All anyone needs to know about Mao Tse-Tung can be gleaned from what appears on page 13 of this biography, in Mao's own words: “Of course there are people and objects in the world, but they are all there only for me. People like me only have a duty to ourselves; we have no duty to other people.... I am responsible to no one.” What follows for roughly the next six hundred pages is a non-stop litany of awful, horrible actions and deeds that put truth behind what Mao wrote. He cared for no one; he cared for nothing. Except himself, and what made him feel good. In every way, he was as brutal and appalling as Hitler and Stalin, and I actually even wonder if he might have been even slightly worse than Stalin, but when you're talking about that extreme level of depravity, I am not sure that there is much appreciable difference between one or the other.

Jung Chang and Jon Halliday chronicle Mao's rise through the Chinese Communist Party. And what a sham it was. At almost every step of the way, Mao proved himself to be a lazy, bungling, incompetent commander of forces. Time after time, Mao blundered into a better position, through a combination of bullying, lying, misdirection, intimidation, vindictiveness, and a tendency for his opponents to either back down from a direct challenge to him or underestimate him long-term. Despite repeatedly disobeying Party rules countless times, Stalin and the powers in Moscow continued to back him up and praise him. Why? It seems that because Mao was one thing: not weak. He was brutal and destroyed whoever he needed to. Since Stalin operated that way as well, it would seem that he rewarded that awful quality in Mao.

The authors portray Mao as a brutish thug, with absolutely no sense of morality. They seem to imply that, because of the atrocities committed at his insistence and under his regime, that he possibly worse than Hitler or Stalin. They say this because Mao often worked people literally to death, or starved them to death. While I can understand that thinking, I am not sure I agree with it. When you get to that level of evil, a level that only a select few individuals over the course of humankind has ignobly achieved, then if there is any separation amongst the tyrants it is by a matter of degrees. Is what Mao did any worse than what happened in Buchenwald or Auschwitz? I think it depends on your own point of view. Torturing and/or killing people is the worst thing that someone can do to another person, so perhaps trying to figure out who was more brutal is a somewhat meaningless exercise. Mao was horrible, as were the others. I will add this, though: it does seem that Mao did not have a single shred of decency or compassion in him. I did not get that sense when reading about Stalin; as awful as he also was, there would very rarely be a glimpse (and a small one at that) of a moment of kindness. Mao seemed to have none. When his son was killed in the Korean War, he did not bother to tell his daughter-in-law even though he saw her regularly. She did not learn about his death for several years.

Occasionally the authors extrapolate events a bit too much. For example, when Stalin died at age 73, they discuss how Mao was causing stress for Stalin by pushing for obtaining his own atom bomb, all while the Korean War (largely a product of Mao's attempt to goad the United States into a confrontation so as to force Stalin to provide China with the bomb) continued as a stalemate. On page 369, they write: “Mao may have helped cause Stalin's stroke.” I find this somewhat dubious. Stalin was, by this point, an old man who ate poorly and did not get a lot of exercise. He drank heavily and had (as best can be determined given the limited access to Russian archives) some previous health issues, including most likely a stroke during WWII. Was Mao an irritant to him? Yes. But enough to contribute to his death? I think this unlikely.

Additionally, I came across something rather small, but that I know to be incorrect: on page 570, the authors are writing about the lead-up to the historic visit of Richard Nixon to China in May 1972, and they are talking specifically about the preparation meetings involving Henry Kissinger, Nixon's National Security Adviser. They mention “Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller was reported as being...”. Well, one problem here: Rockefeller did not becomes Vice-President until late 1974, after Nixon's resignation and Gerald Ford nominated him to fill the vacancy at that office. Spiro Agnew was Vice-President in 1971 and 1972. Yes, this is small. However, if this one part is incorrect, and it just happens to be something that I know, then it made me question if there are other small or large mistakes in the book. And if so, then how accurate is some of it? Don't get me wrong: Mao was a brutal and horrible human being, you don't need to rely on this book to learn that. That is pretty well-established. But I do wonder if, in their quest to show Mao in all of his awfulness, did the authors push things a bit beyond historical accuracy?

Grade: C+

From purely a historical viewpoint, I would give this four and a half stars. As an enjoyable read, I would give this no more than 2 stars. For those of you who believe this is extremely biased, I suggest you read, "Mao's Last Dancer". I guarantee it is a great read, written by someone who lived in China, during Mao's rule, and loved Mao as one loves a "God".

This book on Chairman Mao of China is the latest entry in my intermittent but ongoing project to read biographies of many of the modern eras most evil leaders... To review, I have now read volumes on Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin.

As usual, I attempted to research the best biography of the figure in question prior to reading. There are not nearly as many bios of Mao as there are of Hitler or Stalin, of course, but this one seemed to be the most comprehensive. Part of the reason for the paucity of books on Mao is that he did such a good job sealing off China from the rest of the world for so many years, and also tightly controlled any information about himself that was released to the public. While there were some criticisms of this book, I would like to point out that though this door-stopper rings in at 814 pages, pages 637 to 790 are all just citation and source material, not counting the notes and the index. This book was extensively researched and documented, whether you feel the authors were biased or not. The list of interviewees alone is impressive.

As to bias... I am not sure it is possible to be unbiased when it comes to a personality like Mao. If you ever wondered what it would be like to give complete power over a quarter of the world's population to a complete sociopath, look no further. The general sense I got from reading about Mao is that, although we think of him as one of the fathers of modern Marxism / Communism, in reality he didn't care one bit about the ideology. Unlike Lenin, Mao was no intellectual. It was a means to an end for him. When he died in 1976, an estimated 40-80 MILLION people had been sacrificed (in peacetime) for his ambition. The scale of suffering presented in this book is numbing, and all to fuel Mao's personal desires and whims. On his deathbed, "Mao felt sorry only for himself." -3/20/19 addendum: On further reflection, I wonder if Mao's original sin was envy. If it was, Communism provided the ideal vehicle for him, since it is a system built almost entirely upon politicized envy.

W/out spoiling anything, there are interesting insights into foreign policy throughout the book, in relation to Chinese-Soviet relations, America's dealing w/ the both the Chinese Nationalists and Communists prior to the ChiCom ascendancy, the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, and Nixon's dealings with Mao.

Of interest to me personally are Mao's personal habits described in the book, which again were similar to Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin. For instance, he preferred to sleep in very late, and work until the early hours of the morning. Like most Communist luminaries, Mao enjoyed a relatively comfortable "bourgeoisie" upbringing. Unlike Hitler or Lenin however, Mao was a terrible public speaker and had almost zero charisma, which makes his rise notable as a perfect exercise in playing pure, ruthless, amoral politics w/out regard to the cost to anyone else, including your own family. Mao never demonstrated any love or loyalty to anyone other than himself. Besides ambition, cruelty for it's own sake (torture actually amused him), and satiation of his own lusts and desires even while his people died from starvation, sickness, forced labor, persecution and the elements were all aspects of Mao's personality. He even waged a crusade to rid China of its culture, which was one part of what the "Cultural Revolution" was organized to accomplish (along with purging any resistance to Mao that was left in China, whether there was evidence of it or not). Books, movies, plays, parks, monuments, architecture - all were objects of his wrath.

-3/20/19 addendum: The techniques Mao exercised throughout his rule in order to completely dominate those under him were fascinating, and provide a Devils toolkit for any totalitarian state. One interesting method that is seeing a depressing comeback in the "liberal West" - to include the U.S. - is the "thought" or "self-examination" (also sometimes called a "struggle session"). This results from the clever communist understanding that if people practice healthy self-reflection, it is likely to result in thinking that undermines the socialist mindset. How to prevent this? Co-opt the very practice through forced self-reflection aimed directly at "wrong thinking" (anything the government decides is wrong). This is often done in a hot-house style group setting to "encourage" "confessions" and engender guilt for all the anti-socialist / anti-leader thoughts the poor soul may - no, is REQUIRED - to discover. I've been watching this very tactic on full display on our campuses and public spaces almost weekly these days. Yesterday, Robert "Beto" O'Rourke, a leftist U.S. Presidential candidate, was made to prostrate himself in a public show of guilt for his "white male privilege" in a display that was disturbingly close to what was described in this book. It is designed to humiliate, to indoctrinate and to dominate.

I will just end this w/ the following excerpt from page 323, which struck me as a perfect summation of Mao Tse-Tung, in his own words: "Mao was viscerally hostile to law, and his subjects were utterly shorn of legal protection. He described himself to Edgar Snow in 1970 as ""a man without law or limit."" Anyone seeking a prototype of the Antichrist need look no further than "The Great Helmsman."

This book is a catalog of a dirty criminal. It felt at times like I was reading about ancient Roman emperors.

Fun/Entertaining book for sure. One can tell that narrator/author has a vendetta against Mao, but it does’t necessarily make the story any less true.

a remarkably forthright and brutal portrayal of Mao, including his relationship with Zhou Enlai and the visit of Richard Nixon to China ... nobody is truthful ... everyone cares only for their own status and power ... (so what else is new?) ... a few excerpts give the flavor

... the real Zhou was not the suave diplomat foreigners saw, but a ruthless apparatchik, in thrall to his Communist faith. Throughout his life he served his Party with a dauntless lack of personal integrity.

... A secret agreement was reached for the CCP to send Russia one million tons of food every year. The result was famine and deaths from starvation in some areas of China occupied by the Communists. ... Few knew that the famine in Red areas in those years was largely due to the fact that Mao was exporting food; the shortage was put down to “war.” Here was a foretaste of the future Great Famine, which was likewise Mao’s creation: again the result of his decision to export food to Russia.

... Kissinger returned to China in November (now as secretary of state), bringing a terminal blow to Mao’s ambitions. Nine months before, Kissinger had promised that Washington would move towards full diplomatic relations “after the 1974 [mid-term] elections.” Now he said that the US “domestic situation” precluded severing relations with Taiwan “immediately”—which Peking had insisted on as a prerequisite for diplomatic relations.

... Mao intended to let the tumor eat Zhou to death unimpeded.

... Mao did not care one iota what happened after his death

... primal myth about the Long March—the crossing of the bridge over the Dadu River ... This bridge is the center of the Long March myth,* fed to the journalist Edgar Snow in 1936. Crossing the bridge, Snow wrote, “was the most critical single incident of the Long March" ... This is complete invention. There was no battle at the Dadu Bridge

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Wow. I bet Batman would write a less biased hate filled book about his parents killers then what Changs got here. But both do deserve to be in a pulpy comic book world due to the sensationalism and over the top delivery they'd contain. This book doesn't stray too far away from Mao's life, but it does often take a break from history and dive off the deep end into hate fueled digression. Does Mao deserve such ferocious posthumous honors? You'll certainly think so after spending time with him in these pages, and being force fed an opinion (however justified) isn't what I want in a biography. Obviously the author will have deep feelings about their subject, but such things should blend in, not stand out like the Bat Signal.

ماو تسي تونغ

سيرة ذاتية كتبتها مؤلفة (بجعات برية) يونغ تشانغ بالتعاون مع زوجها البريطاني جون هوليداي، الشعور الذي سيشعر به القارئ حالما يفرغ من الكتاب هو مزيج من عدم التصديق لكل هذا الشر الذي كان يحتويه ماو، وحجم الكوارث التي تسبب بها للصينيين، وشعور آخر بأن المؤلفة بالغت بشكل ما، وجعلت ماو مدركاً لعواقب كل قرار كان يقوم به، فما تعرضه لنا هذه السيرة ليس إلا رجل طموح جداً، رجل لا يهمه إلا مجده الشخصي، رجل لا تهمه الشيوعية ولا الوطن، لا يهمه العامل أو الفلاح، كل ما يهمه هو صورته الشخصية، وقيمته التاريخية، ومن أجل هذا قام بكل ما قام به، تكشف لنا المؤلف كيف ولماذا انضم ماو للحركة الشيوعية، كيف ولماذا حطم كل الشيوعيين الذين سبقوه حتى لا يقفوا في طريق زعا��ته للحزب، كيف كانت المسيرة الطويلة غير ضرورية ومدمرة لكوادر الحزب، كيف كانت قرارات ماو اللاحقة من الحرب مع اليابانيين ومن ثم القوميين، ثم دخوله الحرب الكورية، وعلاقته بالسوفييت، كل هذه كانت مدفوعة بحبه للسلطة ورغبته في تقوية مركزه، حتى الأحداث الكارثية اللاحقة بعد الانتصار الشيوعي والسيطرة على الصين القارية، مثل القفزة الكبيرة للأمام والثورة الثقافية كلها كانت مدفوعة بأحلام وطموحات ماو الجنونية، وكيف دفع الملايين من الصينيين ثمن هذه الأحلام من أمنهم وطعامهم وحياتهم أحياناً.

This is a thicc-ass book, at between 800 to 1000 pages, depending on which printed version you get, and damn, there's a LOT of juicy shit here.

This is my third biography by this author - 4th if you also include her bio/autobiography Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China The first two bios I read were of the Soong sisters Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China and of Empress Dowager Cixi Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

In her bios of the Soong sisters and Cixi, Jung is more flattering/sympathetic to them. Which does make some sense, as these women were frequently demonized/belittled/portrayed unflatteringly by others simply for being women in power. Here in Mao's biography, Chang does the opposite - which also makes sense given Mao's cult of personality and the propaganda machine that practically deified him despite all the suffering that he was responsible for, directly or indirectly.

In here, Chang portrays Mao as all too human - and all too selfish and greedy. It certainly was interesting to read about Mao's early days and how he treated his wives and his soldiers and subjects, and how as he amassed more and more power he got more selfish and worse. He didn't truly care about the people but he could act like he did when it suited him.

Some people have an issue with the bias in this book against him and I understand why - but at the same time I also enjoyed this book and learning all this juicy shit about Chairman Mao and why he should NOT have been deified/lionized as he was in China. It makes me think of Hitler/the Nazi Party, the Kims of North Korea, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Pol Pot in Cambodia, and so on, and how these awful people could present a pleasing image when it suited them while at the same time being responsible for the deaths of countless people.

4/5 stars for a juicy but entertaining and hella informative read.

Historically, it has always been a problem for communists to accept the Freudian message that all of us, irrespective of greatness, have a dark side to our character. Because of this reluctance, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao have all been shown to be 'pure' in a way that smacks of communism being a religious cult.

Irrespective of the validity of the anonymous sources and KGB archives used by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday in this book, the following points seem to be a fact of life:

1. That Mao was primarily responsible for the disaster of the Great Leap forward and that he hardly showed any remorse for the death of 20-30 million Chinese as a result of his policies. There is no record of him apologising to the Chinese people even privately thru his confidants.

2. That he unleashed the cultural revolution primarily for the preservation of his power in the face of rising opposition within the party to his policies. Again, the consequence of millions of lives being uprooted and lost was just a 'collateral' damage for him, for which he showed no remorse.

3. That Mao was basically authoritarian and undemocratic in his outlook and ruled as a dictator. There is no point in pointing to 'the hundred flowers' movement and talk of democratic centralism in support of Mao. Whenever his colleagues Liu Shao Chi or Peng de Huai tried to invoke the democratic principle in policy making, Mao's response seems to be to brand his opponents as 'counter-revolutionaries', which is a classic communist response promoted by Lenin and Stalin.

4.Even though there are many western and eastern scholars who contest Jung Chang's thesis and come to the defence of Mao, there is something that Jung Chang possesses which none of her detractors do. As shown in her book 'Wild Swans', Jung Chang lived in China through the cultural revolution and also personally experienced the travails and hardships of her parents , who were good communists. Such personal experience must be accorded higher value in evaluating her work than comparing it with the work of academicians sitting in their offices in London and New York.

5. Even if her debunking of the crossing of the river Dadu and other similar communist accomplishments do not stand scrutiny, the above points are sufficient to seriously doubt the 'greatness' of Chairman Mao.

This book is a must read for all good communists.

副標「鮮為人知的故事」應該是對應到共匪所塑造的毛神話，特別針對「功績」部分進行還原與澄清，因此立場踩得很明顯。

一路看下來，毛酋根本就是 chaotic evil 的具體化身，一路使壞鬥爭，其樂也無窮。不過，問題就來了。如果真如同書裡所述，一輩子幹壞事到底，其他人豈不就是完全被玩弄於股掌間的白癡笨蛋？然而這其中必有的緣故在本書中是看不到的。