy read and certainly a challenge to empathize with Jung Chang's anger and open contempt for Mao. Her intense personal feelings established this book as a personal journey of discovery which took her ten years of intense research. Although most of the facts can be verified, there are others, supplied by people who wished to remain anonymous, that prevent this book from being regarded as a historical masterpiece. Yet, being known for her honesty and meticulous skills as researcher, there is no doubt in my mind that all her sources are trustworthy and true.
The actual relationship between Stalin and his newly acquired 'hand-horse', Mao, is revealed in this book and how the events in both countries were masterbrained in Moscow. When Mao decides to go on his own and imposes his version of Communism on a country, the Russian counterpart withdrew, due to the excessive violence used in Maoism. The latter's success inspired him to go bigger than China and rule the world with the events very well documented in this book.
It took me several weeks to finish this book. It was so demoralising and shocking on the mind and body that I really had to gather up courage and persistants to finish it. The tone in the book is much different from her first book, which made it more difficult to absorb. The content is amazing though especially since she had access to Russian archives which closed soon after her research was complete. She had, therefor, a rare insight into documents that not many people will ever see in their lives. She also interviewed people close to Mao, a rare opportunity.
The book is described as "An atom bomb of a book" and it truly is.
For people who still believe in the ideal of communism, this book will be a lesson in how it did not work and why. For those who do not know anything about real communism, this book will be equally an eye-opener. After acquiring this knowledge and background it will be very hard for anyone to defend it. Besides, other forms of communism exist, but none of those models have SUCCESSFUL written over it. Reading this book through Jung's eyes, after reading her own personal family history in "Wild Swans", it is difficult to demand objectivity of her in this book. That is my personal opinion.
It is the one -ism in the world which killed more people than all the world wars from the beginning of time combined.
You must have a real interest in world affairs to read this book. This history is violent, shocking, torturing, excruciating, mind blowing. What Mao did to his own people, even his family, defies every single law of freedom and logic, and even drove all three his children eventually insane. The world knew about Hitler, but after "Mao - the Unknown Story" was published, Hitler's life and deeds became Valentine's stories in comparison. After all, Maoism lead to the deaths of 38 million Chinese of famine alone and 70 million people in total until 1967.
Shocking, traumatizing, depressing, text-bookish but brilliant. This is the sequal to Jung Chang's first international best seller, "Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China".
It was not an easy read and certainly a challenge to empathize with Jung Chang's anger and open contempt for Mao. Her intense personal feelings established this book as a personal journey of discovery which took her ten years of intense research. Although most of the facts can be verified, there are others, supplied by people who wished to remain anonymous, that prevent this book from being regarded as a historical masterpiece. Yet, being known for her honesty and meticulous skills as researcher, there is no doubt in my mind that all her sources are trustworthy and true.
The actual relationship between Stalin and his newly acquired 'hand-horse', Mao, is revealed in this book and how the events in both countries were masterbrained in Moscow. When Mao decides to go on his own and imposes his version of Communism on a country, the Russian counterpart withdrew, due to the excessive violence used in Maoism. The latter's success inspired him to go bigger than China and rule the world with the events very well documented in this book.
It took me several weeks to finish this book. It was so demoralising and shocking on the mind and body that I really had to gather up courage and persistants to finish it. The tone in the book is much different from her first book, which made it more difficult to absorb. The content is amazing though especially since she had access to Russian archives which closed soon after her research was complete. She had, therefor, a rare insight into documents that not many people will ever see in their lives. She also interviewed people close to Mao, a rare opportunity.
The book is described as "An atom bomb of a book" and it truly is.
For people who still believe in the ideal of communism, this book will be a lesson in how it did not work and why. For those who do not know anything about real communism, this book will be equally an eye-opener. After acquiring this knowledge and background it will be very hard for anyone to defend it. Besides, other forms of communism exist, but none of those models have SUCCESSFUL written over it. Reading this book through Jung's eyes, after reading her own personal family history in "Wild Swans", it is difficult to demand objectivity of her in this book. That is my personal opinion.
It is the one -ism in the world which killed more people than all the world wars from the beginning of time combined.
You must have a real interest in world affairs to read this book. This history is violent, shocking, torturing, excruciating, mind blowing. What Mao did to his own people, even his family, defies every single law of freedom and logic, and even drove all three his children eventually insane. The world knew about Hitler, but after "Mao - the Unknown Story" was published, Hitler's life and deeds became Valentine's stories in comparison. After all, Maoism lead to the deaths of 38 million Chinese of famine alone and 70 million people in total until 1967.
June 17, 2008
Just like when I read Wild Swans byt Jung Chang, there were times when my eyes almost crossed when she is writing of politics and military maneuvers. However, I felt that anyone interested in 20th Century China should read both. There has been some controversy about the accuracy of some of the information, but overall, from what I have read, there is some new information that has been verified (Russia's involvement in Chinese politics during the civil war, for example).
Sometimes, I think Jung Chang's personal involvement colors her commentary. There are times when she states that Mao is a monster or cold-hearted--editorial and personal commentary that is not only unnecessary but distracting. Anyone who can tackle this hefty book is quite capable of drawing these conclusions on their own and not having it hammered into their skulls.
Still, I found it a riveting though not easy book to read. Not easy because of it's length and complicated explanations of political intrigues and military machinations but also because of the cold-hearted way in which Mao ruled--and nearly ruined--China. But it is a good book for anyone who wants to understand recent Chinese history.
Sometimes, I think Jung Chang's personal involvement colors her commentary. There are times when she states that Mao is a monster or cold-hearted--editorial and personal commentary that is not only unnecessary but distracting. Anyone who can tackle this hefty book is quite capable of drawing these conclusions on their own and not having it hammered into their skulls.
Still, I found it a riveting though not easy book to read. Not easy because of it's length and complicated explanations of political intrigues and military machinations but also because of the cold-hearted way in which Mao ruled--and nearly ruined--China. But it is a good book for anyone who wants to understand recent Chinese history.
July 10, 2017
An excellent read - thorough, painstaking research and incisive insight presented in a manner that tells the story of one of the leading historical figures of the twentieth century. Even readers with little or no knowledge of Chinese history will conclude this book with a thorough understanding of how we got to where we are today in the Far East, and of the inside life of this most evil of men. Like Hitler and Stalin, he not only wiped out entire communities in their millions, but also tended to exert a highly destructive influence on anyone unfortunate enough to get close to him.
January 25, 2009
At first, I was put off by the heavily polemical style and constant sneers at Mao. But I pushed on, and I'm glad that I did. Read the book, not as academic history or as a scientific investigation, but more as a bill of indictment. Chang and Halliday spent ten years digging up an extraordinary wealth of material, and I doubt anyone will ever match what they have done. They had access to Russian archival material and various aging eye-witnesses in China that have not been available to previous historians. Of course, it's possible that the authors'
attitude to their subject impaired their ability to work, but I think that the sweep of their narrative, combined with the details that they have uncovered, make the whole work compelling. Adding up the plusses and minuses, I would still give it a strong recommendation.
I read Spence's book on Modern Chinese History, which I liked very much. His NYRB review was guardedly critical of the Chang & Halliday work, mostly because of their negative
attitude, but he didn't seem to criticise specific elements for their veracity.
Overall: a must read.
attitude to their subject impaired their ability to work, but I think that the sweep of their narrative, combined with the details that they have uncovered, make the whole work compelling. Adding up the plusses and minuses, I would still give it a strong recommendation.
I read Spence's book on Modern Chinese History, which I liked very much. His NYRB review was guardedly critical of the Chang & Halliday work, mostly because of their negative
attitude, but he didn't seem to criticise specific elements for their veracity.
Overall: a must read.
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