Mao: The Unknown Story

Posted By J

http://www.amazon.com/Mao-Story-Jung-Chang/dp/0679422714/sr=8-1/qid=1158372816/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-2114092-4768951?ie=UTF8&s=books

Clearly a well-researched book (tons of primary sources - though I didn't care for the way the references were all dumped at the back instead of footnoted or endnoted), a devastating portrait of Mao that shatters myths (the long march narrative of the Chinese government for example is debunked), but the authors have such a hard bent against Mao that by the end of the book it's clear that their thesis no longer properly explains Mao's later life at least. He was selfish, ruthless, violent, manipulative, and cunning and this allowed him to become the master of his Maoist/Stalinist state. But after detailing periods where no one could so much as think outside a Maoist framework suddenly movements of a million people protesting against Mao's policies emerge seemingly out of nowhere if the author's framework is to be believed. The book they produced effectively shatters myths and explains the first half to two-thirds of Mao's life, but the latter years and the interaction between Mao and the China he ruled don't fall neatly into the author's thesis.

I also have to say that the book opened my eyes up to just how horrendous the extent of China's violent turmoil in the 20th century was. People who spend so much time these days harping on how supposedly inherently violent the Arab world is and looking for derogatory cultural and religious reasons to blame and Arabs and Islam would do well to read this book. Zarqawi and Bin Laden had nothing on the Communists, Nationalists, warlords, Japanese and others who turned China into a sea of blood that far outstripped even the horrors of today's Iraq (the Congo of the past decade may be a far better comparison point, but then who in the West could care less about the Congo?). And yet China has emerged into something better. That is not to say that China isn't full of problems or that Iraq is destined to rise like a Phoenix, but rather to make the point that cultural or religious factors are clearly not good core explanatory factors and that we're far better off looking to the motives of groups and individuals who operate on remarkably similar bases the world over - for good and evil, in Mao's case mostly evil.

All that said, a book worth reading, I just feel I need to read some more modern Chinese history to round the picture out. I've copied a much more succinct Amazon review below.




Communism is not for the faint-hearted, August 31, 2006
Reviewer:
Thomas Koetzsch (Hong Kong) - See all my reviewsJung Chang and Jon Halliday's book is a rather detailed account of Mao's life. The authors describe the life of a master schemer - in another life he may have made a good chess player - and manipulator. Occasionally one feels that every aspect of China including her population is just another factor in his schemes to be manipulated because on a number of occasions he mentions re-shaping the population into a more useful tool. 80 million people killed is a most horrendous figure, however, one does feel on a number of occasions, that it could have been a lot worse. What did put me off a bit is the one-sidedness of the book. Mao was a character with few positive qualities; having read this book I can't think of a single one except perhaps that of unifying China into one entity (well almost). The myth of Mao continues to legitimise the present Government of the People's Republic. In that respect I find the authors' epilogue a bit naïve. What other choices would the People's Republic's Government have without jeopardising its existence. On a more positive note one can almost feel the tremendous amount of research that must have gone into this book.