I found this used book in a bin at Frenchy’s, paid $2 for it. As much as I want other people to read it, I think I’ll not lend it out, since I want to on a shelf within reach. A fascinating and historical character study, to help me to understand a great man’s personality, to understand the motives behind great evil, to understand much of the fallout of the 20th century. Images from this book will stick with me the rest of my life.
On the one hand, this book feels magisterial. The notes and references at the back, and the list of interviewees, is daunting and feels authoritative.
On the other hand, the bitter tone of the book accounts for how many scholars have raised questions about its objectivity and journalistic/academic merit.
But if the book explains anything, it explains why author Jung Chang would be bitter: she lived through the cultural revolution that until now I barely knew about. Images of students beating their teachers to death in that revolution; images of Chinese peasants starving to death, picking their village’s trees bare of leaves to try to survive, during the Great Leap Forward; images of the elimination of private life and private thought through training an entire population to denounce their neighbours; images of Mao ready and willing for 200,000 Chinese soldiers to die in Korea, ready to starve half his population to death in order to buy nuclear capability, ready and willing to abandon his family, his loyal followers, etc., whenever politically expedient – those images will stick even where exact fact-checking comes up wanting.
The authors also do much to point out that we in the West have been largely bamboozled by Mao’s propaganda. He purposefully used various Western writers, especially Edgar Snow, to create a believable myth about Mao’s noble rise to power. Even Pierre Trudeau wrote co-authored a book contributing to this myth (I’ve ordered it from the library now). Chang and Halliday work (it took them 10 years of research) to prove that so much of that myth is a thin veneer, and that underneath lies much malice. Most of us non-academics cannot fact-check all of their claims. But if even a fraction of what they say is true, then my view of the globe is highly altered.
About the time that the book was first published, I was making friends with a variety of Chinese visiting scholars at university, and I also visited Beijing for a week. There is a real nobility to the character of Chinese people who were born while Mao was still alive (he died in 1976, not very long ago, really). For most of my Chinese friends, their passion for the honour and wellbeing of their homeland is heartfelt and sincere. The most sickening part of my experience of reading this book was to realize that Mao deliberately exploited and betrayed their national devotion. I remember once some Chinese friends explaining the bewilderment they (quietly) felt when they realized that other nations around them, like Japan and South Korea, had not starved like them in the 1950’s and 60’s.
As depressing as this book was by times, there were uplifting moments. There were times when various Communist leaders would respond to their own consciences, knowing that they would probably die anyway, and would speak out against Mao’s policies. Liu did this the most daringly, leading many others to end the starvation of great leap forward. Their courage and their commitment to their people is exemplary. Unfortunately, it also created the need, in Mao’s mind, for the “purging” that he effected in the Cultural Revolution.
This book also opens our eyes to how often, when we see major events in the news, we really have no idea what is going on. When Mao’s China began to attack Taiwan, or when Mao instigated the Korean War, or even the war in Vietnam, he always had ulterior motives, wanting to get a threat out of one superpower that he could use as leverage to get nuclear arms etc. from another superpower.
Ultimately, the authors argue that Mao really didn’t care about China, nor about the people close or loyal to him, nor even about himself in any profound way. What he really cared about was his desire to become the leader of a world superpower, whatever the cost.
I read another book a couple years ago called The China Mirage. It outlines the ways that Western foreign policy and big business historically ravaged China, before Mao put a stop to it. I went back to that book and checked, and it doesn’t reference this book, though it’s written some years later. It is probably important to keep the two books in mind, to remember that as badly as Mao treated China, it is possible that the West might have treated it worse if Mao had lost his bid for power.
There is little in this book about the life of the church in China. Now that I know a little bit more historical context, I think I will go back and listen to Dr. Jonathan Chao’s lectures at https://christianuniversity.org/professors/dr-jonathan-chao/.
WhatPastorSamIsReading 