Mao: the never ending story

This book – a monumental result of 10 years of patient and painstaking research – has yielded some sensational findings about Mao. It is the strongest indictment of Mao made in English or Chinese. If much of the story may not be unknown to ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party, they, on the whole, prefer not to speak. For the ordinary Chinese, as Jung Chang herself observes, the desire to vent pent up anger and speak out about Mao Zedong is as strong as Chinese felt 2000 years ago about the first Chinese emperor, Chin Shih-huang. It was said of Chin Shih-huang’s rule that "the Chinese felt very angry but dared not speak their anger!" Mao’s regime seems to have produced a similar result.

Mao: The unknown story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday is published in the United States this week.

Mao was a complex personality and a formidable figure. Mao: The unknown story is also formidable: it is an indictment not only of Mao but of the entire Communist movement in China. This is not so much an unknown as an untold story.

The authors make an impressive team. Jung Chang has the advantage of being the daughter of a senior member of the Chinese Communist party and, having been a Red Guard for some years, she can claim wide access even to difficult Chinese sources. She has used all her advantage to harvest a great deal of material that resounds to Mao’s discredit, including the lost poems of Mao's first love – his second wife, Yang Kai-hui. Complementing Jung Chang’s Chinese access is her husband Jon Halliday’s expertise as a historian and, more importantly, his knowledge of Russian, which gave him good access to those Russian sources which are vital for an understanding of the history of Communist China.

This biography is virtually a new text book of modern Chinese history. For some, its clear anti-Mao bias may detract from its value as objective history. The authors devote more time and space to Mao’s early life (before the Communist victory in 1949). As to later events, they seem to accept most of the official versions of later incidents, including the mysterious death of Lin Biao in 1971 and the return to power of Deng Xiaoping.

Mao was a deadly enemy who systematically destroyed his rivals, which means that the official story of Lin Biao’s attempt to escape must be subject to some doubts. It is this: that Mao himself knew of Lin Biao’s plans and, on a visit to Shanghai, Mao suddenly ordered his train to return to Beijing, a change of plans that surprised even his faithful prime minister Zhou En-lai. Back in Beijing, Mao listened calmly to Zhou En-lai’s account of Lin Biao’s escape attempt and his death, only observing, "Let him go. One can not stop the rain or bride going to her wedding". As an account, it all seems rather unrealistic and suggests that, while the author’s informants would speak about the distant past, nobody seemed willing to talk of recent history or the fact that Lin Biao had become Mao’s greatest threat and Mao was evidently worried.

The Chinese and Soviet Party archives certainly contain material which will either give more support to the authors’ version of history or, perhaps, tell a totally different story. Jon Halliday has written a good historical reconstruction that relates both to international events and to domestic policies. It is an objective effort that benefits from his sound historical acumen, but in the real world history is often made by tentative, irrelevant and subjective considerations.

Witnesses do not often tell the whole truth. One incident of which I have some personal knowledge is Anastas Mikoyan’s secret visit to China in January 1949, eight months before the Communists finally came to power in China. The authors have referred to this visit, but seem to have misread its main purpose. A good source told me that Stalin had sent Mikoyan to Mao to ensure that Zhou En-lai would be appointed prime minister in the new government. Stalin was aware of Mao’s hostility to Zhou and feared that Zhou, whom Moscow favoured, might not make it.

There might be other such details which have escaped the authors in, for example, the linked episodes of the death of Lin Biao and the return of Deng Xiaoping. Both Mao and Zhou wanted Deng to return after the Lin Biao incident but each had different reasons: Zhou wanted him as an able supporter; Mao wanted him to counterbalance Zhou.

The book deals well with the uneasy relationship between Mao and Zhou, the two men at the heart of the Chinese Communist state from 1949 until their respective deaths in the mid seventies. This account brings out their contrasting characters: the slender, selfless, urbane, idealistic disciplined party worker, Zhou En-lai, pitched against the hefty, rustic, foul-mouthed, self-centred Kulak and heartless, reckless rebel, Mao Zedong. It is an unequal fight and Mao won hands down, dragging Zhou into abject slavery in his final years through virtual blackmail. Zhou emerges as a weak and tragic figure with little strength or will left to resist, Mao as a ruthless tyrant who forgets nothing and forgives no one. Mao snubbed and humiliated Zhou, forcing him to commit many unconscionable crimes (which included putting people to death) while himself maintaining his self-propagated image as "a benign and always correct, wise leader". In fact, he was neither benign, wise or correct. Amongst other crimes, Mao’s total ignorance of economics resulted in the starvation and death of millions of Chinese. But Mao was a clever PR man who gave currency to his cult of personality and his image of benign and correct leadership by rewriting Party history and slandering earlier leaders.

Despite Mao’s faults, he deserves credit for standing up to Stalin and the Russian leadership and making them see the errors of their China policy. He also won a marked victory over the power-greedy US president, Richard Nixon and his fawning, unscrupulous secretary, Henry Kissinger, and succeeded in re-establishing China’s international stature. Neither Sun Yat-sen or Chiang Kai-shek could match Mao’s political skill and cunning in this.

Two of Mao’s contemporaries have summarized Mao in two sentences and the book illustrates the two points well. Mao’s long time Russian interpreter-cum-secretary, Shih Che once told me that Mao did not trust anyone. And young Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang of Xi’an fame once aptly commented "Mao knew well how to use people (for his own ends)". Mao trusted no one, not his women, his party colleagues or his family members. He used all of them for pleasure or power and then threw them away with equal unconcern when they ceased to be useful to him. That was the secret of Mao's success – trust no one but use everyone. It is a truth well illustrated by this book.