Mao: The Unknown Story

The Man Who Made Nixon Look Good

People who know nothing about history often think Hitler was the greatest mass murderer of all time. People who know a little more about history think Stalin was. But Hitler and Stalin were amateurs. The dubious honor of greatest mass-murderer in history goes to Mao Tse-tung, who was responsible for more peacetime deaths of his countrymen than anyone before or since. The exact numbers are hard to tally, since Mao held absolute control over the dissemination of information, but 65 million is a commonly cited total. Why do most people know about Stalin and Hitler's atrocities, but not Mao's? That is the subject of Chang and Halliday's epic work.

For starters, Mao was a brilliant self-aggrandizing publicist. Even during his long claw to power, he was assiduously creating the myth of himself as the savior of the masses, and fed the fairy tale to western journalists. He left Russia out of this revisionist history, despite the fact that he came to power completely under Stalin's Communist Party guidance, and with the assistance of Russian arms and hundreds of millions of dollars of aid. He proclaimed himself as the hero of the "Long March," despite the fact he rode in a litter most of the time, and caused many deaths along the way in order to position himself for more power. At the end of the march he destroyed half of the Red Army so that he could lead the group that hooked up with Russia, again positioning himself in the power seat. He refused to fight the Japanese when they invaded, because he wanted the Japanese to destroy Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist army so he could take over. Of course, after the war his version of history had the Reds (under his command) single-handedly pushing the Japanese out of China.

Mao loved giving his oppressive policies euphemistic names. After he took power, what he called "Land Reform" was actually a campaign of terror, wherein villagers were forced to gather and denounce each other, usually resulting in people being severely beaten and killed. The "Great Leap Forward" was not a leap to industrialization, but a bid for military superpower status wherein millions were starved via a food-for-arms deal with Russia. The "Cultural Revolution" was more accurately cultural decimation, a purge in which teachers, doctors, authors, artists, and their works were ground into dust. The result was a country of uneducated people with no culture or history other than Mao.

Throughout, Mao's story reminds one of Pete Townshend's acute summary of Animal Farm politics: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Mao lived a life of luxury and womanizing, while publicly denouncing both of these traits among his people as being decadent vestiges of the old ways. He overthrew the oppressive landlords and replaced them with a regime that starved tens of millions in order to pay for Russian arms with food. When he finally arrived in full power in 1949, the first thing he did was abolish the courts and replace them with Communist tribunals, while meanwhile taking over the media. He was now the word and the law, more so than the emperors ever were. Anyone who dared question him was denounced and terrorized until they publicly confessed their anti-party and anti-masses ways. Stalin kept his purges quiet; Mao made sure everyone watched. The chapter headings in Mao give the years covered and Mao's age during that time, demonstrating the adage that people mellow with age didn't apply. He took over China at the age of 55, and most of the worst famines and purges took place when he was in his mid-sixties and seventies.

Through secrecy, terror, and propaganda Mao became lord of the most populous country on Earth. Through those same methods he maintained power for thirty years, and his legacy remains, as the events in Tiananmen Square showed the world. Everyone was terrified to speak out against Mao or the party, for fear their neighbors would denounce them. Mao maintained terror at the local level rather than imposing it from above, via regular village meetings where denouncements were encouraged. With everyone terrified of each other, no one could even think about, let alone organize, a resistance movement. Through hand-feeding stories to sycophantic journalists, he maintained the illusion in the west that he was the people's hero, a man who achieved a popular Communist takeover without outside assistance. In contrast to this popular image, the Mao in Chang and Halliday's well-researched book is a brutal, power-hungry thug with no empathy for other human beings. John Lennon was right all along: "If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow."

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