Mao: A Life

Of all the great 20th century dictators, Mao seems the hardest to fathom. This is probably because of the way his mind worked and the peculiarities of his weltenschaung. It is useless to pin down his psyche with a choice quotation or two. The man who famously said that "power flows out of the barrel of a gun" has also been reported as saying that it is "a mistake to believe that weapons decide everything". Above all -- in Phillip Short's excellent biography -- Mao comes across as a man of contradictions. He saw the world in dialectical, yin-yang terms. One feels, almost, that the great turmoils he unleashed were his way of ensuring that the great proletarian revolution remained permanant and forever dialectical and always violent. Stasis would be bad for China. To those brought up under a western-inspired education system and world-view, Mao seems like a capricious crank, a heartless monster. In Philip Short's treatment, however, Mao displays a preternatural sense of nuance and subtlety of thought, and a finely-honed sense of brinkmanship (as in the Cultural Revolution where he let loose the forces of revolution upon the Party itself). And what of his legacy ? Short argues that an important distinction needs to be made between Mao and the other dictators: The overwhelming majority of deaths under his rule were the unintended consequence of policies, not the deliberate genocide of a class of people (like the Jews or the Kulaks). Mao's cavalier attitude towards deaths on a massive scale is acknowledged. To Mao, a million deaths is merely a part of the dialectics of revolution. In this sense he was indeed a monster. Today China is a capitalist country in all but name. I think Mao would have seen this as a natural state of affairs, given the contradictions inherent in world history.If he were to come back from the grave, he would judge that the time is now ripe for him to unleash another great upheaval. Capitalist stasis is also not good !

Few have had so much influence on the lives of so many people. Who was this man? It is impossible to answer that question without knowing something about China. Mao was an emperor. It is no secret that Mao patterned himself after the Qin emperor. Like the Qin emperor, he despised Confucius. And like the Qin Emperor, he was ruthless in the implementation of his vision for China. Mao was so full of contradictions which seemed somehow to make sense. His rhetoric seemed to indicate a disregard for the common people, yet as a revolutionary, he treated peasants well, to win their support. He governed a party structure that was almost Puritanical in it's expectations, yet he lived a profoundly promiscuous life. Lord Acton said that, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." I believe that this is key to understanding what happened to Mao. To be sure, Mao had some pretty wacky ideas from the very beginning. But he seemed to deteriorate as his power increased. One of the main problems with the early Communist party is that there was no way to balance power. Mao saw to this, but the Party allowed him to. This book does an excellent job of demonstrating the steady downward pattern of this sickness. It culminated in the Cultural Revolution, and the defining moment is the point where Liu Shao Qi, the president of China, comes to Mao, who has no power, but has used his status as a cultural icon to destroy the country, and literally overthrow the government. Liu literally begs for his life. He asks to be allowed to leave government and return to his home community. What unearthly cowardice would bring the president of any country to the place where he would have to beg for his life from someone who wasn't even in a legitimate position of authority? This, more than any other phenomenon, illustrates the weakness of the party structure. Mao's response to Liu was terse, "Take care o f yourself." A few days later, Liu's phone line was cut; shortly afterward he was placed in solitary confinement to begin a time of imprisonment that would end in his death when he was refused proper medical treatment. But I don't want to ramble on about Mao. What I want to do, briefly, is to point out what I feel are the unique strengths of this book" 1. It is well researched and well documented. The first thing you will notice about this book is the scholarly manner in which it is put together. 2. This book gives the best analysis of the Korean War that I have read. It lets you see the road to war and the development of the conflict from the Chinese-Soviet-North Korean side of the conflict. 3. It is objective. There are two kinds of personalities, simple and complex. Mao was a complex personality. Deng Xiao-ping was much simpler. (I am talking about personality, now, not intellect.) Because of the complex nature of Mao's personality, it is very hard to deal with him objectively. Philip Short does an excellent job of l

Mao Zedong. Love him or hate him, he is inarguably one of the greatest men of the twentieth century. His ideas and vision, whims and passions directly impacted nearly a quarter of humanity and nations far beyond. If you totally love and idolize him (like many Chinese over fifty), hate or vilify him (as many similarly aged Westerners do) or follow one of the more pragmatic formulations; seventy percent right, thirty percent wrong (current official Party policy) or believe he was good before 1956, but the last twenty years of his life were damaging to China (the formula I personally hold to), Philip Short's rendering of Mao's life is a fascinating read, at times difficult to put down. I have not seen a work on Mao (and I have read many) as well balanced as Short's. He crafts Mao as a very human individual, crafted and shaped by events around him. Short portrays Mao in his youth as a patriotic individual pained at seeing foreigners running rampant through his own country. Short spends a lot of time looking into oft overlooked parts of Mao's life: his childhood and youth. Understanding this helps one to understand the man Mao became. If you are interested in the history of modern China, or you are simply interested in studying the great men of the twentieth century (i.e. Churchill and Stalin, Roosevelt and Hitler), Mao: A Life is a highly recommended read with much to offer. You will not come out of it feeling quite the same about arguably the most important man of the twentieth century.

An excellent account of Mao's early life, indoctrination into Marxism, early role in Chinese politics and then gradually his rise to power in the Chinese Communist Party. His encirclement campaigns against Chiang-Kai-Shek's Kuomingdang battalions, and the early years of turbulence in Chinese politics is so very well illustrated and exemplified. Moreover, two of his biggest blunders, the GREAT LEAP FOWARD and CULTURAL REVOLUTION in which more than 10-15 million Chinese civilians, peasants, workers and CCP party workers were purged are explained in an outstanding fashion. Though a ruthless man, yet his knack for poetry, philosophy and political strategy planning prepared him to become one of the greatest political icons of the 20th century. A must read for anyone who wonders HOW one man changed the fate of the most populous nation in the world, converting it from an utterly impoverished nation to one of the strongest super-powers of the current period. 5 stars in all! Subhasish Ghosh St. Cross College, University of Oxford

From an affluent peasant's home in Hunan, and the rote learning of rural schools in early 20th century China, Mao Zedong becomes the most powerful man in Chinese history, leading an army of millions to revolutionary triumph. Besides a portrait of Mao, this is a wonderful survey of seven decades of Chinese history. One marvels at the wide epic sweep of events, from the "coolie" revolts of Mao's youth, to mass "struggles" in which the very top Communist leaders are subjected to humiliating public beatings. Mao himself emerges as a supremely contradictory figure, a romantic revolutionary, a poet and military genius who is ruthless and cold-blooded once he gets hold of power. The many gripping and tragic events of Mao's rise from rural backwater to totalitarian leader are related here: from the heroic drama of The Long March, to the excesses of the Cultural Revoultion. Short is a serious researcher, and a wonderful story-teller with an eye for the absurb, and this book very smartly carves out a path between the popular and the academic. For students of the Left, this is a must read, along with Jon Lee Anderson's equally gripping "Che: A Revolutionary Life."