Jonny's Reviews > The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957

Frank Dikotter's history of the "liberation" of the Chinese people pulls no punches. Wearing its belief that Mao's communism was an unparalleled disaster for the country firmly on its sleeve, the book details the Chinese communist party's seizure of power (in a brief but effective overview of the cruelties of the civil war and the confusion reigning on the CCP's victorious entry into China's major cities.
The book really takes off in the period of consolidation of power, as the Chinese are taught to think properly, learn their place in this new country and seize the land from the evil landlords. Most of whom are not even really landlords, just in the wrong place, or who haven't learned which way the wind blows. The subsequent attempts to obtain parity in the Communist world with Stalin, the fall of the bamboo curtain and the growth in the number of political prisoners are are laid out and by the end of the book you're left with no doubt that the average man on the street had been broken and remoulded in Mao's flawed image. Exactly how flawed is a matter for the next book in the trilogy...

Interesting for showing how China became so closed off, and for giving examples of the birth of the doublespeak that's (arguably) led to our lives becoming a lot more "interesting" of late. Plus ca change...