 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com In the epilogue to her biography of Mao Tse-tung, Jung Chang and her husband and cowriter Jon Halliday lament that, "Today, Mao's portrait and his corpse still dominate Tiananmen Square in the heart of the Chinese capital." For Chang, author of Wild Swans, this fact is an affront, not just to history, but to decency. Mao: The Unknown Story does not contain a formal dedication, but it is clear that Chang is writing to honor the millions of Chinese who fell victim to Mao's drive for absolute power in his 50-plus-year struggle to dominate China and the 20th-century political landscape. From the outset, Chang and Halliday are determined to shatter the "myth" of Mao, and they succeed with the force, not just of moral outrage, but of facts. The result is a book, more indictment than portrait, that paints Mao as a brutal totalitarian, a thug, who unleashed Stalin-like purges of millions with relish and without compunction, all for his personal gain. Through the authors' unrelenting lens even his would-be heroism as the leader of the Long March and father of modern China is exposed as reckless opportunism, subjecting his charges to months of unnecessary hardship in order to maintain the upper hand over his rival, Chang Kuo-tao, an experienced military commander. Using exhaustive research in archives all over the world, Chang and Halliday recast Mao's ascent to power and subsequent grip on China in the context of global events. Sino-Soviet relations, the strengths and weakness of Chiang Kai-shek, the Japanese invasion of China, World War II, the Korean War, the disastrous Great Leap Forward, the vicious Cultural Revolution, the Vietnam War, Nixon's visit, and the constant, unending purges all, understandably, provide the backdrop for Mao's unscrupulous but invincible political maneuverings and betrayals. No one escaped unharmed. Rivals, families, peasants, city dwellers, soldiers, and lifelong allies such as Chou En-lai were all sacrificed to Mao's ambition and paranoia. Appropriately, the authors' consciences are appalled. Their biggest fear is that Mao will escape the global condemnation and infamy he deserves. Their astonishing book will go a long way to ensure that the pendulum of history will adjust itself accordingly. --Silvana Tropea
10 Second Interview: A Few Words with Jung Chang and Jon Halliday Q: From idea to finished book, how long did Mao: The Unknown Story take to research and write? A: Over a decade. Q: What was your writing process like? How did you two collaborate on this project? A: The research shook itself out by language. Jung did all the Chinese-language research, and Jon did the other languages, of which Russian was the most important, as Mao had a long-term intimate relationship with Stalin. After our research trips around the world, we would work in our separate studies in London. We would then rendezvous at lunch to exchange discoveries. Q: Do you have any thoughts about how the book is, or will be received in China? Did that play a part in your writing of the book? A: The book is banned in China, because the current Communist regime is fiercely perpetuating the myth of Mao. Today Mao's portrait and his corpse still dominate Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing, and the regime declares itself to be Mao's heir. The government blocked the distribution of an issue of The Far Eastern Economic Review, and told the magazine's owners, Dow Jones, that this was because that issue contained a review of our book. The regime also tore the review of our book out of The Economist magazine that was going to (very restricted) newsstands. We are not surprised that the book is banned. The regime's attitude had no influence on how we wrote the book. We hope many copies will find their way into China. Q: What is the one thing you hope readers get from your book? A: Mao was responsible for the deaths of well over 70 million Chinese in peacetime, and he was bent on dominating the world. As China is today emerging as an economic and military power, the world can never regard it as a benign force unless Beijing rejects Mao and all his legacies. We hope our book will help push China in this direction by telling the truth about Mao.
Breakdown of a BIG Book: 5 Things You'll Learn from Mao: The Unknown Story 1. Mao became a Communist at the age of 27 for purely pragmatic reasons: a job and income from the Russians.
2. Far from organizing the Long March in 1934, Mao was nearly left behind by his colleagues who could not stand him and had tried to oust him several times. The aim of the March was to link up with Russia to get arms. The Reds survived the March because Chiang Kai-shek let them, in a secret horse-trade for his son and heir, whom Stalin was holding hostage in Russia.
3. Mao grew opium on a large scale.
4. After he conquered China, Mao's over-riding goal was to become a superpower and dominate the world: "Control the Earth," as he put it.
5. Mao caused the greatest famine in history by exporting food to Russia to buy nuclear and arms industries: 38 million people were starved and slave-driven to death in 1958-61. Mao knew exactly what was happening, saying: "half of China may well have to die."
Average Customer Rating:   
I don't know
| Customer Rating: |
When this book came out, both critics and fans missed the point completely. Critics complained that it was too negative (one reviewer even complained that they didn't give Mao enough credit as a poet). Fans showered praise because it shows how evil and horrible Mao was.
Both positions are idiotic. This is supposed to be the "unknown" story, not the "balanced" story. The whole premise of the book is that Chang and Halliday have done interviews and archival research that show that Mao was even more of a monster than everyone knows already. Add this to Chang's personal experiences, and expecting a "balanced" view is like asking Trotsky to be "balanced" about Stalin. The fans equally ignore the originality and veracity of the content.
The merit of this book rests entirely on these two questions: 1. Are its claims original? 2. Are they true?
Even leaving aside the issue of Mao's personal character (a power hungry sadist and heartless womaniser who neglected his parents and his children, had no concern for the poor, and rose to the top of the CCP through lies and murder) Chang and Halliday make some startling claims about wider Chinese history: that Chiang deliberately let the Communists escape during the Long March, that a Communist sleeper agent in the Nationalist army deliberately provoked the Shanghai incident to draw Japan into China and away from Russia, and that other sleepers later lost the Civil War.
I just don't know enough about China in general or Mao in particular to tell if this book is a groundbreaking work of original scholarship or a crude pastiche of Cold War propaganda. On the few issues that I know a little about, I find myself leaning to the propaganda side. The claim that Mao was responsible for 70 million deaths seems rather flimsy - this is based on 38 million in the Great Leap famine (twice the consensus estimate) and 25 million in labour camps (based on extrapolating the death rate in one camp in a particularly bad year on a guesstimate of the total camp population). Similarly, the claim that Marshall lost China is a very old chestnut, although at least they do not claim it was deliberate ("a conspiracy so vast").
It is a disgrace that the dust jacket is adorned with praise from reviewers who are hardly better qualified than I to judge both questions, and that those who are qualified have not addressed them. The biggest controversy was about whether a minor battle at some bridge was faked or not.
| Mad Mao
| Customer Rating: | This book was a xmas gift. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down. It persuades me that Mao was as sociopathic as Hitler and that his works were on balance as evil as Stalin's and that he used the same kind of terror and disinformation to advance and secure his ends. There are now hundreds of reader reviews of this book outstanding, so I haven't much to add.
First of all, the authors do not appear to be knee-jerk anticommunists. For example, they describe Lauchlin Curry as sympathetic toward communism, not a secret communist agent. I think they get that right.
The great strength of this book is its use of soviet sources/archives. Its weakness is that it is not sufficiently critical of them or of any of its other sources that support its authors' thesis. One reviewer has already mentioned their idiosyncratic interpretation/narration of the Quemoy/Matsu crisis -- i.e., it was all about Russia.
Another case, which is easy to check from publicly available sources, they claim that the Korean War caused US aircraft losses in excess of replacement rates, 3000 in the first year of the war. While this claim is relevant to their argument, it's not true. The US lost about 2,000 planes in the entire Korean War. Only 10 percent of these losses were in air-to-air combat. During the same period it produced about 20,000 military aircraft.
However, no book is perfect. | Oh My Lord!
| Customer Rating: | | The book is sooooooooooooooo silly it reminds me that a hammer takes everything for nails. The authors did a grave disservice to their own cause. A slight pretension of impartiality would have fared better! | Hitler, Mao...
| Customer Rating: | I find it incredible that so many clearly intellectual people and 'experts', as well as laymen, appear to be lining up to cast aspersions on this book. They have the luxury of doing this, living in the West where freedom of speech allows the robust defense of the worst of despots. I think that many of these reviews demonstrate the reality of the myth of Mao, the pseudo-deity, as so many people seem to be dismissing this book because it did not search for the good in Mao, or consider that his policies were due to a genuine belief that his actions were best for his people.
Hitler believed that the Jews and many other groups were subhuman, and that it was best for the German people for them to be removed - does this make his actions less evil or more justifiable? I think not. So why should this argument be made by so many regarding Mao? Germany is now a strong country with influence and affluence; does this mean that Hitler had a positive contribution to Germany's unity and current power? There are some that might say so (let me be clear, I would not be one of them), but I don't think they would be given the credence that the reviewers of this book are for saying similar things about Mao.
Mao was well aware of the human cost of his policies - about the endless murders, the torture, the rape, the starvation, the absolute wretchedness of his own people - and he didn't care, he actually reveled in it, and only cared that he got what he wanted, which was unreasoning, absolute power and deification. Even if his policies had been motivated by thinking that he knew best for the Chinese people, so what? If one of our own leaders aspired to this, we would be vociferous in our criticism; why have a different standard for Mao?
My view is that Jung Chang has written an uncompromising and courageous biography of Mao, based on personal experience and research, that will hopefully continue to expose him for the despot he was. | The worst-case scenario of Mao
| Customer Rating: | This book picks up its three stars because of the depth of research its authors did in search of new dirt on Mao, but that's a more limited positive than you might think. The book is so slanted against Mao that it's of almost no use to any reader without a deep pre-existing knowledge of Mao's life and history.
You would need that history to have a perspective on which of Chang and Halliday's accusations to take seriously, which might offer new revelations, and which should be dismissed as stretched truths or fabrications. In this entire long book, there is nary a complimentary statement about Mao to be found. I am perfectly willing to believe that Mao's rise and reign in China were a tragedy for the country and its people, but it's impossible to believe that a person could impact the world on the scale Mao did without some characteristics of leadership, intelligence and cunning.
Chang and Halliday would have you believe that an evil person, of no particular leadership ability, with no military skill, of average intelligence somehow schemed his way to being the leader of the most populous country on earth. That simply doesn't add up.
If you know Mao's story well and want to know what the average anti-Mao Chinese thought of the man, this is truly a good source based on primary research. If, however, you are looking for an objective overview of Mao's life, his rise to power, and his reign over China and its consequences, you'll have to keep looking. | |  |
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