Customer Reviews

Mao: The Unknown Story

5 star:		(136)
4 star:		(55)
3 star:		(30)
2 star:		(26)
1 star:		(64)

 

 

As many reviewers here have said, the book is a sea of controversy, challenging a number of important generally-accepted arguments about Mao and his rule.

Some of the most prominent claims:

Mao's China was Stalin's creation; Mao had received money from the Soviet Union early in his career, and later served basically as Stalin's puppet (though a cunning one at that). Mao's rise to power would have been impossible without the Soviet backing after 1945.

Personally, I think the authors fail to come up with enough evidence to support this argument. On the whole the book seems to misrepresent the Soviet actions and motives. There is plenty of evidence in the materials, to which the authors had full access (Stalin-Mao correspondence, Mikoyan talks in 1949 etc) to at least raise serious questions about Stalin's real preferences in China; in fact, much evidence suggests that after 1945 Stalin was initially willing to trade in his special relationship with Mao for a broader agreement with the Guomindang. To this end, and probably not to confuse the "imperialists", he sponsored CCP-GMD peace talks, handed over territory to the GMD, agreed to suppress anti-GMD rebellion in Xinjiang and Altai, etc. The general tilt of Soviet foreign policy in 1945-46 - not only in China but elsewhere - points to Stalin's willingness to compromise with the West, rather than a propensity towards endless expansion of the Soviet sphere of influence.

A related question: the authors argue that the GMD collapse in the Civil War was a result of infiltration by communist spies and of Jiang Jieshi's kind-hearted treatment of the Soviet "moles" in his ranks. The authors then point to various Soviet "sleepers", in whose ranks they include people like Zhang Zhizhong, in my view downplaying internal reasons for GMD disunity. After all, one did not have to be a Soviet "sleeper" to want to play on the Jiang-Mao conflict to maximize personal benefits. Even if some of the so called "sleepers" in fact did, as the authors claim, had contacts with the Soviets before, this need not mean that they would act on Soviet behalf in China or carry out Stalin's orders.

Another major pillar of the book - the role of "ideology" in Mao's rule. The authors emphasize that Mao was moved first and foremost by considerations of power and prestige, not by fears about "revisionism" in China, etc. I happen to completely agree with the authors on this point; their argument, backed by detailed evidence, goes a long way to remedy a certain disbalance in favor of the "ideological" school especially popular since Chen Jian's path-breaking Mao's China and the Cold War.

Portrayal of the Cultural Revolution as basically a power struggle is fairly convincing, though one cannot help but have second thoughts. Other authors, including notably Roderick MacFarquhar, admit that there was indeed a power struggle, and yet could there be something else, or why would Mao continue the campaign beyond 1966? In their effort to portray Mao as a cynical manipulator, do the authors overlook his genuine concerns about China's future path?

An interesting thesis comes towards the end: Sino-US opening was not a result of Mao's fear of Soviet invasion, but of his effort to regain international prestige after the failure of Maoization of the world. This is a very important argument for what it tells us about Mao's delusion of grandeur, though it probably downplays Mao's fear of the Soviet Union. Yang Kuisong in a well-known article in 2000 issue of Cold War History journal argued that it was precisely Mao's reaction to Zhenbaodao in 1969 that prompted him to rethink relations with the US. This claim has been advanced in other books, for example, Li Zhisui's Private Life of Chairman Mao.

Speaking of the Soviet angle, the authors advance a controversial claim that Malinovsky's drunken remark to Zhou Enlai and He Long in November 1964 about ousting Mao was actually a carefully planned act of official policy. There is no evidence for this. In fact, drunken orgies were a common practice in the Soviet leadership ranks, so Malinovsky could well say rash things without any instructions. Indeed, if the Soviet leadership wanted to probe Zhou and He Long about removing Mao, why not do so privately, rather than in the presence of foreign diplomats, including those from Western countries. Furthermore, it was He Long who approached Malinovsky to make remarks, and not the other way around.

Of course, there are many episodes that are still impossible to document properly. The verdict is out, but this book gives interesting interpretations.

Regarding Lin Biao, the authors subscribe to the well-known version that the plane crashed in Mongolia because it ran out of fuel. This is one example of mysteries-still-to-be-solved. Indeed, a recently leaked document (investigation by the Mongolian KGB) concludes that the plane had plenty of fuel on board. This evidence was not available to the authors at the time of writing; it shows though that many of the arguments advanced in the book will be challenged and possibly overturned when new evidence emerges.

Many reviewers have said that the book blames everything on Mao. That is true to some extent. Clearly, the authors emphasize the role of one man over the faults of the system. However, I feel the authors take a fairly bold line in condemning Zhou Enlai, whose "myth" is perhaps more wide-spead than the myth of Mao. Zhou, Liu Shaoqi and many other cronies willingly participated in Mao's purges. For some reason, Peng Dehuai is spared criticism in the book, as if he was the only saint in the leadership. Deng Xiaoping receives light treatment, too, though one might ask where he was in the late-1950s at the height of the economic mess? Did he not also advance Mao's foreign policy program rigidly, for example in Moscow in July 1963, where he was more outspoken against "revisionism" than even Kang Sheng?

The amount of work that went into this book is simply colossal. It must be the best-researched book on Mao ever written, and it does offer a great deal of new scraps of evidence, though some of it comes from highly questionable sources such as "interviews with a Russian insider" (???). It is impressive how the authors were able to memorize (!) documents in the Chinese archives and then quote from them. The level of interviewees (presidents of different countries etc.) makes me wonder how the authors pulled this off. Overall, I am very impressed by this book. It is exceptionally well written.

Are the arguments too far-fetched? It is hard to say. Almost every major and many minor claims of the book could be easily challenged as I showed above. And yet... The final words somehow ring true: "His [Mao's] mind remained lucid to the end, and in it stirred just one thought: himself and his power" (p. 616).

I walked away with a mixed feeling about this book, but it sure made an impression.

I enjoyed the book in the sense that it provided an enormous amount of detail and precise anecdotes to back up it's thesis. It provided a well written and interesting account of Mao's rule. I read the book rather briskly as I found some of the detail to be ecessive or tedious. Much of the book was not comprised of things that were unheard about the story of Mao sofar as the invasion of by Japan etc.
What was original and rather interesting about the book was the connection made with Soviet Russia. The authors used the relatively recently released Soviet (92 i believe) archives to the best of their abilities and provided an interesting connection between Moscow's communism and Mao's. While I found the book to be longwinded at times it presents new information as well as old in an interesting and engaging manner. It is definetly not a quick read by any means but can definitely be worth it for those interested in the origins of Chinese communism and are willing to sift through 700 (ish) pages of matierial.

I bought this book because I was hoping to read a new account of one of history's most glossed over mass murderers, but I was very disappointed by the lack of simple foot or end noting of the authors' sources. One can not write a book that calls into question the veracity of some of the most prominent events and people of the 20th century and then not offer actual evidence. There are many better books than this about Mao that do offer sources. Read those instead.

Every man is a complex being. If one does not acknowledge this simple truth, he or she is unworthy to write books on topics like this.

It's true that millions of people have died as a result of Mao's policies either directly or indirectly. But many things were beyond his control at the time. Things may not have been what he originally hoped for. I'm not trying to defend Mao, but to say that everything was caused by him and him alone is not only absurd but also childish. Mao is a controversial figure and deserves a far more complex treatment. I simply cannot agree with Chang's one-sided portrait of the character.

I can imagine why this book is so successful in America and Europe. It's because many people already had a pre-formed judgment on Mao and Communism before they read this book, and this book simply said what they had in mind or what they wanted to hear.

4 stars for the effort; 2 star for its value. Average is 3.
(I changed my original rating. I'll give credit to the extensive research done by the author. She deserves it.)

P.S. I believe the Cultural Revolution was a collective crime, a crime against the mass and carried out by the mass. Every Chinese man and woman who lived through that period ought to repent. Yes, Mao is to blame for the atrocities, but so are the other party leaders, the propaganda machine, the Red Guards, the butchers, the informers and the bystanders!

Jung Chang's young intellect was formed in an environment where totalitarian propaganda substituted for reason and evidence. After she came west, she was unable to make the adjustment. She still thinks and argues the same way. Her ram-it-down-your-throat approach, strained interpretations, and outright distortion of sources make it look as if she does not trust the reader to make up his or her own mind. She should stick to reminiscences, at which she is adept, and leave history to competent historians. There are much better arguments against Mao than this. Philip Short, in just one example, makes an equally scathing case against Mao, but uses reason and an honest appraisal of sources. It is a compelling case. Chang's totalitarian mode of argument is so silly that it actually undermines the case against Mao by making it the subject of mockery. She thus gives comfort to the Maoists. Nobody except fanatics can take this book seriously, and the case against Mao should be taken seriously. As for Halliday, he should know better. "What does it profit a man...?"

One shouldn't doubt that Jung Chang has reason to despise Mao, having lived through the effects of his reign. Mao himself certainly left plenty of evidence of his tyranny. The problem is that the vendetta is so obvious that it reaches self-parody after a couple hundred pages. The authors purport to know Mao's actual thoughts at specific times, suggest that he deserves the blame (if that's the proper word) for Stalin's death, and take an obvious relish in describing Mao's incompetence regarding such as language acquisition and management. Don't base all of your knowledge of the subject on this single source.

After reading this book, i'm beginning to think that if someone has suffered under a dictator then maybe they shouldn't write a biography about that dictator. This book is written by that same woman who wrote Wild Swans. For those who haven't read that book. It follow three generations of women in Chang's family her grandmother, mother and herself. It was a very interesting memoir about living before Mao , during his rise to power and the tale end of his reign. The Chang family suffered under Mao's domination. A lot of people suffered under Mao's domination. Chang set out to write an unflattering biography but in doing so whatever valid evidence she has is complete overshadowed by her own hate of Mao. Her anger comes through every page of the biography. Mao was not a nice person. The Gang of four committed atrocities that would have made Stalin proud but because of the tone and language of the writing, Chang's version will be dismissed as spite. I recommend approaching this book with caution. Only read this book after you have read a more balanced biography to get Mao's background and the facts straight. Then go read Wild Swans to find out where Chang is coming from. Then read this one with a grain of salt. I believe that Chang fears that Mao is being romanticized as time progresses further away from his reign and she wants to make sure that the world never forgets but she's over doing it.

All history is biased because we observe objective facts through subjective prisms, and because history's real value is interpretation, which is by its nature personal. However, some histories are more biased than others. This one doesn't even attempt to be fair. Its judgments are so extreme that they undermine the reliability of a massive, indeed impressive, body of research. Unreliability makes for poor history. What a waste of so much energy, labor, and potential! Yes, we all know that Mao was evil and the biggest mass murderer in history, surpassing even Stalin and Hitler. We also know that Mao would still have been a disgusting human being even had his politics been admirable, and none of us would have liked to have him home for dinner. Certainly not I. There is no need to excuse or romanticize anything about Mao. He was bad. But his successes were stunning and world-shaking, not only uniting China but freeing it from foreign control, creating the industrial base that allowed the economy to flourish under a less bandit-like regime, and making China a world power to be reckoned with. We are still dealing with the consequences. Does the end justify the means? Of course not. But there should be room in the authors' model to consider political brilliance or anything else positive. They see just will, luck, cunning and ruthlessness. And they see everybody else as just gullible, even Chou En Lai. Can it be so simple? The book goes further. It attributes all evil anywhere in Asia like the Korean and Vietnam Wars solely to Mao. Wow! That's a lot of power! I didn't realize he was omnipotent. (Doesn't the looney left make the same assumptions about the CIA?) There is no subtlety in this investigation, and no sense that either human beings or historical causes can in any way be complex. This book is simplistic, simple-minded, anti-intellectual, and juvenile. It is not history. It is catharsis.

A word on style. People in this book don't just disappear; they "disappear from the face of the earth." This book reads like a seventh grade composition drawn from "Dial a Cliché." The editors couldn't improve the poor historiography, but they certainly could have done something about the pedestrian prose. Depravity, after all, can be interesting, at least in small doses. These authors make it dull.

Thesis: "Nothing anything Mao ever did was any good!"
Evidence: Everything bad Mao ever did
Coutner-Evidence: None!
Conclusion: Mao bad, fire good!

A biography by someone who does not like Mao is far more refreshing than one by someone who drank the Kool-Aid.

Yet this book presents the thesis that Mao was after one thing - Personal Power. Neither Jung nor Halliday explain why this man gave up all his power in the KMT to lead a peasant revolution, if he only sought power.

If you think Mao was a great man who led a great revolution that did nothing but help the Chinese people - read this book.

If you wish to find an objective telling of Mao's life - read Philip Short's "Mao: A Life"

I applaud the authors' efforts in producing a sweeping study of Mao and attempting to uncover many hitherto unknown aspects of his fascinating life. `Facts' surrounding the Long March, such as the famous Luding Bridge heroics, are exposed as being untrue. And claims about the engineered killings of more than 70 million Chinese and the often gruesome nature of their deaths take us to a whole new level of understanding about Mao's megalomania and inhumanity. These chilling revelations are all the more absorbing in an age where we're being made increasingly aware of state-engineered brutality both past and present. Reading this book (and accepting its claims wholesale) will revolutionise the way you think about Mao and such events as the Long March and the `Great Leap Forward'.

Yet the main problem with this book lies precisely in how far we can accept its claims. Most of the reviews here have already highlighted the book's many factual inconsistencies, exaggerations and generally speculative assertions. The book's sources, for one, have been criticised for being either unreliable or unverifiable. The emphasis on Mao has also obscured the role played by the Communist party in perpetrating the said atrocities.

No specialist of Chinese history myself, I nonetheless found the claims a little too sensational and the writing too overwrought in places. Mao the man comes across as an utterly self-absorbed, power-crazed, pitiless beast whose one-dimensionality seems too much like a caricature at times. As with other similar books I've read, the authors' profound emotional engagement with the subject (ten years of research, interviewing hundreds of eyewitnesses etc.) seems to have gotten in the way of sober analysis.

At over 800 pages long this is not a short book by any measure. But it is written for a general audience and so should be accessible enough to most readers. If the writing doesn't capture you attention, the gripping narrative most certainly will. Just bear in mind the scepticism that book's claims have received from academic circles. Checking these claims against the work of other experts in the field will probably be a good idea; and will most certainly be my next port-of-call.