During the first day of my 2010 trip to Beijing, I was escorted by Li Kai, the Chinese friend of a Korean friend. We went to the heart of the matter—to the balcony atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace, looking out over Tiananmen Square. From this spot on October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the inauguration of the People’s Republic of China. By all accounts, it was a heady moment with all sorts of promises that a bright new era had dawned. There was a parade and processions by soldiers, students, peasants, workers and artists. Looming above them was a huge portrait of Mao, the central figure of the military and political movement that had driven the Nationalists off the mainland and over to Taiwan.
The glorification and indeed deification of Mao had begun. As the Chinese Communist Party told it, he was a heroic figure who delivered the nation from a century of weakness and ruin. “The Great Helmsman” was just one of the flattering names given him.
I would beg to differ with such a characterization. I recently completed a 680-page biography of Mao and am less than enamored. What I write here is by no means comprehensive, and I cannot but admit that some good things took place during his reign. Literacy rose, as did the status of women. He lived 83 years and essentially unified the most populous country on earth.
I will start by asserting that the Long March of 1934‒1935 was shorter and less arduous than we have always been told. Objective historians now doubt that it was any 8,000 miles; 3,500 is more likely. (Still a long way to go, I concede.) Stories of how Mao and his hardy band of red soldiers fought and overcame great difficulties were exaggerated. Both Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping later admitted as much.
That is a mere quibble. Now, onto more substantive matters. I am always irked when I read about the Great Leap Forward and do not see “so-called” before the term or quotation marks around it. Most euphemisms are meant to obscure, and this one does so to the extreme. Mao’s plan to quickly turn China into an agricultural and industrial giant was in fact a great leap backward. I will skip the details, but suffice it to say the program failed miserably. So certain was he that he had all the answers, even when reports of disaster came in, he ignored them and said full steam ahead. The result was so awful that it is hard to grasp. Mao alone is responsible for what was probably the worst famine in human history. Scholars have looked closer at the years 1958‒1962, and the estimated number of deaths by starvation has just grown—20 million, 30 million, 40 million. Perhaps as many as 70 million people died prematurely during that time due to Mao’s misguided, utopian policies. In private conversation, he sometimes shocked listeners with off-hand comments about mass deaths, whether by the atomic bomb or famine. I give you this quote from Mao in Shanghai, circa 1959: "When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half the people die so that the other half can eat their fill."
While this was going on, Mao was living quite comfortably in Zhongnanhai, his office and home in Beijing. He could often be found there wearing slippers and a robe, reading a book about ancient Chinese history, swimming in his private pool (one of the very few in the entire country) and consorting with the young females his aides brought on an almost daily basis. Austerity was the name of the game for everybody else, but the Chairman's food, from what I read, was plentiful and tasty. He missed no meals.
Let us now discuss the “Cultural Revolution.” Again, I fairly scream when I see this term used without quotation marks. As has been well documented, Mao’s personality cult was a big hit with Chinese youth who called themselves the Red Guards. He essentially gave them permission to ransack the country, beating and killing whoever they considered less than ideologically pure. It lasted most of 10 years—1966 until his death in 1976. How absurd was it to send teachers, doctors, intellectuals and those educated abroad to rural areas to labor with the peasants? I knew one of those people, Dr. Ching-I Niu. He is among the alumni featured in my 1994 book Coming to Texas. Dr. Niu earned a doctorate in biochemistry at the University of Texas, went back home and became a prominent scientist. Under tough conditions, he and his team synthesized bovine insulin. It was a major scientific breakthrough in 1965. But once the “Cultural Revolution” got in full swing, he was forced to perform menial chores in the lab, factory and farm. At least Dr. Niu survived. Many, unable to stand the abuse and humiliation, committed suicide.
During my visit to Beijing two years ago, I bought a copy of the Little Red Book, pithy quotations from Chairman Mao. Sometimes I pick it up and flip through a few pages, but I discern no great wisdom therein. American pop artist Andy Warhol created a series of colorful portraits of Mao in 1973 which gained considerable fame. People in that milieu thought it all quite charming. As you might expect, I do not. It also galls me that Mao is still held in such high regard in the PRC. His face is on nearly every Chinese banknote, and it is still there on the Gate of Heavenly Peace. He is honored with a large mausoleum in the center of Tiananmen Square. Mao, who did so much damage to China and its people, remains a symbol of national strength. It is not in the interest of the Chinese Communist Party to admit that is only a façade.
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