Mao: a super monster?

MAO: THE UNKNOWN STORY. By Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. xiii, 814 pp. (Photos, maps.) US$35.00, cloth. ISBN 0-679-42271-4.

Any fresh consideration of the life and times of Mao Zedong--the ruthless revolutionary, ruler, visionary and modernizer--should be welcome, considering the national myth surrounding Mao that is still propagated both officially and unofficially in China. At present, there is a mountain of Chinese-language material on the topic, including biographies, memoirs, histories, official and unofficial documents and chronologies. Yet few Chinese scholars or writers, with the exception of those who publish in Hong Kong and Taiwan, dare to cross the party line. Materials in English are more limited, but there has been a recent spate of perceptive biographies, including those by Short and Terrill, as well as pocket biographies by Spence, Feigon, Devan, Breslin and Lynch. (1)

Mao: The Unknown Story claims to be the "most authoritative life of Mao ever written," intended to "astonish historians and the general reader alike." This effort, by husband-and-wife team Jung Chang and Jon Halliday--she of Wild Swans fame, he an academic writer on the Korean War and Japanese imperialism--represents a formidable research enterprise, and took a decade to complete. The authors conducted extensive interviews in 35 countries with those who knew or were connected to Mao, and their archival research took them to ten countries, including Russia. The 58-chapter book includes 46 pages of bibliography and 86 pages of notes.

The book portrays Mao as a relentless schemer who exploited every situation and opportunity to satisfy his ego and greed for power, and as a homicidal and genocidal tyrant who would sacrifice anyone and anything. Manipulative and bent on revenge, he is shown to be a sadist who enjoyed thuggery, torture and slow deaths; he is also portrayed as lazy, bumbling and "addicted to comfort." Above all, the authors claim that Mao was indifferent to ideology, and unpatriotic.

Among the "startling revelations" of a "completely unknown Mao" offered up in this book are the following: Mao despised the peasants and workers; he needlessly sacrificed his soldiers, even a brother, in order to gain power; and he poisoned rivals, terrorized followers and lieutenants, and amassed a huge personal fortune. The authors also assert that Chiang Kai-shek let the Reds go because Stalin was holding his son hostage; that the heroic exploits of the Long March were a hoax; and that Mao's incompetence resulted in many lost battles, including the claim that his siege of Changchun took more lives than the Nanjing Massacre. When Mao was in power, the authors allege that he deliberately starved the peasants and told them to eat leaves, sold grain during famine to acquire arms, and set a trap to ensnare the intellectuals during the Hundred Flowers episode.

This litany of Mao's evildoing establishes the underlying theme of his relentless quest for power and world domination. Writing as if they have access to his inner consciousness, the authors go so far as to share with the reader Mao's last thoughts: "in [his mind] stirred just one thought: himself and his power" (p. 630).

One would expect careful and responsible analysis of source material in such an iconoclastic work, but Chang and Halliday have taken great liberties in this regard, distorting, stretching and quoting their sources out of context. Despite its academic trappings, this work ignores much existing scholarship in English and Chinese. Many of the so-called "startling revelations" are well known, but the authors still claim to be the first to tell them. New information is manufactured out of a manipulation of facts to such an extreme that they can no longer be sustained by empirical evidence. The overall impression is that the authors have reduced a complex, contradictory and multi-faceted subject into a one-dimensional caricature of unremitting evil.

Manipulation of Sources

Consider Chang and Halliday's major thesis: that Mao was obsessed with promoting the "Secret Superpower Programme" (SPP) so that China could dominate the world. This plan, however, exists only in Chang's and Halliday's imaginations; it conflates disparate factors that were neither secret nor linked to superpower aspirations. At first, this programme is identified as the General Line, launched with much publicity in 1953, with the intention of promoting industrialization and the development of agriculture and commerce (p. 380). Later, the authors identify the SSP with the First Five-Year Plan (FFYP, 1953-1957) and insist on its unquestionable "military nature" (p. 426), because military and arms-related industries, they say, consisted of 61 percent of the budget. To come up with this percentage, the authors simply added up the budgetary allocations for national defence (23.4%) and capital construction (37.6%); the result is a gross distortion, because the latter included investments in many spheres of industry, agriculture, education and health. Granted, defence allocations were high and perhaps under-reported, and some industrialization could have military applications, but the authors lack grounds to claim that all investments were military. On page 426, they further confuse Mao's call to accelerate fulfilment of the National Programme for Agricultural Development (NPAD, 1956-67), a comprehensive rural development project, with the acceleration of industrialization and an imaginary SPP.

Mao was ambitious and at times delusional, but no evidence exists to suggest that he considered China to be capable of projecting power worldwide in his lifetime. Even with the completion of the General Line, the FFYP and the NPAD, China would still, according to Mao, remain "poor and blank." The convoluted assertions of Chang and Halliday prove nothing.

The authors' argument that Mao intended to dominate the world (pp. 426ff) by controlling the Pacific Ocean is similarly contrived. They cite as proof a line in Mao's June, 1959 speech: "Currently the Pacific Ocean is not peaceful. It can only be peaceful when we take control over it in the future," and Lin Biao's interjection: "We must build big ships, and be prepared to land (sc. military) in Japan, the Philippines, and San Francisco." But in this speech Mao was only talking about what China would have to do if attacked, if Beijing and Shanghai were hit with nuclear bombs. China would have to retaliate, he said, and that would require a navy. He then wondered aloud as to how much effort and time it would take to build such a navy. (2)

Chang and Halliday's citation of Mao's line, "In future we will set up the Earth Control Committee, and make a uniform plan for the Earth" (p, 426) as proof of his superpower pretensions is equally absurd. Here, Mao was talking about solidarity with Vietnam, and urging those who went there to care for everything, because the affairs in Vietnam belonged not just to Ho Chi Minh, but also to all labouring people and the Earth. It was as an advocate of central planning that he said that the Chinese, if necessary, would make uniform plans to deliver grain to any place with a grain shortage by setting up an Earth Control Committee. (3)

Mao's most formidable weapon, Chang and Halliday assert, was his lack of pity, and they cite the starvation tactics used in the city of Changchun during the siege of 1948, when its population shrank from 500,000 to 170,000 (pp. 312-14). The authors' version, however, is indicative of how they manipulate evidence to make one-sided claims. This assertion contradicts evidence in their own sources, which paint a complicated picture of the five-month siege, with both sides contributing to the tragedy. It is true that the Communists planned to use the siege to break the KMT forces, but it was Chiang Kai-shek who forbade the exodus of the population; who ordered the holding of the city to wait for rescue which never came; who failed to supply the city with air lifts; and who ordered the forced requisition of all civilian grain to feed the starving soldiers.

Anything goes seems to be Chang and Halliday's attitude when it comes to sources. They frequently rely on works of historical fiction that are dramatized with reconstructed dialogue, and that prioritize entertainment, sensationalism and titillation over historical accuracy. In such accounts, factual gaps and uncertainties that baffle historians are filled in with the authors' imagination to complete the narrative. Chang and Halliday use these wildly unreliable sources indiscriminately to buttress their claims. One example is Ming Xiao and Chi Nan's Mousha Mao Zedong de heise taize (The Black Prince Who Tried to Assassinate Mao Zedong), (4) which the authors use, among other things, to support assertions that Lin Biao and his wife knew and acquiesced to Lin Liguo's alleged plan to assassinate Mao (pp. 557-58, 728-729).

Chang and Halliday continually exaggerate their revelations; in fact, most of what they "expose" does not represent a discovery unearthed from the archives. For instance, discussion of the alleged terrorist methods used in Jiangxi is in Gong Chu's memoirs (5) and Mao's alleged perfidies can be found in Zhang Guotao's memoirs. (6) Many other revelations are also well known to academics--for instance, the importance of opium revenue to support economic development in Yanan (pp. 276ff) has been studied by Chen Yung-fa, (7) and its brutal rectification campaign is chronicled by Gao Hua (8) and others. (9)

Chang and Halliday assert that Mme Sun Yat-sen was beyond doubt a Soviet agent, but their lone piece of evidence proves nothing (p. 134). Such a grotesque assertion even contradicts what Chang and Halliday say themselves in their hagiography of Mme Sun, written in English and later translated into Chinese. (10)

On the Tucheng battle (pp. 143-144, 674), the biggest Communist defeat of the Long March, Chang and Halliday's version offers more distortions. According to them, Mao ordered and insisted on the ambush, but one major source cited says that the decision was arrived at collectively by Mao, Zhou Enlai and Liu Bocheng. To demonstrate Mao's deceit, the authors claim that he watched the decimation of his troops and consented to withdrawal only after a full day. This is inconsistent with the accounts offered in the sources they cite. For instance, Guo Chen relates that it took the Reds three hours, starting at 3 p.m., to successfully occupy Tucheng. Intelligence received at 6 p.m. showed that the enemy reinforcement forces nearby numbered eight divisions, and not the four originally estimated. This information prompted the retreat and the subsequent defeat by pursuing Guomindang forces. (11) Chang and Halliday do not cite interviews as a source for their claim that Mao blatantly sacrificed his troops, so we can assume that this is another of their embellishments. Their assertion that the defeat was "completely suppressed in public" and remembered only in "private" because Mao was responsible is also inaccurate. Mao openly admitted to and took responsibility for the mistakes he made in his command of the four battles at Gaoxingwei, Nanxiong, Tucheng and Maotai. (12) While cover-ups and euphemisms are often used to describe these mistakes, they are certainly not unknown, as all have been discussed in the works of Hu Zhefeng. (13)

The Mao portrayed by Chang and Halliday was indifferent to death. They cite his May 1958 speech, when he allegedly told his audience to welcome deaths that resulted from their Party's policy (p. 439). Again, this quote is taken out of context to prove Mao's "ghoulish philosophy." In this speech, Mao was employing some humour as he contemplated the philosophy of dialectics and the unity of opposites in relation to issues of war and splits in the Party. According to him, the Chinese are rather dialectical in their thinking: when people die, they mourn, but they also regard this as a cause for celebration. Mao stated with dry humour that "if Confucius were alive today and wanted to be part of the meeting, it wouldn't be too wonderful, because he would be 2,000 years old." He thus urged his audience not to think in absolute terms, because disunity, imbalance, death, destruction and calamity could also offer their opposites, leading to unity, balance, life and development. (14) Mao gave this speech during the optimistic heyday of the Great Leap Forward, when widespread starvation was as yet unknown. Chang and Halliday's juxtaposition of this quote with descriptions of famine conditions in 1960 and 1961 in Fengyang County is an unjustifiably crude way to make their point. Distortions like this abound in the book, but space limit allows for the illustration of only a few of the most egregious.

Simplistic Reasoning and Faulty Logic

Chang and Halliday's moralistic fervour blinds them to the necessities that drive the actions of politicians such as Mao, the need to use strategy, including tricks, manipulation and even treachery, as a normal means of statecraft, especially in dealings with foreign powers. They are likewise oblivious to any possibility of multiple interpretations for their evidence. The authors deem Mao's reluctance to directly confront the Japanese to be cowardly and hypocritical. They fault him for "preserving his forces" and waiting for Stalin to do the job for him (p. 204). They describe Mao as privately furious with Lin Biao's battle at Pingxingguan and Peng Dehuai's Hundred Regiment Offensive (with 9,000 casualties), both fought without his authorization, while publicly lauding the battles as indicators of the Communists' determination to fight (p. 221). Chang and Halliday do not appreciate that Mao's tactic of conserving strength in the face of overwhelmingly superior Japanese forces and avoidance of battle set pieces was what made him a great tactician and earned him the respect of his followers. Indeed, if Mao had fought the Japanese, at a huge cost of lives, the authors, using their inherent bad faith model, would likely blame him for recklessness.

Similarly, manipulation and deception are said to be behind Mao's invitations to Nixon and Kissinger. In a chapter entitled "Nixon: the Red-Baiter Baited," Chang and Halliday describe how Mao had Nixon "thinking that he was the keener of the two" for the visit; Nixon bore "many and weighty gifts, and asked for nothing in return." These weighty gifts included promises of diplomatic recognition, abandonment of Taiwan and a guarantee of Chinese sovereignty, as well as Kissinger's offer to withdraw troops from Vietnam and Korea and to share intelligence on the Soviet Union. Kissinger's presence in Beijing also helped China regain its seat in the UN's Security Council, and Nixon helped reverse the demonization of Mao, turning him into an international figure of "incomparable allure." Leaving aside whether this is an adequate analysis, and whether the Nixon/Kissinger team was that gullible, the authors' evidence can be interpreted as showing a supreme mastery of diplomacy by the Mao/Zhou team, which is inconsistent with their view of Mao as either a dissembler or a bumbling fool.

Chang and Halliday's approach of focusing in on Mao and his alleged perfidies misses the cultural, historical and socio-economic contexts that conditioned Mao's behaviour and his era. Mao's counterparts--foreign leaders, adversaries, colleagues, peasants, etc.--appear as passive and docile pawns in Mao's machinations and his quest for supreme power. The authors argue that Mao repeatedly terrorized his troops and supporters, only to rehabilitate them when he needed them (p. 247).

One would expect special insights on the nuances of behaviour and power relations from Chang, a Chinese scholar and former Red Guard who experienced the Maoist era first-hand. A subject as complex as Mao's life and times cannot be treated in black and white terms. Yet the authors take things at face value, offering up page after page of wild assertions, leaving readers no room for reflection or imagination. No sensible person would want to apologize for Mao, especially when official censorship and cover-ups have prevented many Chinese from telling their stories. The tremendous policy blunders and human costs of Mao's policies should continue to be revealed and discussed, but by trampling all over their sources in their efforts to provide a simplistic and sensational analysis, Chang and Halliday have botched their chance.

How could such an angel of death, who brought about so much suffering and destruction, still maintain the respect of so many of his people even 30 years after his death? Was Mao's charismatic ability to move millions based simply on terror, cruelty and oppression? Mao: The Unknown Story contributes little to the resolution of these pressing questions.

ALFRED L. CHAN

University of Western Ontario, London, ON., Canada, March 2006

(1) Philip Short, Mao: A Life (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1999); Ross Terrill, Mao: A Bibliography, revised and expanded edition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); Jonathan Spence, Mao (London: Phoenix, 2000); Lee Feigon, Mao: A Reinterpretation (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002); Delia Davin, Mao Zedong (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1997); Shaun Breslin, Mao (London: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998); Michael J. Lynch, Mao (London: Roudedge, 2004).

(2) Mao Zedong, Maozhu weikangao, "Mao Zedong sixiang wansui" beiji ji qita [Unofficially Published Works of Mao Zedong, additional volumes of "Long Live Mao Zedong's Thought" and Other Secret Speeches of Mao] volume 11B (Oakton, VI: Center for Chinese Research Materials, 1990), p. 80.

(3) Mao Zedong, weikangao, volume 13, p. 131.

(4) (Hong Kong: Zhonghua ernu chubanshe, 2000). A postscript said that one author had participated in the investigation of the Lin Liguo case (p. 507). In any case, the book belongs to a genre the Chinese call "wild history" [ye shi] or, at best, report literature, because it blends facts and fiction.

(5) Wo yu hongjun [The Red Army and I] (Hong Kong: Nanfeng chubanshe, 1954).

(6) Wode huiyi [My memoirs], 3 volumes (Hong Kong: Mingbao yuekan chubanshe, 1974).

(7) "The Blooming Poppy under the Red Sun: The Yan'an Way and the Opium Trade," in Tony Saich and Hans van de Ven, New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1995).

(8) Hongtaiyang shi zenyang shenqilai de [How Did the Sun Rise over Yan'an? A History of the Rectification Movement] (Hong Kong: Zhongwen Daxue chubanshe, 2000).

(9) David E. Apter and Tony Saich, Revolutionary Discourse in Mao's Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).

(10) Jung Chang with Jon Halliday, Mme Sun Yat-Sen (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1986); Jung Chang, Sun Yixian furen [Mme Sun Yat-sen] (Beijing: Zhongguo heping chubanshe, 1988).

(11) Guo Chen, Teshu liandui [A Special Company] (Beijing: Nongcun duwu chubanshe, 1985), pp. 198-199.

(12) Mao Zedong Wenji [The Selected Works of Mao Zedong] volume 7 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1999), p. 106.

(13) Mao Zedong wulue [The Military Strategy of Mao Zedong] (Taipei: Huiming wenhua shiye youxian gongsi, 2002).

(14) Mao Zedong, weikangao, volume 11B, p. 68. Mao Zedong, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao [Manuscripts of Mao Zedong Since the Founding of the State] volume 7 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1992), p. 201.