My first post on Mao was too much, I realize. I cannot finish the detailed summary of Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. Some summary thoughts will let me put the whole idea to rest:
a. Mao was not heroic at all. His behavior in the Long March, his terrorizing tactics at the Red Base (with self-criticisms and public denunciations), his incessant practice of falsely accusing and disposing of any who resisted his will - all have been "touched up," re-worked, or even totally rewritten in official Chinese history (and what the government tells the West) to make Mao seem heroic.
b. Mao wanted to dominate the world by himself. He deprived his own people of basic necessities for years through a system of taxation that involved fraudulent and thuggish tactics in most all Chinese provinces. His basic goal was to get his people to live on slimmer resources so that more and more resources could be used to purchase and develop the trappings of a superpower nation - atomic bombs, an air force, a space program, etc.
c. When Mao's health took a sudden downturn, he insisted that his nation's nuclear developments reach their goals much quicker than projected. He wanted to see it with his eyes and have that power at his disposal. He did not care in the least about the state of the nation after his death (or about the tens of millions of Chinese citizens who died in privation as part of Mao's ambitious pursuits). A couple of months ago a news report about Kim Jong-Il's health scare and his country's redoubled efforts to perfect their nuclear capabilities - these reminded me of Mao's intense drive to obtain full nuclear capability before his own death. Of course, recent reports claim that North Korea has halted its nuclear program (good news for the whole world).
d. Mao supplied tens of thousands of troops to North Korea and covertly managed the Korean war through his top officials. The books quotes Mao expressing his hope to grind the US military out of superpower status by sheer strength of numbers. I'm not looking at the book now, but I seem to remember that the authors claim Mao was responsible for starting and drawing out the Korean War. I think the authors did not claim nearly as much about Mao's role in the Vietnam War.
If you've read all this and find it interesting, I'd recommend you read the book, but read it with a high view of human dignity and justice firmly established in your own mind. The authors relay the inhumane tactics Mao used to get to the zenith and remain there. What I was taught about the history of the 20th century seems far from complete without this book's contribution. It opened my eyes.
3 comments:
I found your summary and thoughts on the book helpful. I plan to get to this book at some point in the future. For now I will rely on your thoughts and reflections on the book to satiate my desire to read the book.
You mentioned this book helping to provide a complete knowledge of the 20th century. In addition to that knowledge, I would recommend a horribly difficult book to read that was almost tucked away out of 20th century history - Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking.
Thanks for the encouragement to read the book...but thanks more for reading it for me! I do appreciate your summary. It shaped my view of 20th century history.
When I read that John Mark had posted, I laughed at the first sentence, because I thought that you were posting a compliment to your own post. Then I realized that it's the other John Mark.
What other books have shaped your view of 20th century history? Any stand out?
Ben - a few sources have shaped my views of the 20th century more than my public school education. One source was a class with Richard Land (just hearing him reflect on several decades of politics); another was Boyer's book "When Time Shall Be No More" that documents (among other things) Zionism among evangelicals; another has been the presidential documentaries that PBS runs on many Mondays; another was a large biography of LBJ that I read in college; I might even add that "All the President's Men" was my first exposure to Watergate. Beyond that, my dad watched countless WW II documentaries when I was a boy. I have David McCullough's Truman on my shelf, hoping to read it in the near future, as well as Andrew Roberts' History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 (following Churchill's series).
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