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Penguin Lives
Mao Zedong
A renowned expert on Chinese history turns his considerable talent and experience to the life of China's greatest modern leader--the enigmatic, mythologized, often maligned, and still-revered architect of Chinese Communism and the modern Chinese state.
208 pages, Hardcover
Published October 1, 1999
About the author
Jonathan D. Spence
57 books289 followersJonathan D. Spence is a historian specializing in Chinese history. His self-selected Chinese name is Shǐ Jǐngqiān (simplified Chinese: 史景迁; traditional Chinese: 史景遷), which roughly translates to "A historian who admires Sima Qian."
He has been Sterling Professor of History at Yale University since 1993. His most famous book is The Search for Modern China, which has become one of the standard texts on the last several hundred years of Chinese history.
He has been Sterling Professor of History at Yale University since 1993. His most famous book is The Search for Modern China, which has become one of the standard texts on the last several hundred years of Chinese history.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 138 reviews
February 19, 2011
A brief and not at all sensational account of Chairman Mao. Meaning, it does not address any of the sensational aspects of Mao's personality (such as Mao's physician did) or dwell on the disasters of the Cultural Revolution of of the Great Leap Forward or get into the whys and wherefores of Mao's (manipulative) relationship with Lin Biao, Liu Shao Qi or Zhou Enlai. Instead, it is a "straight up" account of Mao's life and succeeds I think in communicating the essentials of these without getting into any detail about those other, polemical issues. I think it well worth reading in addition to -- any part of a very broad spectrum of books.
October 30, 2010
This was no deep look into the trivial doings of Mao, but rather a synopsis of his life. I found it to be absolutely perfect for what it was. The details all seemed to be on the same plane: no sudden dips down into minutia, unmatched elsewhere. Likewise, no skipping over the surface to cover great gulfs of time in only a few pages. No doubt the end lacked depth but the author certainly made a good case for they why: Mao's personal journey having been mostly completed and no events were happening to him instead of emanating from him.
If someone wishes a quick summary, just under 200 pages, of a man that has defined a country for generations this is wonderful pick. It does provide insight into the man along with giving an account of the history of his time. Being someone who knew only as much as I could remember from my Asian history lessons out of mediocre text books, I did not feel lost at all. This is a well written, concise book that does exactly what it sets out to.
If someone wishes a quick summary, just under 200 pages, of a man that has defined a country for generations this is wonderful pick. It does provide insight into the man along with giving an account of the history of his time. Being someone who knew only as much as I could remember from my Asian history lessons out of mediocre text books, I did not feel lost at all. This is a well written, concise book that does exactly what it sets out to.
Want to read
December 13, 2021
A LIFE, HUH？
July 26, 2009
This is a good quick read for someone who interested in the way Mao created a public personality and clung to failing policies despite some evidence of his own doubt and criticism from others. His journey from a child born in a peasant village who was quick to follow the winds of radical movements and read subversive newspapers as a youth to an isolated older man that imposed radical policies rooted in lofty aphorisms and who was paranoid of dissent from intellectuals and students much like himself when he was a youth. I wish this book had gone more into depth about how his conflict with chiang kai shek or the Chinese civil war. I wondered while reading the book if Mao's experience with the several deaths of his children in their infancy and detachment from then influenced his apathy towards the suffering of the people for the sake of revolution.
On another note there was some amusing trivia such as his quote to Peng Dehuai "if your not going to shit then get off the pot!"
What my father had told me about his life began to come together such as in in hundred blossoming flowers speech in 1957 which is when my father recalled Mao encouraging dissent with the dissenters promptly being punished for speaking out against Mao. My father's cousin committed suicide after speaking out in this period. My father called it "luring the snake out of the hole".
On another note there was some amusing trivia such as his quote to Peng Dehuai "if your not going to shit then get off the pot!"
What my father had told me about his life began to come together such as in in hundred blossoming flowers speech in 1957 which is when my father recalled Mao encouraging dissent with the dissenters promptly being punished for speaking out against Mao. My father's cousin committed suicide after speaking out in this period. My father called it "luring the snake out of the hole".
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 22, 2020
Out of the Canon of literature on Mao, there is a surprising lack of decent, objective biographies. Expecting no less from Jonathan D Spence, this biography is highly readable, informative and contains the key chapters of his life. The only snag is its a bit too concise.
Having said that, containing every chapter of Mao Zedong's long and highly consequential life, and a key strength is that this pays more attention to his early years. One gets a feeling of the early career steps, and the events and currents of thought that created Mao's worldview.
The part concerning the Jiangxi Soviet is rather too short, and seems confused as the author seems to almost overlook the founding of the PLA, or at least doesn't place it at the very famous dating of August 1st 1927.
Having said all this, these are all very small detractions on what is a highly readable account of Mao's life, and as such, should really be treated as a primer on Mao Zedong. Those wishing to read further should check out Alexander Pantsov's excellent Mao: The Real Story along with Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China.
Still, this is all the thing's that matter on Mao, in a day's reading, and a highly readable read it is.
Having said that, containing every chapter of Mao Zedong's long and highly consequential life, and a key strength is that this pays more attention to his early years. One gets a feeling of the early career steps, and the events and currents of thought that created Mao's worldview.
The part concerning the Jiangxi Soviet is rather too short, and seems confused as the author seems to almost overlook the founding of the PLA, or at least doesn't place it at the very famous dating of August 1st 1927.
Having said all this, these are all very small detractions on what is a highly readable account of Mao's life, and as such, should really be treated as a primer on Mao Zedong. Those wishing to read further should check out Alexander Pantsov's excellent Mao: The Real Story along with Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China.
Still, this is all the thing's that matter on Mao, in a day's reading, and a highly readable read it is.
July 23, 2024
Short, but informative biography of Mao. It's not as detailed as full-fledged biography, but it got all the important things out imo. I would say there are three big stages of Mao's life, his time as a student/upcoming revolutionary during the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and the chaos in China afterwards, his time as a military leader during the Chinese Civil War/WW2 and his time as the leader of Communist China.
Personality-wise, he was bold, committed to his idea of revolution and stubborn. Those traits made him a great military leader during the war but made him a bad peacetime leader. The stories about the buildup to the Great Leap Forward are frustrating and sad; he was constantly warned that the reforms he was proposing would lead to disaster and he responded by lashing out. He really buried his hand in the sand as he got older, leading to more and more crackpot ideas that no one could criticize without being ruined. His personal life was also rather messy, lots of affairs and leaving one partner for another.
Overall, it's a sad life of someone who started as an ambitious, talented leader, but ended as a dictator whose stubbornness ruined his legacy and his country.
Quotes
The ground was being laid for a new kind of division within the Party, one that pitted those who were truly “red”—the believers in Mao’s thought and the purifying power of trusting the masses—against those who based their prestige and policies on their specific expertise, whether that lay in precise economic planning, advanced education, or mastery of bureaucratic procedures.
They should never forget that “books cannot walk, and you can open and close a book at will; this is the easiest thing in the world to do, a great deal easier than it is for the cook to prepare a meal, and much easier than it is for him to slaughter a pig.”
There Mao had written: “From Lake Dongting to the Min River, the tide rides ever higher. Heaven and earth are aroused by it, the wicked are put to flight by it. Ha! We know it! We are awakened! The world is ours, the state is ours, society is ours. If we do not speak, who will speak? If we do not act, who will act? We must act energetically to carry out the great union of the popular masses, which will not brook a moment’s delay!”
Personality-wise, he was bold, committed to his idea of revolution and stubborn. Those traits made him a great military leader during the war but made him a bad peacetime leader. The stories about the buildup to the Great Leap Forward are frustrating and sad; he was constantly warned that the reforms he was proposing would lead to disaster and he responded by lashing out. He really buried his hand in the sand as he got older, leading to more and more crackpot ideas that no one could criticize without being ruined. His personal life was also rather messy, lots of affairs and leaving one partner for another.
Overall, it's a sad life of someone who started as an ambitious, talented leader, but ended as a dictator whose stubbornness ruined his legacy and his country.
Quotes
The ground was being laid for a new kind of division within the Party, one that pitted those who were truly “red”—the believers in Mao’s thought and the purifying power of trusting the masses—against those who based their prestige and policies on their specific expertise, whether that lay in precise economic planning, advanced education, or mastery of bureaucratic procedures.
They should never forget that “books cannot walk, and you can open and close a book at will; this is the easiest thing in the world to do, a great deal easier than it is for the cook to prepare a meal, and much easier than it is for him to slaughter a pig.”
There Mao had written: “From Lake Dongting to the Min River, the tide rides ever higher. Heaven and earth are aroused by it, the wicked are put to flight by it. Ha! We know it! We are awakened! The world is ours, the state is ours, society is ours. If we do not speak, who will speak? If we do not act, who will act? We must act energetically to carry out the great union of the popular masses, which will not brook a moment’s delay!”
October 13, 2022
This was a perfect little look at Mao. I man I knew very little about but now.... amazed by his destructive influence. I have read a lot of dictator books. And they are... all very similar.
Do something awesome for your people, do some terrible people to your people, get old and insane and ride the sweet coat tails of that one good thing you did and the terror you instilled in your people afterwards.
not a fan.
Do something awesome for your people, do some terrible people to your people, get old and insane and ride the sweet coat tails of that one good thing you did and the terror you instilled in your people afterwards.
not a fan.
May 15, 2013
Jonathan Spence's biography of Mao is concise yet revealing and detailed at the same time. Spence uses social, political, intellectual, and cultural history to provide good background information to Mao's life and also to explain the impacts of his policies. Spence is a fine historian. He admits when we simply lack enough documented evidence to support a claim or not. When we don't know enough about why Mao made a certain decision or not, Spence mentions this lack of evidence, fair and square. At times he does make the leap of guesswork, but at least he uses the phrases "probably," "could have," and "may have" with honesty. Despite being concise and accessible to a general audience, Spence does show himself to be a good scholar and talks a little about the documents he uses to deduce some of his conclusions about Mao. His main contention appears to be that as Mao took on more responsibilities and tasks of state, party, and military leadership and management, he became increasingly isolated from diverse outside contacts and that this caused him to become ever more confident in his ideological convictions. Spence is in the more recent camp of scholars who try to view Mao more "objectively" and distantly, but he still uses the rhetoric of the liberal camp of critics of Mao and shows that he comes from that ideological background. All-in-all, this book is a fine introduction to Mao's life in short, easy-to-read prose. Spence also happens to be a great writer in general and is fun to read.
November 17, 2022
Buena biografía de uno de una de las personas más influyentes y polémicas de la historia de la humanidad. Mao supera a Hitler y a Stalin en cuanto a número de muertos y, a pesar de que al final de la Revolución Cultural admite su culpa y que la cosa se le fue de las manos, debido a que la propia población actuó violentamente contra los "enemigos" del Estado, su credibilidad no es muy alta debido a que él mismo fue el instigador y, aunque dicha Revolución se dio sin él en política, no cabe duda de que su poder e influencia eran enormes. Asimismo, a parte de los aspectos negativos en política, también los hay en su vida privada y personal, sin embargo, creo que también podemos destacar puntos positivos de su vida: Mao era un gran aficionado a la natación y a la lectura, así como también se trató de una persona inquieta en cuanto a transmitir conocimientos, a la par que en su juventud también daba largos paseos con amigos por la naturaleza, aprovechando estos momentos para discutir entre ellos asuntos sociales y políticos y, por último, también considero admirables su oposición y lucha contra un sistema injusto en una atmósfera de opresión y muerte.
¿Por qué destaco también lo postivo? (lo mismo hice al leer "Mein Kampf), pues porque creo que de todo el mundo podemos aprender algo positivo y no debemos dejar que lo oscuro nuble nuestro conocimiento.
Por último, hay que decir que en la biografía, en algunos puntos hay un claro sesgo anti-Mao, algo que no me gustó, pues considero que el texto debe ser imparcial, pero aún así pienso que es buena.
¿Por qué destaco también lo postivo? (lo mismo hice al leer "Mein Kampf), pues porque creo que de todo el mundo podemos aprender algo positivo y no debemos dejar que lo oscuro nuble nuestro conocimiento.
Por último, hay que decir que en la biografía, en algunos puntos hay un claro sesgo anti-Mao, algo que no me gustó, pues considero que el texto debe ser imparcial, pero aún así pienso que es buena.
November 13, 2018
The author doesn't wander himself into Mao’s ideological maze and his mysterious motives. He doesn’t condemn or praises Mao’s political journey. Amid authors whom demonize and over analyze psychologically, to the point of conspiracy theories, other world leaders, this author just gives headlines. Which sometimes were not certainly interesting and captivating for me. He almost makes it seem that, despite the huge state he lead, he was a simple human being, who lived in a cave once.
How many of us knew this fact before? Or that he never visited any other country except the Soviet Union? That he wrote romantic poems and was married to an actress among others? Or that he was convinced that his sleep followed lunar phases? These are definitely exotic facts. But not satisfying enough for a student or any other engaged reader.
This book is a good start but it should be followed by more research on, maybe most importantly, the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.
How many of us knew this fact before? Or that he never visited any other country except the Soviet Union? That he wrote romantic poems and was married to an actress among others? Or that he was convinced that his sleep followed lunar phases? These are definitely exotic facts. But not satisfying enough for a student or any other engaged reader.
This book is a good start but it should be followed by more research on, maybe most importantly, the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.
February 4, 2017
History is not really my favorite subject but finally I finished read this one. The brief biography of Mao Ze Dong tells the overview of his life and what happening in the China at that period. The book provides detail about Mao’s earlier life. Mao had struggle so often against the autocratic nature of his father, hated and despised the shackles of bourgeois marriage and had found joy in a free-love relationship, detest schools and would rather go to the libraries to seek classical and historian reference, and always sought freedom of spirit and the chance to grow. The book also leading to the long years Mao took of war, which emerged strengthened and more numerous, with powerfully effective techniques of mass mobilization in the rural settings and genuine skill at the manipulation of belief through well-conceptualized propaganda.
May 11, 2014
I actually used an old audio tape while driving. Shows you the kind of stuff I listen to.
A fair, even-handed biography. Very thorough. What a catastrophic failure Maoism was. How does it happen? Part of it is losing touch with reality. Part of it is a fear of being overthrown. Part of it is believing so much in a philosophy that all discussion goes out the door. He was willing to destroy all of the historical buildings in Beijing and would rather have had all smokestacks. So he nixed a plan to have the greatest park system in the world for workers.
At least "20 million people died" in the Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution. Enough said.
A fair, even-handed biography. Very thorough. What a catastrophic failure Maoism was. How does it happen? Part of it is losing touch with reality. Part of it is a fear of being overthrown. Part of it is believing so much in a philosophy that all discussion goes out the door. He was willing to destroy all of the historical buildings in Beijing and would rather have had all smokestacks. So he nixed a plan to have the greatest park system in the world for workers.
At least "20 million people died" in the Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution. Enough said.
May 25, 2016
For those looking for a short introduction into the life of Chairman Mao Zedong, this is a perfect book. Although it is true that others have gone more in depth, for a person who is just reading for a simple understanding of his life it gives the information that helps you understand the revolution leading to the current state of The People's Republic of China, changing from their empire to their Nationalist Government to the communist government today. Spence describes his life from his beginnings to today.
June 18, 2018
An excellent short biography that does exactly what it sets out to do: provide an introduction to an important person, with lots of suggestions of where to find more detailed information.
July 31, 2021
It is almost impossible to definitively explain Mao. Maoist thought is almost as complicated as the complex life that he lived. Depending on who penned the biography, in this case a western intellectual (the type that Mao always hated), it is always imperative to take careful consideration into the point of view of the biographer when indulging in such a revolutionary. Most westerners judge Mao based on the political activities in his later life. Making him well hated in almost every camp. Including radicals, liberals, and right wingers. Political thought does not just happen through one singular event. It is an evolving process. Just the same as the life you live.
The first thing that struck me about Mao, besides his humble beginnings in a peasant family, was his choice as a young man to delve deep into Chinese history. It was this decision, just as much as the chaotic world around him, that shaped his political ideology. He was almost digging a well with history. Jonathan spence takes the reader in these first few chapters into the mind of a man who is determined to see just how far he could uncover in his own research of his country's past. Even go back so far to the earliest known ancient dynasties. In order to understand his own present political dilemma he knew he had to trace the root of the prolem.
The book jumps around quite frequently from page to page. You can read that the year is 1925 then the next page is 1927. Then only a few pages later we are back to 1925 again. Spence's account reads more like a rough overview than an indepth biography. Reading like a 178 page article than an actual book. At first, we see a man who balanced passionate activity with incredible intellect. The lengthy days of study, jumping from school to school. Determined to make himself educated. Organizing strikes, opening a bookstore, and joining the first meetings of the Chinese Communist Party. Somehow balancing all this with relentless energy and discipline. The rural working class suffering stcuk with him through all his years. And it was this demographic, this so called "peasantry", that he would keep returning to again and again. All of this acivity in his young life was in orbit with the downfall of the Qing Dynasty, the occupation of British Colonial territory, the occupation and invasion of Japan, and the rise of the quickly evolving rightist faction of the Guomingdang.
We swiftly dive into the Northern Expedition followed by the Long March. It has no doubt baffled leftists and military historians alike just how the Red Army was to forego, let alone become victorious in the Long March. This period of history is riddled with Mao's fathering of children and his disastrous outcome with domestic relationships. At a glance, he loved the women he was with until it suited him not. To be fair to Mao, many of his children died before he even reached the age of 50 due to circumstances beyond his control. But it is this period that is what is so frustrating about the book. The history of the Long March is almost like skim reading. Spence gets us to the end when Mao is living in a cave on the north western border of China. In isolation and a sort of self imposed autodidactic study. And it is here where he cultivates his "Maoist Thought". Spence does not really provide illumination on Maoist Thought but gives the reader mere glimpses. When Mao finally rises to power as Chairman Mao, this is when Jonathan Spence trully reveals his attitude toward Mao.
Mao has now changed, or so we read. He becomes increasingly paranoid and more authoritarian. The large Chinese bureacracy starts to develop within the Communist Party. Chaing Kai-Shek has been defeated and is exiled in Taiwan. Jouranlist pulications, news papers, and literary journals are endless in their support of the party. However, Mao has to keep a watchful eye on anyone in the party who seems to be a "capitalist roadster". This goes on for nearly a decade. Meanwhile, the have encated large communes to help with the farming. But none of this delves to deeply into what these collectives and communes did for humanity as opposed to the economics on papers. The reader is at a lost as to what happened. THere is a short briefing on the Great Leap. Only eluding to the hardship and starvation. Finally, comes the Cultural Revolution. It is here where Spence writes with enthusiasim about what the Red Guard did to the Chinese people. As well as what they did to themselves. Finallly, Mao is left in a slow decline of health until his death.
I would say this is a great introduction but nothing more. I could not tell where Jonathan Spence fell politically. And writing objectively about politics is the worst kind of writing when writing a biography. Why take on such an undertaking of an individual if you were not out to either prove his theories worked, or proved he was a total disaster to humanity? I will say I was inspired by the Chinese Communist Party to have a Central Committee, City Committee, and Provincial Committee. The authoritarinism form the party and Mao himself, is enough to make any leftist throw their hands up in disgust. And maybe that is Jonathan Spence's [oint. To prove that Mao was so anti rightist in the beginning that he eventually swung full circle into becoming an oppressive figure himself.
The first thing that struck me about Mao, besides his humble beginnings in a peasant family, was his choice as a young man to delve deep into Chinese history. It was this decision, just as much as the chaotic world around him, that shaped his political ideology. He was almost digging a well with history. Jonathan spence takes the reader in these first few chapters into the mind of a man who is determined to see just how far he could uncover in his own research of his country's past. Even go back so far to the earliest known ancient dynasties. In order to understand his own present political dilemma he knew he had to trace the root of the prolem.
The book jumps around quite frequently from page to page. You can read that the year is 1925 then the next page is 1927. Then only a few pages later we are back to 1925 again. Spence's account reads more like a rough overview than an indepth biography. Reading like a 178 page article than an actual book. At first, we see a man who balanced passionate activity with incredible intellect. The lengthy days of study, jumping from school to school. Determined to make himself educated. Organizing strikes, opening a bookstore, and joining the first meetings of the Chinese Communist Party. Somehow balancing all this with relentless energy and discipline. The rural working class suffering stcuk with him through all his years. And it was this demographic, this so called "peasantry", that he would keep returning to again and again. All of this acivity in his young life was in orbit with the downfall of the Qing Dynasty, the occupation of British Colonial territory, the occupation and invasion of Japan, and the rise of the quickly evolving rightist faction of the Guomingdang.
We swiftly dive into the Northern Expedition followed by the Long March. It has no doubt baffled leftists and military historians alike just how the Red Army was to forego, let alone become victorious in the Long March. This period of history is riddled with Mao's fathering of children and his disastrous outcome with domestic relationships. At a glance, he loved the women he was with until it suited him not. To be fair to Mao, many of his children died before he even reached the age of 50 due to circumstances beyond his control. But it is this period that is what is so frustrating about the book. The history of the Long March is almost like skim reading. Spence gets us to the end when Mao is living in a cave on the north western border of China. In isolation and a sort of self imposed autodidactic study. And it is here where he cultivates his "Maoist Thought". Spence does not really provide illumination on Maoist Thought but gives the reader mere glimpses. When Mao finally rises to power as Chairman Mao, this is when Jonathan Spence trully reveals his attitude toward Mao.
Mao has now changed, or so we read. He becomes increasingly paranoid and more authoritarian. The large Chinese bureacracy starts to develop within the Communist Party. Chaing Kai-Shek has been defeated and is exiled in Taiwan. Jouranlist pulications, news papers, and literary journals are endless in their support of the party. However, Mao has to keep a watchful eye on anyone in the party who seems to be a "capitalist roadster". This goes on for nearly a decade. Meanwhile, the have encated large communes to help with the farming. But none of this delves to deeply into what these collectives and communes did for humanity as opposed to the economics on papers. The reader is at a lost as to what happened. THere is a short briefing on the Great Leap. Only eluding to the hardship and starvation. Finally, comes the Cultural Revolution. It is here where Spence writes with enthusiasim about what the Red Guard did to the Chinese people. As well as what they did to themselves. Finallly, Mao is left in a slow decline of health until his death.
I would say this is a great introduction but nothing more. I could not tell where Jonathan Spence fell politically. And writing objectively about politics is the worst kind of writing when writing a biography. Why take on such an undertaking of an individual if you were not out to either prove his theories worked, or proved he was a total disaster to humanity? I will say I was inspired by the Chinese Communist Party to have a Central Committee, City Committee, and Provincial Committee. The authoritarinism form the party and Mao himself, is enough to make any leftist throw their hands up in disgust. And maybe that is Jonathan Spence's [oint. To prove that Mao was so anti rightist in the beginning that he eventually swung full circle into becoming an oppressive figure himself.
April 22, 2018
This small book which tries to tell a story about one huge world leader, really helps readers in a sense that you can understand a huge subject with fewer pages. Of course, it needs simplification, and also selection, in order to achieve this goal. A layman about the subject, I find the book helpful in my journey as readers. As I get to understand the subject in a less painful way (you need to sip through a few thick tomes to understand it as a whole).
I find Mao life story, struggle, family life, as interesting, strange, and often paradoxical in many cases. Born in 1893 at Hunan, he moved from being a librarian to the chairman of communist China. In the early life, Spence collected the habit of Mao, particularly his love for reading. Early in Changsha, Mao read rigorously in a library founded by late Qing’s reformist. He had a great interest in world geography and history. One of this early teacher was Yang Changji (Mao married to his daughter later in his life), which reiterate the importance of exercise. Mao absorbs this idea and would regularly go hiking with his friend and swim in the Xiang River.
Mao also active in organizing student association to go on strike against Zhang Jingyao, famously known as General Zhang, a military governor in Hunan. Mao also loves poetry, one of his beautiful poem written to his wife, Yang Kaihui in 1923:
I’m begging you to sever these tangled ties of emotion.
I myself would like to be a rootless wanderer.
And have nothing more to do with lovers’ whispers.
I find Mao life story, struggle, family life, as interesting, strange, and often paradoxical in many cases. Born in 1893 at Hunan, he moved from being a librarian to the chairman of communist China. In the early life, Spence collected the habit of Mao, particularly his love for reading. Early in Changsha, Mao read rigorously in a library founded by late Qing’s reformist. He had a great interest in world geography and history. One of this early teacher was Yang Changji (Mao married to his daughter later in his life), which reiterate the importance of exercise. Mao absorbs this idea and would regularly go hiking with his friend and swim in the Xiang River.
Mao also active in organizing student association to go on strike against Zhang Jingyao, famously known as General Zhang, a military governor in Hunan. Mao also loves poetry, one of his beautiful poem written to his wife, Yang Kaihui in 1923:
I’m begging you to sever these tangled ties of emotion.
I myself would like to be a rootless wanderer.
And have nothing more to do with lovers’ whispers.
June 4, 2022
Obviously at 200 pages, this is would be an abbreviated biography of just about anybody, but for a figure as immense as Mao Zedong, it is especially sparse.
It doesn't go into great detail about the formation of the PLA, the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. It doesn't get into Mao's writings overly much or contend with his legacy. It's actually quite skewed towards his early life and the political machinations before the Japanese invasion that put Mao in a position to take over the Communist Party.
I honestly don't know what to make of it. There is such a dearth of objective accounts of Mao's life and political projects that I guess it's a little refreshing to read something that is more akin to an extended Wikipedia article.
That's not to say that it's totally objective. Spence seems particularly entranced by Mao's multiple wives and liaisons with other women in a way that stops just short of puritanical finger-wagging. He also seems to excuse a lot of the deadlier excesses of the PRC by pointing out how insulated Mao was from the facts on the ground.
I don't know. I was hoping to get a survey of China in the 20th century and while this is definitely not that, it's at least a start at deepening my own understanding of how China got to be where it is today.
It doesn't go into great detail about the formation of the PLA, the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. It doesn't get into Mao's writings overly much or contend with his legacy. It's actually quite skewed towards his early life and the political machinations before the Japanese invasion that put Mao in a position to take over the Communist Party.
I honestly don't know what to make of it. There is such a dearth of objective accounts of Mao's life and political projects that I guess it's a little refreshing to read something that is more akin to an extended Wikipedia article.
That's not to say that it's totally objective. Spence seems particularly entranced by Mao's multiple wives and liaisons with other women in a way that stops just short of puritanical finger-wagging. He also seems to excuse a lot of the deadlier excesses of the PRC by pointing out how insulated Mao was from the facts on the ground.
I don't know. I was hoping to get a survey of China in the 20th century and while this is definitely not that, it's at least a start at deepening my own understanding of how China got to be where it is today.
January 5, 2024
I will give this four stars for two specific reasons.
1: it is very focused on Mao specifically and that was what I was hoping for. Too often Biographies drift off to talk about others and their lives if it impacts the main subject. This however keeps focused on Mao, in fact the other most common subjects include mostly his family. Others you'd expect to see like Zhou Enlai or Deng Xioping are discussed but don't get much attention.
2: The bio is written without much overt western bias, which I appreciated. While the author notes specifically in the 'notes' section the several western sources used - the content is not heavily coated with western conclusions about Mao and some of the major events he took part in. Which was great considering the last book I tried to read about Mao and 'Maoism' was quite simply ridiculous.
While short this is a great primer for those interested in one of the 20th century's greatest leaders. Coming in at under 200 pages but nailing all the important bits with several more intimate insights is something the author should be proud of producing.
1: it is very focused on Mao specifically and that was what I was hoping for. Too often Biographies drift off to talk about others and their lives if it impacts the main subject. This however keeps focused on Mao, in fact the other most common subjects include mostly his family. Others you'd expect to see like Zhou Enlai or Deng Xioping are discussed but don't get much attention.
2: The bio is written without much overt western bias, which I appreciated. While the author notes specifically in the 'notes' section the several western sources used - the content is not heavily coated with western conclusions about Mao and some of the major events he took part in. Which was great considering the last book I tried to read about Mao and 'Maoism' was quite simply ridiculous.
While short this is a great primer for those interested in one of the 20th century's greatest leaders. Coming in at under 200 pages but nailing all the important bits with several more intimate insights is something the author should be proud of producing.
June 14, 2021
This is the kind of history book that puts people off of history books, which wasn’t a huge problem for me because I like history books, but it also wasn’t in depth enough to offer anything truly engaging - instead Spence’s book plays like an extended Wikipedia biography simply listing off the facts of Mao’s life in order of occurrence and while it offers insight, it offers very little in way of perspective.
Still Mao is a fascinating enough figure that this remains an engaging enough read especially in short bursts. A good beginners guide to the simple facts of Mao’s life or a refresher course for somebody lapses in the information.
Still Mao is a fascinating enough figure that this remains an engaging enough read especially in short bursts. A good beginners guide to the simple facts of Mao’s life or a refresher course for somebody lapses in the information.
March 20, 2024
A great introduction to Mao’s personal and political life. Impressively written in a matter-of-factly style avoiding any sensationalization, while still so engaging that it’s hard to put down. If you’re unfamiliar with Mao, I highly recommend this book! If you’re a China scholar, there won’t be much new information, but it still provides a nice overview of the chain of events (the lack of in-text references can be a little frustrating, but each chapter has a short list of used/recommended sources).
December 21, 2017
Mao,hasil tulisan Jonathan D. Spence,merupakan sebuah buku biografi ringkas mengenai seorang tokoh besar China pada abad ke-20,Mao Zedong.
Buku yang berketebalan 205 muka surat sahaja ini ditulis oleh seorang yang sememangnya pakar mengenai hal ehwal negara China. Buku ini amat sesuai sekali dibaca oleh mereka yang mungkin selama ini tidak pernah mengetahui latar belakang dan sejarah kehidupan Mao Zedong selama ini.
Walaupun ini bukan kali pertama saya membaca buku biografi mengenai Mao,namun,membaca buku ini mendedahkan beberapa fakta yang tidak saya ketahui sebelum ini.
Buku yang berketebalan 205 muka surat sahaja ini ditulis oleh seorang yang sememangnya pakar mengenai hal ehwal negara China. Buku ini amat sesuai sekali dibaca oleh mereka yang mungkin selama ini tidak pernah mengetahui latar belakang dan sejarah kehidupan Mao Zedong selama ini.
Walaupun ini bukan kali pertama saya membaca buku biografi mengenai Mao,namun,membaca buku ini mendedahkan beberapa fakta yang tidak saya ketahui sebelum ini.
May 25, 2021
I had some familiarity with Mao, but wanting to know more, I wanted to read a biography. My impression is that there are a lot of biographies in Mandarin that portray Mao in a favorable light and many in English that vilify him. I was hoping to find a book that was detailed, fair, and accurate, so I landed on this one. I didn’t realize how small and short this book was until I got it, so it clearly has a different objective than some other biographies I have read. This is a very brief introduction to Mao, highlighting his early life and rise to power with some, but not a lot of, coverage of Communist China under Mao.
Mao was born in 1893 during a bit of instability in China, as the Qing dynasty was in its last waning years. Mao had a bit of education, attending primary school, middle school, a variety of vocational schools including law school, and eventually became the assistant librarian at Peking University. All along, he was an avid reader, learning about political thought, history, and poetry through the books he could get ahold of. He was a busy person, eventually being a teacher, bookseller, and author of many articles. He also helped organize strikes and advocated for more rights for women, likely influenced by his arranged marriage when he was 13. “The first brief ‘Manifesto’ of the Chinese Communist Party appeared in Shanghai in November 1920, but there is no evidence that Mao saw it right away. From a flurry of letters that Mao wrote at this time to friends in many parts of China and in France, we know that he was frantically busy with his teaching, running the new People’s Study Society and the Cultural Book Society, building up a ‘rent-a-book readers club,’ and coordinating the struggle for Hunanese independence.” (48) Mao eventually became more involved in the Communist party, although it was not rapidly gaining popularity. “Mao’s scale of activities was now broadening swiftly. In the midst of the endless organizational work and the addressing of the somewhat contradictory calls of the Party center, he had managed to spend enough time with Yang Kaihui for them to start a family. Despite the absence of any formal ceremony, they now considered themselves married. Their first son, Anying, was born in October 1922. But something curious was happening to Mao. The young man who had struggled so often against the autocratic nature of his father, who hated and despised the shackles of bourgeois marriage and had found joy in a free-love relationship, who detested schools and would never be a student in one again, and who always sought freedom of spirit and the chance to grow and change had willingly accepted, at the age of twenty-eight, a much greater degree of disciplined control from the Communist Party than any he had encountered in his life before. In early 1921, Mao was still a political amateur…By the end of 1922, however, Mao was becoming a professional revolutionary organizer and learning how to coordinate major strikes that affected the lives of tens of thousands of workers.” (59) In order to gain more political connections, Mao joined the Nationalist party. The Chinese Communist party continued to slowly grow, but it still remained a small force. “By the summer of 1923, Mao was definitely a member of the Nationalist Party. Yet despite this new alliance, growth for the Communists continued to be slow and difficult, with the Party membership climbing only up to 420 by June 1923, of whom 37 were women, 164 were workers, and 10 were in jail. Mao’s career trajectory now began to change, as he was caught up in the swirl of official political business. Though Yang Kaihui was pregnant again by the spring of 1923, Mao had to leave home in June to attend the Third Congress of the Communist Party…and he dutifully endorsed the declarations concerning alliance with the Guomindang. At this congress, Mao was elected to the Communist Party’s ruling Central Executive Committee, and named head of the Party’s organization department.” (64)
As the friction between the nationalists and Communists increased, the situation devolved into a civil war around 1927. After a few years of fighting, Mao helped organize the Long March, retreating from southern China to avoid capture by Chaing Kai-shek. “The Long March [in 1934-1935], later presented as a great achievement in Communist history, was a nightmare of death and pain while it was in progress. The huge column was bogged down with equipment, party files, weaponry, communications equipment, and whatever else had been salvaged from Jiangxi to help them in setting up a new base area. A devastating attack by the Guomindang artillery and air force as the slow-moving column was trying to cross the Xiang River in northern Guangxi province, took close to half their number in casualties. But the march continued, even though there was no agreement on exactly where they were heading, or even on which direction they should take.” (84) This helped bring acclaim to Mao and Zhou Enlai, and helped them on their path to power. Only about 1/8 of the people who started on the march completed it. “During the fall of 1935, Mao’s greatly diminished forces endured a hellish march through the swamplands and mountains of Qinghai and Gansu, where their main enemies, apart from grim skirmishes with the local tribespeople, were intense hunger – there was almost no food to be either bought or foraged – the constant damp, and freezing temperatures at night. Many of the remaining 15,000 or so people in the column died of malnutrition, suppurating sores, or by eating poisonous weeds and berries. Only between 7,000 and 8,000 of the column survived, reaching the village of Wayabao in Shaanxi, just south of the Great Wall, in October 1935, and joining forces with some other Communist troops who had already made a base there…He Zizhen became pregnant for the fifth time after the March ended, and their daughter Li Min was born in the late summer of 1936.” (86)
Mao had been a man of the people, but as he rose in stature, his connection with the commoners was shrinking. “Few people dared to criticize Mao directly for such behavior [around 1940], but we can see how he was moving on a trajectory that was pushing him more in the direction of dominance and power. He seemed less flexible and more determined to make all those around him conform to his own whims and beliefs. From living the simple life because he had to, Mao had moved to choosing to live the simple life, thence to boasting about living the simple life, and now to forcing others to live the simple life. At the same time, the fascination with the more complex sides of Chinese culture that had informed Mao’s youth were being replaced by a bitterness and irritation toward the educated people and the aesthetic traditions in China.” (97) Mao continued to develop his philosophies, elevating the working man and diminishing the importance of intellectuals that he would later put into practice in the Cultural Revolution. “From the Marxist-Leninist standpoint, said Mao, ‘a great many so-called intellectuals are actually exceedingly unlearned’ and they must come to understand that ‘the knowledge of the workers and peasants is sometimes greater than theirs…’ They had to understand that book knowledge in and for itself was worthless, and that only words born out of the world of experience had meaning. They should never forget that ‘books cannot walk, and you can open and close a book at will; this is the easiest thing in the world to do, a great deal easier than it is for the cook to prepare a meal, and much easier than it is for him to slaughter a pig.’ Mao was himself becoming fully confident that he knew what was ‘correct.’” (99) This cooperation between the Guomindang and the Communist party, the Second United Front, lasted from 1937 to 1941. I had assumed that Mao was one of the leaders of the Communist party from its inception in China, but Mao began as an early member, but was not one of the leaders until later. It wasn’t until 1943 that Mao became the leader of the Communist party in China. “In late 1943, an inner core of Mao’s senior colleagues [including Chen Boda] began to rewrite Chinese Party history so that Mao would be forever at the center. One by one the other rivals of the present and the past were denigrated, their ‘incorrect lines’ exposed, and Mao’s own wisdom pushed ever further back in time.” (101) This reinforced some of what I knew about Mao later when he was very concerned about his legacy and that Deng wouldn’t denigrate his contributions as Khrushchev had done to Stalin.
World War II ended abruptly after the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, leading to a scramble by the two Chinese groups to recapture the land the Japanese had held. “It was a chance of geography as much as anything else that helped the Communists at this stage [in 1945 as the Japanese were being pushed back]. From their Yan’an base, their Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei border region, and their strong guerilla units based in Shandong province, they could move troops into Manchuria far faster than the Nationalists could, and Mao decided to take the gamble and attempt to occupy the huge region, so rich in mineral and forestry resources, though sparsely inhabited compared with the heartland of China proper. And as soon as the Communists learned of the Japanese surrender, they began to do so. They were aided considerably by the Soviet armed forces, who allowed the Chinese to take over the gigantic Japanese stockpiles of arms and ammunition in the key railroad city of Kalgan, just south of the Great Wall in Chahar. In several Inner Mongolian cities the Soviet troops first subdued and disarmed the Japanese, and then retreated, allowing the Chinese to come in unopposed…Russian logistical help was equally great, with as many as 100,000 Chinese Communist troops and 50,000 political workers being ferried into southern Manchuria from Shandong and northern Jiangsu provinces, and these forces were able to seize and hold several major cities.” (103) The operating model of the Communist forces seemed more successful in equipping their soldiers for battle. “Each time they smashed their way into a former Guomindang area, the Communists would set up bases there, rom which in turn they would launch new campaigns. Despite the need for such base areas, destroying the enemy and capturing their weapons always took precedence over ‘holding and seizing a place.’ Mao’s maxims were simple but by this time were the fruit of long experience: ‘Be sure to fight no battle unprepared, fight no battle you are not sure of winning,’ and fight relentlessly, giving the enemy no time to recoup. Use at once all the arms and at least 80 to 90 percent of all captured troops (though not their officers); take supplies from the Guomindang-dominated areas, not from older Communist base areas; carry out land reform in both old and newly liberated areas. The strategy was astonishingly successful. By the following year Communist troops had totally routed the Guomindang armies in Manchuria and were ready to move south.” (107)
The book continued at a rapid pace, talking about the start of the People’s Republic of China, and the changes that were made. The Korean war, which lasted from 1950 – 1953 wasn’t really mentioned that much, even though it was a major world conflict that China was heavily involved in. The next big initiative for Mao was the Great Leap Forward. “The Great Leap, in Mao’s mind, would combine the imperatives of large-scale cooperative agriculture with a close-to-utopian vision of the ending of distinctions between occupations, sexes, ages, and levels of education. By compressing the hundreds of thousands of existing cooperatives – the number had passed 700,000 by late 1957 – into around 20,000 giant communes, with all land owned by the state and worked in common, Mao believed that China as a whole would reap the immense benefits of scale and of flexibility. Communal kitchens and laundries would release women from chores to perform more constructive agricultural tasks; rural laborers would learn to build backyard steel furnaces and supplement China’s iron and steel production in the urban factories; local militia would increase the combat effectiveness of the People’s Liberation Army by allowing them to concentrate on high-priority military matters; communal schools would end the literacy gap; barefoot doctors would bring health care within the reach of every peasant; and collections of people’s poems would swell the national cultural heritage…Mao professed to see in it the promise of a China without hunger in which the Chinese themselves would no longer pay for food and the surplus would be given away free to the poorer people elsewhere in the world…Deep lowing, close planting, reforestation, and the economies of scale made possible by enthusiastic massed labor power would produce this surplus, in which a third of China’s land would lie fallow every year…Hard work and discipline would bring better health to everyone, just as Mao had experience it in the cave dwellings during the civil war, and physicians would have nothing left to do except research. Mental labor would fuse with manual labor, and education would be merged with production. Nobody would need to put on airs – clothes would be indistinguishable in cut and texture, and would be as free as food. Differentiated wage systems would vanish, as would any need for private housing. Morality would improve so much in the new society that no supervision would be required, and all would have the inspired and selfless spirit that had been such a force in the past revolution, when ‘people died without asking anything in return.’ The whole of China would be a lush and landscaped park so that no one would even need to travel anymore to see the sights.” (133) I don’t know how accurate a description of the time this was, but it certainly fell short of its goals, resulting in lower yields and contributing to tens of millions of deaths related to starvation.
Isolation can make understanding a country’s place in the world challenging. “Mao saw numerous other foreign leaders in Beijing, but the meetings were generally shrouded in protocol, and visitors were unlikely to point out his shortcomings. Mao had never been to any foreign country except the Soviet Union, and he never visited any other place outside China until he died. As he had said in his 1958 Beidaihe speech, ‘Why tour the four continents,’ when China itself contains so much? Many of Mao’s senior Communist colleagues had lived and studied abroad for considerable periods, and spoke one or more foreign languages…Personal observation of social conditions was also a natural way to gather information about China, and as a youth, Mao had excelled at this, compiling careful notes on the minutest gradations of economic strata and drawing bold conclusions from closely watched moments of violence and self-assertion by the poor…But from the late 1950’s onward, Mao traveled in his specially equipped train, with personal attendants and bodyguards always present, which further increased his isolation from the outside world.” (137) Not only was there separation between those in charge in China from other countries, but they were less in touch with the needs of the common people in China. “He [Mao’s secretary Tian Jiaying] found that virtually all the leaders except for Mao favored some kind of redistribution of production based on the household. It was clear that there was now little meeting of the minds between Mao and his own senior colleagues, apart from the small group of those boosting his thoughts. As Mao got older, he had apparently further increased his isolation from his own people, even as he claimed to speak in their name. The Mao who had so often praised the virtues of living in case, now stayed at a series of luxurious guest houses – provided for him by Party officials – in different parts of China. It was people like Tian who now acted as his eyes and ears. In addition, it seems clear that Mao’s lifestyle had not endeared him to his revolutionary colleagues. At the now more frequent dances in Zhongnanhai, in his private room aboard his own personal railway train, and in the numerous guest houses he visited, Mao entertained a succession of young women.” (155) Many people use their power to have access to many different love interests. Mao was no exception, and he seemed to continue to exercise that power continually over the years.
As I neared the end of the book, I was surprised that there was so little left. It had briefly discussed the Great Leap Forward, but it hadn’t discussed the Cultural Revolution yet. In the waning pages, it touched on that briefly. There was a first level of involvement where the heads of department directly ordered things to be done, but there was a second level as well. “The second level of cultural revolutionary violence was unorchestrated, coursing down its own channels in an only vaguely designed direction, in search of rightists or ‘feudal remnants,’ ‘snakes and monsters,’ or ‘people in authority taking the capitalist road.’ An announcement from the ‘Beijing Number 26 Middle School Red Guards,’ dated August 1966, gave the kind of program that was to be followed by countless others. Every street was to have a quotation from Chairman Mao prominently displayed, and loudspeakers at every intersection and in all parks were to broadcast his thought. Every household as well as all trains and buses, bicycles and pedicabs, had to have a picture of Mao on its walls…No one could wear blue jeans, tight pants, ‘weird women’s outfits,’ or have ‘slick hairdos or wear rocket shoes.’ No perfumes or beauty creams could be used. No one could keep pet fish, cats, or dogs, or raise fighting crickets…Children should criticize their elders, and students their teachers. No one under thirty-five might smoke or drink.” (164)
The book ended quite abruptly without much discussion of his legacy, how people view him now, or how certain things he fought for were rolled back. As new leaders followed him, they incorporated some of his ideas, but also blazed some trails of their own. I get that this book was supposed to be short, but I think one more chapter of summary and conclusions would have been useful.
(continued in comments)
Mao was born in 1893 during a bit of instability in China, as the Qing dynasty was in its last waning years. Mao had a bit of education, attending primary school, middle school, a variety of vocational schools including law school, and eventually became the assistant librarian at Peking University. All along, he was an avid reader, learning about political thought, history, and poetry through the books he could get ahold of. He was a busy person, eventually being a teacher, bookseller, and author of many articles. He also helped organize strikes and advocated for more rights for women, likely influenced by his arranged marriage when he was 13. “The first brief ‘Manifesto’ of the Chinese Communist Party appeared in Shanghai in November 1920, but there is no evidence that Mao saw it right away. From a flurry of letters that Mao wrote at this time to friends in many parts of China and in France, we know that he was frantically busy with his teaching, running the new People’s Study Society and the Cultural Book Society, building up a ‘rent-a-book readers club,’ and coordinating the struggle for Hunanese independence.” (48) Mao eventually became more involved in the Communist party, although it was not rapidly gaining popularity. “Mao’s scale of activities was now broadening swiftly. In the midst of the endless organizational work and the addressing of the somewhat contradictory calls of the Party center, he had managed to spend enough time with Yang Kaihui for them to start a family. Despite the absence of any formal ceremony, they now considered themselves married. Their first son, Anying, was born in October 1922. But something curious was happening to Mao. The young man who had struggled so often against the autocratic nature of his father, who hated and despised the shackles of bourgeois marriage and had found joy in a free-love relationship, who detested schools and would never be a student in one again, and who always sought freedom of spirit and the chance to grow and change had willingly accepted, at the age of twenty-eight, a much greater degree of disciplined control from the Communist Party than any he had encountered in his life before. In early 1921, Mao was still a political amateur…By the end of 1922, however, Mao was becoming a professional revolutionary organizer and learning how to coordinate major strikes that affected the lives of tens of thousands of workers.” (59) In order to gain more political connections, Mao joined the Nationalist party. The Chinese Communist party continued to slowly grow, but it still remained a small force. “By the summer of 1923, Mao was definitely a member of the Nationalist Party. Yet despite this new alliance, growth for the Communists continued to be slow and difficult, with the Party membership climbing only up to 420 by June 1923, of whom 37 were women, 164 were workers, and 10 were in jail. Mao’s career trajectory now began to change, as he was caught up in the swirl of official political business. Though Yang Kaihui was pregnant again by the spring of 1923, Mao had to leave home in June to attend the Third Congress of the Communist Party…and he dutifully endorsed the declarations concerning alliance with the Guomindang. At this congress, Mao was elected to the Communist Party’s ruling Central Executive Committee, and named head of the Party’s organization department.” (64)
As the friction between the nationalists and Communists increased, the situation devolved into a civil war around 1927. After a few years of fighting, Mao helped organize the Long March, retreating from southern China to avoid capture by Chaing Kai-shek. “The Long March [in 1934-1935], later presented as a great achievement in Communist history, was a nightmare of death and pain while it was in progress. The huge column was bogged down with equipment, party files, weaponry, communications equipment, and whatever else had been salvaged from Jiangxi to help them in setting up a new base area. A devastating attack by the Guomindang artillery and air force as the slow-moving column was trying to cross the Xiang River in northern Guangxi province, took close to half their number in casualties. But the march continued, even though there was no agreement on exactly where they were heading, or even on which direction they should take.” (84) This helped bring acclaim to Mao and Zhou Enlai, and helped them on their path to power. Only about 1/8 of the people who started on the march completed it. “During the fall of 1935, Mao’s greatly diminished forces endured a hellish march through the swamplands and mountains of Qinghai and Gansu, where their main enemies, apart from grim skirmishes with the local tribespeople, were intense hunger – there was almost no food to be either bought or foraged – the constant damp, and freezing temperatures at night. Many of the remaining 15,000 or so people in the column died of malnutrition, suppurating sores, or by eating poisonous weeds and berries. Only between 7,000 and 8,000 of the column survived, reaching the village of Wayabao in Shaanxi, just south of the Great Wall, in October 1935, and joining forces with some other Communist troops who had already made a base there…He Zizhen became pregnant for the fifth time after the March ended, and their daughter Li Min was born in the late summer of 1936.” (86)
Mao had been a man of the people, but as he rose in stature, his connection with the commoners was shrinking. “Few people dared to criticize Mao directly for such behavior [around 1940], but we can see how he was moving on a trajectory that was pushing him more in the direction of dominance and power. He seemed less flexible and more determined to make all those around him conform to his own whims and beliefs. From living the simple life because he had to, Mao had moved to choosing to live the simple life, thence to boasting about living the simple life, and now to forcing others to live the simple life. At the same time, the fascination with the more complex sides of Chinese culture that had informed Mao’s youth were being replaced by a bitterness and irritation toward the educated people and the aesthetic traditions in China.” (97) Mao continued to develop his philosophies, elevating the working man and diminishing the importance of intellectuals that he would later put into practice in the Cultural Revolution. “From the Marxist-Leninist standpoint, said Mao, ‘a great many so-called intellectuals are actually exceedingly unlearned’ and they must come to understand that ‘the knowledge of the workers and peasants is sometimes greater than theirs…’ They had to understand that book knowledge in and for itself was worthless, and that only words born out of the world of experience had meaning. They should never forget that ‘books cannot walk, and you can open and close a book at will; this is the easiest thing in the world to do, a great deal easier than it is for the cook to prepare a meal, and much easier than it is for him to slaughter a pig.’ Mao was himself becoming fully confident that he knew what was ‘correct.’” (99) This cooperation between the Guomindang and the Communist party, the Second United Front, lasted from 1937 to 1941. I had assumed that Mao was one of the leaders of the Communist party from its inception in China, but Mao began as an early member, but was not one of the leaders until later. It wasn’t until 1943 that Mao became the leader of the Communist party in China. “In late 1943, an inner core of Mao’s senior colleagues [including Chen Boda] began to rewrite Chinese Party history so that Mao would be forever at the center. One by one the other rivals of the present and the past were denigrated, their ‘incorrect lines’ exposed, and Mao’s own wisdom pushed ever further back in time.” (101) This reinforced some of what I knew about Mao later when he was very concerned about his legacy and that Deng wouldn’t denigrate his contributions as Khrushchev had done to Stalin.
World War II ended abruptly after the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, leading to a scramble by the two Chinese groups to recapture the land the Japanese had held. “It was a chance of geography as much as anything else that helped the Communists at this stage [in 1945 as the Japanese were being pushed back]. From their Yan’an base, their Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei border region, and their strong guerilla units based in Shandong province, they could move troops into Manchuria far faster than the Nationalists could, and Mao decided to take the gamble and attempt to occupy the huge region, so rich in mineral and forestry resources, though sparsely inhabited compared with the heartland of China proper. And as soon as the Communists learned of the Japanese surrender, they began to do so. They were aided considerably by the Soviet armed forces, who allowed the Chinese to take over the gigantic Japanese stockpiles of arms and ammunition in the key railroad city of Kalgan, just south of the Great Wall in Chahar. In several Inner Mongolian cities the Soviet troops first subdued and disarmed the Japanese, and then retreated, allowing the Chinese to come in unopposed…Russian logistical help was equally great, with as many as 100,000 Chinese Communist troops and 50,000 political workers being ferried into southern Manchuria from Shandong and northern Jiangsu provinces, and these forces were able to seize and hold several major cities.” (103) The operating model of the Communist forces seemed more successful in equipping their soldiers for battle. “Each time they smashed their way into a former Guomindang area, the Communists would set up bases there, rom which in turn they would launch new campaigns. Despite the need for such base areas, destroying the enemy and capturing their weapons always took precedence over ‘holding and seizing a place.’ Mao’s maxims were simple but by this time were the fruit of long experience: ‘Be sure to fight no battle unprepared, fight no battle you are not sure of winning,’ and fight relentlessly, giving the enemy no time to recoup. Use at once all the arms and at least 80 to 90 percent of all captured troops (though not their officers); take supplies from the Guomindang-dominated areas, not from older Communist base areas; carry out land reform in both old and newly liberated areas. The strategy was astonishingly successful. By the following year Communist troops had totally routed the Guomindang armies in Manchuria and were ready to move south.” (107)
The book continued at a rapid pace, talking about the start of the People’s Republic of China, and the changes that were made. The Korean war, which lasted from 1950 – 1953 wasn’t really mentioned that much, even though it was a major world conflict that China was heavily involved in. The next big initiative for Mao was the Great Leap Forward. “The Great Leap, in Mao’s mind, would combine the imperatives of large-scale cooperative agriculture with a close-to-utopian vision of the ending of distinctions between occupations, sexes, ages, and levels of education. By compressing the hundreds of thousands of existing cooperatives – the number had passed 700,000 by late 1957 – into around 20,000 giant communes, with all land owned by the state and worked in common, Mao believed that China as a whole would reap the immense benefits of scale and of flexibility. Communal kitchens and laundries would release women from chores to perform more constructive agricultural tasks; rural laborers would learn to build backyard steel furnaces and supplement China’s iron and steel production in the urban factories; local militia would increase the combat effectiveness of the People’s Liberation Army by allowing them to concentrate on high-priority military matters; communal schools would end the literacy gap; barefoot doctors would bring health care within the reach of every peasant; and collections of people’s poems would swell the national cultural heritage…Mao professed to see in it the promise of a China without hunger in which the Chinese themselves would no longer pay for food and the surplus would be given away free to the poorer people elsewhere in the world…Deep lowing, close planting, reforestation, and the economies of scale made possible by enthusiastic massed labor power would produce this surplus, in which a third of China’s land would lie fallow every year…Hard work and discipline would bring better health to everyone, just as Mao had experience it in the cave dwellings during the civil war, and physicians would have nothing left to do except research. Mental labor would fuse with manual labor, and education would be merged with production. Nobody would need to put on airs – clothes would be indistinguishable in cut and texture, and would be as free as food. Differentiated wage systems would vanish, as would any need for private housing. Morality would improve so much in the new society that no supervision would be required, and all would have the inspired and selfless spirit that had been such a force in the past revolution, when ‘people died without asking anything in return.’ The whole of China would be a lush and landscaped park so that no one would even need to travel anymore to see the sights.” (133) I don’t know how accurate a description of the time this was, but it certainly fell short of its goals, resulting in lower yields and contributing to tens of millions of deaths related to starvation.
Isolation can make understanding a country’s place in the world challenging. “Mao saw numerous other foreign leaders in Beijing, but the meetings were generally shrouded in protocol, and visitors were unlikely to point out his shortcomings. Mao had never been to any foreign country except the Soviet Union, and he never visited any other place outside China until he died. As he had said in his 1958 Beidaihe speech, ‘Why tour the four continents,’ when China itself contains so much? Many of Mao’s senior Communist colleagues had lived and studied abroad for considerable periods, and spoke one or more foreign languages…Personal observation of social conditions was also a natural way to gather information about China, and as a youth, Mao had excelled at this, compiling careful notes on the minutest gradations of economic strata and drawing bold conclusions from closely watched moments of violence and self-assertion by the poor…But from the late 1950’s onward, Mao traveled in his specially equipped train, with personal attendants and bodyguards always present, which further increased his isolation from the outside world.” (137) Not only was there separation between those in charge in China from other countries, but they were less in touch with the needs of the common people in China. “He [Mao’s secretary Tian Jiaying] found that virtually all the leaders except for Mao favored some kind of redistribution of production based on the household. It was clear that there was now little meeting of the minds between Mao and his own senior colleagues, apart from the small group of those boosting his thoughts. As Mao got older, he had apparently further increased his isolation from his own people, even as he claimed to speak in their name. The Mao who had so often praised the virtues of living in case, now stayed at a series of luxurious guest houses – provided for him by Party officials – in different parts of China. It was people like Tian who now acted as his eyes and ears. In addition, it seems clear that Mao’s lifestyle had not endeared him to his revolutionary colleagues. At the now more frequent dances in Zhongnanhai, in his private room aboard his own personal railway train, and in the numerous guest houses he visited, Mao entertained a succession of young women.” (155) Many people use their power to have access to many different love interests. Mao was no exception, and he seemed to continue to exercise that power continually over the years.
As I neared the end of the book, I was surprised that there was so little left. It had briefly discussed the Great Leap Forward, but it hadn’t discussed the Cultural Revolution yet. In the waning pages, it touched on that briefly. There was a first level of involvement where the heads of department directly ordered things to be done, but there was a second level as well. “The second level of cultural revolutionary violence was unorchestrated, coursing down its own channels in an only vaguely designed direction, in search of rightists or ‘feudal remnants,’ ‘snakes and monsters,’ or ‘people in authority taking the capitalist road.’ An announcement from the ‘Beijing Number 26 Middle School Red Guards,’ dated August 1966, gave the kind of program that was to be followed by countless others. Every street was to have a quotation from Chairman Mao prominently displayed, and loudspeakers at every intersection and in all parks were to broadcast his thought. Every household as well as all trains and buses, bicycles and pedicabs, had to have a picture of Mao on its walls…No one could wear blue jeans, tight pants, ‘weird women’s outfits,’ or have ‘slick hairdos or wear rocket shoes.’ No perfumes or beauty creams could be used. No one could keep pet fish, cats, or dogs, or raise fighting crickets…Children should criticize their elders, and students their teachers. No one under thirty-five might smoke or drink.” (164)
The book ended quite abruptly without much discussion of his legacy, how people view him now, or how certain things he fought for were rolled back. As new leaders followed him, they incorporated some of his ideas, but also blazed some trails of their own. I get that this book was supposed to be short, but I think one more chapter of summary and conclusions would have been useful.
(continued in comments)
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December 15, 2012La biographie eut longtemps mauvaise presse dans la science historique. Elle y voyait un exercice racoleur – qui rencontrait d’ailleurs souvent le succès dans le grand public – plus soucieux de multiplier les anecdotes croustillantes que d’étudier la « longue durée ». Avec le renouveau de l’histoire politique, la biographie a fait son retour dans les années 80. Il s’agissait d’ailleurs moins souvent de présenter un personnage individuel dans sa singularité que de traiter l’histoire collective à travers le prisme de l’histoire singulière. La biographie que J.N. Jeanneney consacre à François de Wendel a pour thème central les relations entre milieux d’affaires et vie politique sous la IIIème République ; quand S. Berstein étudie Edouard Henriot, c’est une incarnation de l’Idée républicaine qu’il poursuit.
S’attaquer aux « monstres » de l’histoire est plus difficile ; car leur singularité fut si écrasante, leur longévité si grande qu’on ne peut réduire leur personnalité à une seule thématique. Du coup, la singularité du « héros » biographique repasse au premier plan. C’est le risque assumé par Jean Lacouture dans ses essais monumentaux sur De Gaulle ou Mitterrand. Des questions passionnantes surgissent : comment un homme que rien souvent ne distingue initialement de ses contemporains va-t-il se retrouver dans la position de marquer l’histoire de sa trace ? Est-ce le fruit du hasard, des circonstances (De Gaulle aurait-il été De Gaulle sans la Seconde guerre mondiale ?) ou l’aboutissement logique d’un apprentissage tout entier tourné vers la conquête du pouvoir ? Autre question qu’appelle l’étude biographique des « tyrans » les plus sinistres que compta le XXème siècle : comment ces leaders charismatiques, souvent animés du désir sincère de faire le bien, de restaurer la grandeur de leur Nation, en vinrent-ils à causer la mort de millions de victimes ?
La très classique biographie que le sinologue Jonathan Spence consacre à Mao Zedong ne répond malheureusement pas à ces questions. S’appuyant sur une solide documentation, sans prétendre faire de révélation fracassante, l’auteur raconte la vie du grand dirigeant chinois sans se perdre à narrer celle de la Chine. Seul le tiers du livre traite de l’exercice du pouvoir, après 1949. On appréciera les développements consacrés à la formation intellectuelle de Mao, à sa (tumultueuse) vie familiale. On regrettera en revanche de rester à distance du Mao du Grand Bond en Avant et de la Révolution culturelle.
On peine aussi à trouver chez Mao cette « rupture » qui divise souvent la biographie des « grands hommes ». Né en 1893 dans une famille de paysans riches du Hunan, il tarde à s’affirmer à la tête du mouvement marxiste. Il n’occupe qu’un strapontin à la fondation du PCC en juillet 1921 et subit la Longue Marche plus qu’il ne l’initie. Son succès vient de son rejet très rapide de la ligne soviétique d’union avec le Guomindang et de révolution urbaine et ouvrière ; il lui préfère la scission d’avec Chiang Kai Chek, l’engagement militaire contre les Japonais et la révolution paysanne. Sa stratégie réussit et on voit Mao mûrir dans le grottes de Yan’an en 1936 : « De plus en plus rigide, l’homme cherche à plier son entourage à ses caprices et à ses croyances. La vie austère qu’il a menée par nécessité puis par choix, il s’en vante à présent et prétend même forcer tout le monde à l’imiter. Oubliée, la fascination qu’il éprouvait dans sa jeunesse pour les aspects les plus subtils de la civilisation chinoise » (pp.126/7). C’est peut-être à Yan’an que se situe le « tournant ».
Quelles furent les raisons pour lesquelles celui qui fut « le Lénine de la révolution chinoise avant d’essayer maladroitement à en devenir le Staline » (Lucien Bianco) causa la mort de près de 20 millions de Chinois pendant le Grand Bond en Avant et traumatisa toute une génération dix ans plus tard dans la Révolution culturelle ? Ce qui frappe dans la biographie du Grand Timonier, c’est depuis son plus jeune âge combien il se prend au sérieux et manque désespérement d’humour. Sans doute cette critique naît-elle dans une époque qui survalorise peut-être l’humour. Mais à lire un Mao si fanatiquement confiant dans l’avenir du communisme, on se prend à croire qu’un peu d’ironie aurait peut-être évité à la Chine bien des malheurs.
S’attaquer aux « monstres » de l’histoire est plus difficile ; car leur singularité fut si écrasante, leur longévité si grande qu’on ne peut réduire leur personnalité à une seule thématique. Du coup, la singularité du « héros » biographique repasse au premier plan. C’est le risque assumé par Jean Lacouture dans ses essais monumentaux sur De Gaulle ou Mitterrand. Des questions passionnantes surgissent : comment un homme que rien souvent ne distingue initialement de ses contemporains va-t-il se retrouver dans la position de marquer l’histoire de sa trace ? Est-ce le fruit du hasard, des circonstances (De Gaulle aurait-il été De Gaulle sans la Seconde guerre mondiale ?) ou l’aboutissement logique d’un apprentissage tout entier tourné vers la conquête du pouvoir ? Autre question qu’appelle l’étude biographique des « tyrans » les plus sinistres que compta le XXème siècle : comment ces leaders charismatiques, souvent animés du désir sincère de faire le bien, de restaurer la grandeur de leur Nation, en vinrent-ils à causer la mort de millions de victimes ?
La très classique biographie que le sinologue Jonathan Spence consacre à Mao Zedong ne répond malheureusement pas à ces questions. S’appuyant sur une solide documentation, sans prétendre faire de révélation fracassante, l’auteur raconte la vie du grand dirigeant chinois sans se perdre à narrer celle de la Chine. Seul le tiers du livre traite de l’exercice du pouvoir, après 1949. On appréciera les développements consacrés à la formation intellectuelle de Mao, à sa (tumultueuse) vie familiale. On regrettera en revanche de rester à distance du Mao du Grand Bond en Avant et de la Révolution culturelle.
On peine aussi à trouver chez Mao cette « rupture » qui divise souvent la biographie des « grands hommes ». Né en 1893 dans une famille de paysans riches du Hunan, il tarde à s’affirmer à la tête du mouvement marxiste. Il n’occupe qu’un strapontin à la fondation du PCC en juillet 1921 et subit la Longue Marche plus qu’il ne l’initie. Son succès vient de son rejet très rapide de la ligne soviétique d’union avec le Guomindang et de révolution urbaine et ouvrière ; il lui préfère la scission d’avec Chiang Kai Chek, l’engagement militaire contre les Japonais et la révolution paysanne. Sa stratégie réussit et on voit Mao mûrir dans le grottes de Yan’an en 1936 : « De plus en plus rigide, l’homme cherche à plier son entourage à ses caprices et à ses croyances. La vie austère qu’il a menée par nécessité puis par choix, il s’en vante à présent et prétend même forcer tout le monde à l’imiter. Oubliée, la fascination qu’il éprouvait dans sa jeunesse pour les aspects les plus subtils de la civilisation chinoise » (pp.126/7). C’est peut-être à Yan’an que se situe le « tournant ».
Quelles furent les raisons pour lesquelles celui qui fut « le Lénine de la révolution chinoise avant d’essayer maladroitement à en devenir le Staline » (Lucien Bianco) causa la mort de près de 20 millions de Chinois pendant le Grand Bond en Avant et traumatisa toute une génération dix ans plus tard dans la Révolution culturelle ? Ce qui frappe dans la biographie du Grand Timonier, c’est depuis son plus jeune âge combien il se prend au sérieux et manque désespérement d’humour. Sans doute cette critique naît-elle dans une époque qui survalorise peut-être l’humour. Mais à lire un Mao si fanatiquement confiant dans l’avenir du communisme, on se prend à croire qu’un peu d’ironie aurait peut-être évité à la Chine bien des malheurs.
January 18, 2021
Short, but comprehensive. A bit academic for casual reading, but gave me a good primer for who Mao was.
August 27, 2019
A very condensed biography. I felt it covers the beginnings of Mao's political career quite well, but it's rather concise on the Small Leap, the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution. It also has no time to shed more light on Mao's accompanying characters. Overall, very useful brief intro to Mao and substantial part of China's 20th century history.
November 26, 2016
A concise and historically punctual overview of Mao Zedong and the development of his 'Thought' within (but beginning much outside) the global narrative of Communist insurgence, particularly where similarities with the Soviet Union could be drawn.
Although perhaps a little vague, especially where the later years of the boy born in the obscurity of the periphery within the sprawling realms of China - a country humiliated by foreign imperial bureaucracies, and the ineffectiveness of the late-decade decadence of the late 19th century Qing dynasty - this book accurately explains the changing cultural climate of the maturing Mao in a story book fashion that presents the Chairman as both an idea and a contradiction. A man who was at once an educated peasant - and at the same time not really a peasant at all despite his rustic tendencies. His intellectualism alienating him spiritually from the humble ruralness with which he hoped to shape a New China and, and mould his personal and professional image.
Though no matter his posturings, his visions of a utopian working-class China in which the blood and toil of the peasantry subsided all things would come to undercut his baseline ideology as it was the exploitation of the peasantry again which were to propel his idealisms to a reality. A reality that was in-achievable beneath his tunnel-visioned lens of policy construction.
Bordering on the maniac, and the paranoid, his efforts and ultimate vision was increasingly mired by his imposed isolation - where he at once sought to set himself apart from the rest of the party as a rural egalitarian and crusader of the people, but was at heart a faltering intellectual who could never himself implement the new reality with which his administration and ultimate control was effectively a symbol, a burning crux for revolution. A revolution he himself withheld the rights to envision - as distant and isolated a figure as he became as from the young pragmatist concerned with civil and social liberty as a youth.
The book is a good if brief analysis of the Chairman's state of mind and maraud of personal and contextual influences. His isolation itself, though extensively explained with regards to his 'second circle years' is not wholly brought into discussion when maybe it most specifically should be, where Mao's very mentality as leader of the party would develop as it did primarily within the spacing of the Yan'an cylindrical aura of influence during the latter war years.
Whilst concurrently Mao's statused time as Chairman (when most all consolidations of ideological power were made) is brushed over somewhat in favour of his totemed and far-reaching strategic influence upon the youth with regards to the Cultural Revolution, the formation of a new crimson Red Guard yielding the most effective gains in terms of historiography - where a basic, but good introduction to Mao is considered.
Worth the read - but only as a supplement to something denser or perhaps more specific in its scope and subsequent analysis.
Although perhaps a little vague, especially where the later years of the boy born in the obscurity of the periphery within the sprawling realms of China - a country humiliated by foreign imperial bureaucracies, and the ineffectiveness of the late-decade decadence of the late 19th century Qing dynasty - this book accurately explains the changing cultural climate of the maturing Mao in a story book fashion that presents the Chairman as both an idea and a contradiction. A man who was at once an educated peasant - and at the same time not really a peasant at all despite his rustic tendencies. His intellectualism alienating him spiritually from the humble ruralness with which he hoped to shape a New China and, and mould his personal and professional image.
Though no matter his posturings, his visions of a utopian working-class China in which the blood and toil of the peasantry subsided all things would come to undercut his baseline ideology as it was the exploitation of the peasantry again which were to propel his idealisms to a reality. A reality that was in-achievable beneath his tunnel-visioned lens of policy construction.
Bordering on the maniac, and the paranoid, his efforts and ultimate vision was increasingly mired by his imposed isolation - where he at once sought to set himself apart from the rest of the party as a rural egalitarian and crusader of the people, but was at heart a faltering intellectual who could never himself implement the new reality with which his administration and ultimate control was effectively a symbol, a burning crux for revolution. A revolution he himself withheld the rights to envision - as distant and isolated a figure as he became as from the young pragmatist concerned with civil and social liberty as a youth.
The book is a good if brief analysis of the Chairman's state of mind and maraud of personal and contextual influences. His isolation itself, though extensively explained with regards to his 'second circle years' is not wholly brought into discussion when maybe it most specifically should be, where Mao's very mentality as leader of the party would develop as it did primarily within the spacing of the Yan'an cylindrical aura of influence during the latter war years.
Whilst concurrently Mao's statused time as Chairman (when most all consolidations of ideological power were made) is brushed over somewhat in favour of his totemed and far-reaching strategic influence upon the youth with regards to the Cultural Revolution, the formation of a new crimson Red Guard yielding the most effective gains in terms of historiography - where a basic, but good introduction to Mao is considered.
Worth the read - but only as a supplement to something denser or perhaps more specific in its scope and subsequent analysis.
December 14, 2021
Short yet descriptive biography on one of the most important figures of the 20th century. "Mao" is a name that's often synonymous with "despot," yet in America his life is relatively unknown compared to, say, Hitler or Mussolini. Spence commences with background on Mao's rustic upbringing in context of a China throwing off the colonial yoke, mainly characterized by British commercial interests and the collaborationist Qing dynasty. Mao grew up in what you might consider a middle class, agrarian household with normal, unassuming parents. Confucian values ruled the day and formed the core of Mao's worldview. Perhaps that was the basis of the scholastic zeal that defined the young Mao, as he (somewhat paradoxically) fervently sought and consumed works on Western political and economic ideologies, institutions, and figures.
"Paradoxical" is the key adjective Spence assigns to Mao's life, considering the stark juxtaposition between the studious youth consumed by a mission of social justice and equality (and who loved poetry and literature...and wrote fairly well) and the later unbending tyrant who autocratically led China through various seismic episodes that toppled millennia-old edifices. Although Mao's stubborn hand arguably cleared the way for the power of modern China, millions perished in the rubble.
Spence details Mao's education into early adulthood, following humanitarian pursuits (belying the modern stereotype, he hated mathematics). It was in his studies that Mao learned more about (and was arguably mentored and groomed for) Marxism as well as Chinese nationalism. This intersected with student activist movements that focused their energies on Marxist revolution...against Western imperialism as well as Chinese tradition (and certainly the capitalistic tendencies observed in both dynamics). Chinese feudalism long predated the pressures imposed by Western commercial interests colonizing China for the sake of land, resources, labor, and markets. Mao even started and ran a commercially successful bookstore through which he promoted the most important political, economic, and philosophical works of the day. This is the Mao whose energies and ambitions expanded into working with the Kuomintang (Chinese nationalists) in taking control of Changsha province in 1920, establishing the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, and militarily seizing land from warlords, and eventually breaking with the Chinese nationalists (under Chiang Kai-Shek) in a very blood civil war in which Mao's Communists eventually triumphed. Of course, China's fight in WWII against Japanese imperialism figures prominently.
Spence covers Mao's heavy-handed domestic reforms, targeting and dispossessing wealthy landowners (with frequent executions) and seeking to rapidly industrialize China under the Five-Year plans. These bolstered China's economy tremendously but at an as tremendous cost in freedom and life. Particularly, the second iteration, known as the Great Leap Forward, resulted in what some estimate to be around 30 million deaths in just a few years largely as a result of a famine caused by poor agricultural policies and methods. Mao's dealings with Stalin, his superior (remember, the USSR was the center of communism and directed Comintern) are detailed. Deviously (yet unsurprisingly) Stalin even advises Mao to foment conflicts underhandedly and then broker peace in order to appear more statesman-like. The further calamity of Mao's domestic policies and the dealings of the CCP, including Mao's succession planning, are discussed as well as his famous re-opening of diplomatic relations with the US in 1972. Mao's various marriages, children, and affairs also figure relevantly throughout the book and again make for great irony given the ostensibly honorable, moralistic Confucian he viewed himself as in the beginning.
Obviously there are much lengthier and more detailed biographies on Mao in circulation. They may also do a better job than Spence of forming a coherent sequence (there are some parts here where you scratch your head a bit on how we get from point A to point B), but given that Spence is tasked with packing so much detail on a significant figure of a vast nation into a volume of around 200 pages, I don't think it's fair to be too critical about this. Overall, this is a solid work for someone seeking to learn who Mao was, how he fit into the global order of the 20th century, and why he's so important to modern China and the world.
"Paradoxical" is the key adjective Spence assigns to Mao's life, considering the stark juxtaposition between the studious youth consumed by a mission of social justice and equality (and who loved poetry and literature...and wrote fairly well) and the later unbending tyrant who autocratically led China through various seismic episodes that toppled millennia-old edifices. Although Mao's stubborn hand arguably cleared the way for the power of modern China, millions perished in the rubble.
Spence details Mao's education into early adulthood, following humanitarian pursuits (belying the modern stereotype, he hated mathematics). It was in his studies that Mao learned more about (and was arguably mentored and groomed for) Marxism as well as Chinese nationalism. This intersected with student activist movements that focused their energies on Marxist revolution...against Western imperialism as well as Chinese tradition (and certainly the capitalistic tendencies observed in both dynamics). Chinese feudalism long predated the pressures imposed by Western commercial interests colonizing China for the sake of land, resources, labor, and markets. Mao even started and ran a commercially successful bookstore through which he promoted the most important political, economic, and philosophical works of the day. This is the Mao whose energies and ambitions expanded into working with the Kuomintang (Chinese nationalists) in taking control of Changsha province in 1920, establishing the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, and militarily seizing land from warlords, and eventually breaking with the Chinese nationalists (under Chiang Kai-Shek) in a very blood civil war in which Mao's Communists eventually triumphed. Of course, China's fight in WWII against Japanese imperialism figures prominently.
Spence covers Mao's heavy-handed domestic reforms, targeting and dispossessing wealthy landowners (with frequent executions) and seeking to rapidly industrialize China under the Five-Year plans. These bolstered China's economy tremendously but at an as tremendous cost in freedom and life. Particularly, the second iteration, known as the Great Leap Forward, resulted in what some estimate to be around 30 million deaths in just a few years largely as a result of a famine caused by poor agricultural policies and methods. Mao's dealings with Stalin, his superior (remember, the USSR was the center of communism and directed Comintern) are detailed. Deviously (yet unsurprisingly) Stalin even advises Mao to foment conflicts underhandedly and then broker peace in order to appear more statesman-like. The further calamity of Mao's domestic policies and the dealings of the CCP, including Mao's succession planning, are discussed as well as his famous re-opening of diplomatic relations with the US in 1972. Mao's various marriages, children, and affairs also figure relevantly throughout the book and again make for great irony given the ostensibly honorable, moralistic Confucian he viewed himself as in the beginning.
Obviously there are much lengthier and more detailed biographies on Mao in circulation. They may also do a better job than Spence of forming a coherent sequence (there are some parts here where you scratch your head a bit on how we get from point A to point B), but given that Spence is tasked with packing so much detail on a significant figure of a vast nation into a volume of around 200 pages, I don't think it's fair to be too critical about this. Overall, this is a solid work for someone seeking to learn who Mao was, how he fit into the global order of the 20th century, and why he's so important to modern China and the world.
July 12, 2015
I like the old Penguin Lives series of brief biographies; they were published between 1999 and 2002 and then abruptly discontinued. I used to read or peruse them back then—I remember reading the one on Woolf in full and maybe Austen too, as well as looking through the Joyce and Melville. So I decided to revisit the series with this volume on Chairman Mao by the distinguished historian Jonathan Spence. It has convinced me that the brief biography format works better for writers than for politicians, since the lives of the latter are so crowded with incident and action and personality.
Moreover, this book is rather oddly structured, leaving for its last third the narrative of Mao's actual rule over China and providing less detail about that period than about Mao's earlier life. This creates a certain "balance," but it neglects the obvious fact that readers, especially those coming to Mao for the first time, will probably be most interested in his leadership. Spence, who rarely editorializes, seems to need this narrative structure to make his argument, though: he casts Mao's life as a tragedy in which the thoughtful, humane, gifted, idealistic young man from the rural provinces rises to world prominence and is then undone by his own hubris. People who know more than I do about modern China will have to decide if this is plausible.
Spence also emphasizes Mao's intellectual ambitions and inadequacies, a motif that climaxes in the Cultural Revolution. In this ghastly episode (though one that will no doubt find more and more defenders today), Mao revenged himself on party leaders for the failures of his own highly ideological plans to modernize China in the Great Leap Forward. Calling on the populace—especially the young—to revolt against their teachers, parents, and other authorities, to "attack the headquarters," in Mao's words, he consolidated his own authority since his ideology was the guide to the revolution. Spence attributes to Mao a resentment for intellectuals with roots in his rural background and in his own failure to become a genuine scholar or thinker himself:
And Spence's clear, factual, and even decorous prose can have a quality of euphemism about what actually went on in the Cultural Revolution, leading readers to believe that it might be an example of some regrettable but necessary excess in the birth of a modern nation rather than a top-down pogrom against civilization itself by a despot preaching self-criticism even as he was immured in the appurtenances of authority. Spence does mention torture as the Revolution's method, and he holds up some Red Guard rhetoric for implied mockery, but the New York Times review of the biography, written by a penitent journalist taken in at the time by Maoist propaganda, gives a more vivid sense of the actual atrocities involved than the biography itself does:
Of course, it is more difficult to evaluate Mao than, say, Hitler: many of his goals seem laudable—the elimination of poverty, the reform of unjust hierarchies, the resistance to imperialism. All the more reason, then, to be clear about the lies and cruelty and stupidity into which such goals may be corrupted.
Moreover, this book is rather oddly structured, leaving for its last third the narrative of Mao's actual rule over China and providing less detail about that period than about Mao's earlier life. This creates a certain "balance," but it neglects the obvious fact that readers, especially those coming to Mao for the first time, will probably be most interested in his leadership. Spence, who rarely editorializes, seems to need this narrative structure to make his argument, though: he casts Mao's life as a tragedy in which the thoughtful, humane, gifted, idealistic young man from the rural provinces rises to world prominence and is then undone by his own hubris. People who know more than I do about modern China will have to decide if this is plausible.
Spence also emphasizes Mao's intellectual ambitions and inadequacies, a motif that climaxes in the Cultural Revolution. In this ghastly episode (though one that will no doubt find more and more defenders today), Mao revenged himself on party leaders for the failures of his own highly ideological plans to modernize China in the Great Leap Forward. Calling on the populace—especially the young—to revolt against their teachers, parents, and other authorities, to "attack the headquarters," in Mao's words, he consolidated his own authority since his ideology was the guide to the revolution. Spence attributes to Mao a resentment for intellectuals with roots in his rural background and in his own failure to become a genuine scholar or thinker himself:
Mao had also grown more hostile to intellectuals as the years went by—perhaps because he knew he would never really be one, not even at the level of his own secretaries, whom he would commission to go to the libraries to track down classical sources for him and help with historical references. Mao knew, too, that scholars of the old school like Deng Tuo, the man he had summarily ousted from the People's Daily, had their own erudite circles of friends with whom the [sic] pursued leisurely hours of classical connoisseurship, which was scarcely different from the lives they might have enjoyed under the old society. They wrote elegant and amusing essays, which were printed in various literary newspapers, that used allegory and analogy to tease the kind of "commandism" that had been so present in the Great Leap, and indeed in the Communist leadership as a whole. It was surely of such men that Mao was thinking when he wrote: "All wisdom comes from the masses. I've always said that intellectuals are the most lacking in intellect. The intellectuals cock their tails in the air, and they think, 'If I don't rank number one in all the world, then I'm at least number two.'"Here Spence's insistence on going into detail about Mao's early studies, his attraction to the classics, his love of poetry, pays off. One is even tempted, if one has known a lot of literary intellectuals, to laugh ruefully along with Mao's insult. (And I am even tempted to suggest an analogy along these lines between Mao and Nixon, both of whom built policy around their and their constituencies' resentments, justified and unjustified, against academic and cultural elites.) The Mao who made the Cultural Revolution, though, was living in comfort and luxury beyond even most scholars, traveling around the country in his specially outfitted train and dallying with his mistresses.
And Spence's clear, factual, and even decorous prose can have a quality of euphemism about what actually went on in the Cultural Revolution, leading readers to believe that it might be an example of some regrettable but necessary excess in the birth of a modern nation rather than a top-down pogrom against civilization itself by a despot preaching self-criticism even as he was immured in the appurtenances of authority. Spence does mention torture as the Revolution's method, and he holds up some Red Guard rhetoric for implied mockery, but the New York Times review of the biography, written by a penitent journalist taken in at the time by Maoist propaganda, gives a more vivid sense of the actual atrocities involved than the biography itself does:
For a year or more, I wrote uncritically, even enthusiastically, about dreadful things -- nuclear scientists shoveling out pigpens who insisted they had been ignorant until ''educated'' by the peasants; classical musicians with fingers smashed by the Red Guards who described their past work as ''poisonous weeds''; acupuncture as the sole ''anesthetic'' for deep-brain surgery in operations that, as we learned years later, few patients survived. Only when the rationalizations became too great to bear did I revert to my instincts.To understand is not to excuse. One can see, reading this book, how a man of Mao's intelligence and sensibility could nevertheless proceed by degrees into tyranny by the extremity of the circumstances in which he had to maneuver: decades of war and deprivation. And it is useless, also obnoxious, to airily insist on liberalism as bromide and panacea to historical actors born far away and long ago. I don't fault Spence for avoiding such rhetoric in 1999, when it was so fashionable. All the same, the lessons for us in Mao's life, especially its final third, should not be avoided: theory must subject itself to observable reality; what looks like popular activity is often manipulated by elites; populist rhetoric is usually promoted by elites themselves for their own purposes; the arts and sciences may be open to all in terms of opportunity, but considered in themselves they are inegalitarian insofar as not everyone is talented enough—perhaps only a few are—to attain great achievements within them. Spence makes the pattern of Mao's policies clear: he destroyed wealth, whether economic or cultural, in the guise of distributing it equally.
Of course, it is more difficult to evaluate Mao than, say, Hitler: many of his goals seem laudable—the elimination of poverty, the reform of unjust hierarchies, the resistance to imperialism. All the more reason, then, to be clear about the lies and cruelty and stupidity into which such goals may be corrupted.
February 5, 2020
This brief biography of Mao by a well-regarded Chinese historian argues that Mao’s life was “a long-drawn-out adventure in upheaval,” as reflected in his concept of continuous revolution. He delineates several ways in which Mao’s life influenced his political philosophy: his birth in rural China led to his emphasis on revolution among the peasants (as opposed to Soviet communism, which focused on revolution among the workers in the cities); his lack of formal education led to his dislike and distrust of intellectuals; his difficulties fighting Chiang Kai-shek led to his belief in having the military might to back up his political goals; his absolute control led to his being increasingly cut off from day-to-day reality and criticism, which then led during the 1950s and 1960s to one disastrous project after another. Other interesting points are Mao’s emphasis on guerrilla warfare, the importance of World War II in strengthening the Communist party (largely because the Communists were more effective in fighting the Japanese than were Chiang’s Nationalist forces), Mao’s development of a coarse persona (similar to Khrushchev and LBJ), the importance of geography in helping Mao’s forces after World War II (the Long March had left them closer to Manchuria, which allowed them to fill the vacuum left there by the defeated Japanese troops), and Mao’s vision of the US serving as a balance to the Soviet Union (thus the opening of China to Nixon and Kissinger). More might have been said about Mao’s rise to power during the Long March and other topics, but Spence has managed to pack a lot of information in just a few pages.
May 13, 2021
Fairly well written, accessible and straightforward account of Mao's political life. It doesn't go into the depths of Mao Thought or tries to figure out who meant what etc, which of course wouldn't be possible in a short primer, but that's completely okay. I feel that in a way, it's almost better that way, as a book written by a Westerner will most likely not be able to really dissect everything going on. On the outside stuff happening, it was meticulous without marring it with unsolicited opinions. A few times I thought that Spence is psychologizing Mao a bit, for instance after the Lin Biao incident. On a factual basis, I think Spence missed it a bit to convey the full nuance of the discussions around the topic, but more, I'm not sure we have an account of Mao's 'well-being' during that time or how hurt he felt from it. Endowing historical figures with an inner life is very tricky and I'm not sure it can be attempted without massive sources.
I personally appreciated that there was a bit more focus on Mao's early year, since I'm more well-read on the later years. Just based on the amount of 'historical density', the later years are obviously more interesting. For the general reader, I think it would've been better if it was skewed a bit more on the later life rather than the early life.
I personally appreciated that there was a bit more focus on Mao's early year, since I'm more well-read on the later years. Just based on the amount of 'historical density', the later years are obviously more interesting. For the general reader, I think it would've been better if it was skewed a bit more on the later life rather than the early life.
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