China's monster, second to none

This long, heavy tome makes the case for Mao as the most monstrous tyrant ever. However, it lacks insight into Mao's behaviour, his childhood, his writings and his political values. Review by Michiko Kakutani

It has become fashionable to look at Hitler and Stalin as the twin monsters of 20th century history. Entire volumes (like Alan Bullock's Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives and Richard Overy's The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia) have examined these two tyrants through the lens of the compare-and-contrast school of history writing, and much ink has been spilled debating which of them was worse – never mind that such debates seem beside the point, indeed offensive, given the fact that both men were responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions of people.

In their new book, Mao: The Unknown Story, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday make an impassioned case for Mao as the most monstrous tyrant ever. They argue that he was responsible for "well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other 20th-century leader," and they argue that "he was more extreme than Hitler or Stalin" in that he envisioned a brain-dead, "completely arid society, devoid of civilisation, deprived of representation of human feelings, inhabited by a herd with no sensibility, which would automatically obey his orders."

Chang, the author of Wild Swans, a best selling memoir that chronicled her family's sufferings under Mao, and her husband, Halliday, a British historian, drew upon newly available material from secret Chinese and Soviet archives for this volume, and they interviewed hundreds of people, including intimates, colleagues and victims of Mao. Their hefty if tendentious and one-dimensional book contains a plethora of valuable new information that helps flesh out the record of devastation left by this heinous tyrant.

The book demonstrates just how brutal and conniving Mao was in his rise to power, maps out the key role he played in fomenting the Korean War and reveals the huge degree to which he was dependent on Stalin both in coming to power and in trying to turn China into a nuclear superpower. The authors write that "close to 38 million people died of starvation and overwork" during the Great Leap Forward and an accompanying famine. This, they contend, was a result not of economic mismanagement but of cold political calculus. They argue, further, that Mao launched his deadly Cultural Revolution as a means of purging those officials (like his No 2, Liu Shao-chi) who had dared to question his catastrophic Great Leap Forward policies.

Not only does their book demolish many of the myths Mao perpetrated about himself – myths that were believed by a host of Westerners, ranging from Simone de Beauvoir to Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon – but it also serves up a far more scathing portrait of the Chinese leader than those laid out by recent biographers like Philip Short and Jonathan Spence.

Previous authors have chronicled many of the atrocities committed by Mao, but at the same time have tended to credit his political and military skills and his role in helping put the most populous nation on earth on the road toward modernity. Chang and Halliday will have none of this. They attribute most of Mao's military and political victories to luck; to the timely intervention in Chinese affairs by the Soviet Union, Japan or the United States; and to Mao's untrammeled use of terror in squashing opposition and dissent.

They write that Mao saw the Sino-Japanese War as an opportunity to have Chiang Kai-shek destroyed by the Japanese and actually hoped that the Soviets would partition China with Japan, giving the Communists control of half the country. In addition, they assail the heroic myth of the Long March, arguing that Mao and his men survived only because Chiang allowed the Red Army to escape.

At the same time, the authors declare that Mao lacked a "heartfelt commitment" to Marxism, that he was driven not by idealism or passionate belief but by a raw pursuit of power. They write that he harboured extreme scorn for his fellow Chinese and that there "is no sign that Mao derived from his peasant roots any social concerns, much less that he was motivated by a sense of injustice." At age 24, they say, he wrote a series of statements that reveal the sheer selfishness at the core of his philosophy: "I do not agree with the view that to be moral, the motive of one's action has to be benefiting others. Morality does not have to be defined in relation to others." And: "Some say one has a responsibility for history. I don't believe it. I am only concerned about developing myself."

In this volume, Mao's megalomania and sadism are underscored by a litany of appalling events. We are shown Mao's vengeful purging of his colleagues and would-be rivals, and his utter disregard for the people he ruled: "We are prepared to sacrifice 300 million Chinese for the victory of the world revolution," he said in 1957. We also witness his ardent embrace of the nuclear bomb as a vehicle for chaos and death – one of his poems read: "Atom bomb goes off when it is told. Ah, what boundless joy!" – and his giddy destruction of Chinese culture and tradition during the Cultural Revolution.

Mao's use of terror was based on turning citizens into informers against one another (children against parents, students against teachers, neighbours against neighbours), and in his personal life, he was equally cold and ruthless. He cavalierly abandoned successive wives and children, and he treated even his closest associates with shocking cruelty. He made his longtime minister Chou En-lai – whom the authors depict as the dictator's self-abasing poodle – wait two years, after his initial diagnosis, to have cancer surgery: partly, the authors contend, to gain leverage over Chou, and partly to make sure that Chou would be available to work around the clock with foreign statesmen who were clamoring to come to Peking in the wake of President Nixon's visit.

One of the problems with this volume is that Chang and Halliday offer little insight into Mao's behaviour. There are few clues to childhood or adolescent ordeals (aside from having a father he disliked) that might have shaped his pathological psyche, no assessment of philosophers (like Nietzsche or Machiavelli, say) who might have influenced his philosophy, no analysis of the dictator's mature writings that might shed light on his politics or values.

The authors also provide scant historical context for Mao's ascendance. They do not put their subject in perspective with the imperial tradition in China, nor do they examine the social and economic circumstances that helped make the country susceptible to his rise and malign rule. To make matters worse, they occasionally make gross generalisations that cannot be proved: for instance, they write that during the Cultural Revolution, when students were exhorted to assail their teachers, "there was not one school in the whole of China where atrocities did not occur."

Such questionable assertions undermine the authors' purpose and are thoroughly gratuitous: Mao's crimes against humanity, documented in this volume and elsewhere, are so heinous and so gargantuan that they hardly need to be hyped.

© The New York Times