Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's 'Mao: The Unknown Story': An In-Depth Exploration of the Life and Legacy of Mao Zedong

Jankowski, Marianne: Was man liest, ist z. T. kaum zu ertragen, aber die Quellen sind offenbar völlig verlässlich. Selbst heute müssen noch Zeitzeugen leben. Ein Kritiker nennt es `a bombshell of a book'! Und wirklich, man fühlt sich nach der Lektüre einiger Passagen fast körperlich verwundet.

Germany on Sep 04, 2023

L: Ouvrage remarquable confirmant les travaux de Simon Leys, la bête noire de la presse bien pensante aux ordres comme libération ou le monde. Simon Leys a chèrement payé son intégrité, puisque le CNRS, repère de gauchistes, a refusé son recrutement pour des raisons purement idéologiques.

France on Aug 29, 2023

John Ferngrove: I knew terrible things had happened under Mao's rule, but until reading this book had presumed they were the consequences of ideological mismanagement rather than calculated terrorism on a near semi-global scale. The picture painted by these authors however, is of a tyrant totally corrupt and supremely cynical from the very start of his career. They describe Mao as a man with no shred of care or affection for anyone outside himself; a psychopath's psychopath; consuming everyone and everything that came into his orbit. While reading I found myself asking if this dreadful man could have been so truly this evil and manipulative right from the very beginning of his ascendency? Had he not, like so many others, started out as a revolutionary idealist who was gradually absolutely corrupted by absolute power? If Jung Chang's version of events is to believed then the answer is an unambivalent no.

This presents a quandary for a general reader like myself, because the only way I can assess this version is by reading other authors, and making painstaking comparisons, insofar as I feel impelled to pursue the topic. It occurs to me that it is less than 40 years since Mao's demise, but he...

United Kingdom on Jul 21, 2014

J. Duducu: This seems to be a book where you either love it or hate it. I guess if you want a dry account about the rise of communism in China then look else where, perhaps do a PhD on the subject but I actually wanted to read a book that was well written and I wasn't disappointed.

To challenge some of the complaints against the book, actually no most people don't know Mao was "evil". If anyone knows anything about him they probably think he "helped" modernise China. He isn't seen as the cold hearted dictator who didn't have a problem seeing millions of his own people starve to death under his regime. Indeed before I read this I thought the cultural revolution was just that rather than a Stalinist style purge.

The sheen of respectability modern China has created and the fact that they do owe it all to Mao means that very few people care to point the rather brutal facts that Mao killed more people than anyone else in history and the vast majority of his "struggles" were made up propaganda. I think the elder statesmen known this but are forced to continue the lie but that means there are billions out there who still see him as a "great leader".

The fact that this book does...

United Kingdom on Mar 11, 2008

G. B. Talovich: I arrived in Taiwan to learn Chinese on the very day that Lin Biao's plane crashed in Mongolia. I did my undergrad and graduate work here; nobody expected Taiwan to last that long. My interests are in Bronze Age China, so I am not an expert on modern history. However, I have translated documents from both the PRC and ROC governments, and have known so many people who have lived through the events described in this book that I am familiar with the period. I felt many parts were out of kilter. Chang and Halliday truly tell the unknown story, and straighten out the history.

For example, the relationship between Chiang Kai Shek and Chiang Chingkuo never made sense before; now we see. Edgar Snow's descriptions of Mao always sounded like a junior high school boy talking about the pretty girl in the next class. I love the way they call him "Mao's American spokesman."

My experience has been that Chinese are extremely reasonable, but during the Cultural Revolution, it seemed that the whole country went crazy. That has always puzzled me. Reading this book, I suspect that they were reacting against the terror and starvation inflicted by Mao.

There are plenty of shockers....

United States on May 08, 2006

Gene Zafrin: Among the book's many themes, two appear particularly distressing: the degree of Mao's disregard for human life and suffering and the extent to which he was a product of the Soviet Russia.

Marxism was perfectly suited for Mao: it justified constant war based on the theory of inevitable class struggle. As did the rulers in the Soviet Russia, Mao just labeled many of his adversaries members of a group that was declared an enemy of the people, and killed them. Early on, he showed a penchant for violence: in 1920s he personally approved various forms of torture. In 1930, in one Mao-occupied county alone there were 120 kinds of torture. The hysterical rallies and "thought examination" were a personal touch that Mao introduced in the 1940s into the practice of dictatorship. Just as in the Soviet Russia, in China oftentimes people were killed according to a quota imposed by the Communist Party. For example, in 1948, the CCP declared that 10% of the population were evil landlords, or kulaks. During the Great Leap Forward, torture and violent murder was widespread as a punishment reserved for the starved people "stealing" food. To the tens of millions who died from famine and...

United States on May 03, 2006

Poldy: To the outside world, Mao was another charismatic, ideological leader, like Stalin and Hitler. The truth, as usual, is far more complicated and bizarre, not to say appalling. Unlike his fellow murderous ideologues, Mao actually had no real interest or belief in the ideology he espoused: his interest was simply in whatever would grant him more power and cement his position as leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and, he intended and schemed, eventually the entire world.
Mao's Communists seized power from Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists, a change of rule which most of the population greeted with enthusiasm, believing as many did that Chiang's government was corrupt and power-hungry. From the moment he assumed power right up until his death, Mao was interested in one thing, and one thing only: keeping hold of power.
How he did this makes fascinating and often uncomfortable reading. Although he himself had been born a peasant, he had no interest in the welfare of the peasantry of his country, often telling his closest associates that a few million deaths meant little. As a way of maintaining power, Mao had the dream of gaining nuclear weapons. In what must be a manoeuvre...

United Kingdom on Jun 17, 2005