This is a short
biography of the controversial Chinese leader, Mao Zedong, who is regarded by
some as the architect of modern China and others, as a brutal dictator
comparable to Hitler and Stalin (incidentally, he had a close relationship with
the latter).
Mao had a modest
beginning, and considering the standards back then, he was from a wealthy
family considering they held a farmland of their own and the book goes on to
describe how his father instilled the discipline in Mao. It then goes on to
talk about his failed pursuits of higher education and as to how he was
suddenly inspired by the ideas of revolution, the communist ideology even
though he differed with the Soviet version as he believed China was more
agrarian than Russia. It then went on to describe the conflict between the
Nationalists and the Communists and how they united to face the common enemy in
Japan. It then goes on to talk about Mao’s retreat – the long march, followed
by his eventual victory against Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalists, thus officially
establishing a Communist State in China (barring Taiwan where Chiang Kai-Shek
was in charge of the government in exile) and what he did later, the policies
he had in place, the Red guards that he created, among various other things.
The book was
very detailed, and gives a glimpse of the situation in China, with regard to
the society, their leanings and their inclination towards the nationalists. It
also gave a reasonable account of their role in the Second World War against Japan
and some of the gruesome events as part of it. It also established Mao’s
personality in detail, the pragmatist, idealist who wouldn’t hesitate to impose
his ideology and his relentless fight against imperialism. As aforementioned,
Mao’s effectiveness is debatable and this book made a reasonable effort in touching
upon both good and bad aspects of his administration.
However, the
extent of detail was a demerit as well, considering, while the Nanking Massacre
during the Second Sino-Japanese war is an integral part of modern Chinese
history, they failed to establish as to how it was relevant in this book
considering Mao stayed relatively silent during the period. Additionally,
although I did state that the book did touch upon some of the bad aspects of
his administration, it failed to quantify any of it, wherein, it is alleged
that through his flawed policies, he has been responsible for the deaths of
close to 71 million people (upper limit) through the purges he conducted
against counter-revolutionaries, his failed industrialisation policy leading to
a mass famine, and the atrocities committed in the name of The Cultural
Revolution. Considering the seriousness of his flawed policies, I felt it
required much more attention than whatever it managed to garner and in that
sense, it is a failure of this biography.
I would say this
was a decent biography considering they didn’t try and go out of the way to
justify every action of Mao but then, I felt the attention was fully on Mao the
revolutionary and very little on Chairman
Mao. Considering that, I would award the book a rating of five on ten.
Rating – 5/10
Have a nice day,
Andy
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