The Legacy Of Mao

On The Eve Of The Beijing Olympics, Sunday Morning Looks At The Communist Leader Who Helped Shaped China

(CBS)  They're rehearsing the fireworks in preparation for the opening of the Beijing Olympics which debut later this week. But behind the scenes, complaints continue about the blocking of some Internet sites, and journalists are grappling with government restrictions - which would probably suit the late Mao Tse Tung just fine. Martha Teichner looks back on the legacy of Mao.

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Call the Olympics China's coming-out party: The celebration of how far it's come and how fast, the Beijing skyline proof that Mao Tse Tung's determination to make China a superpower is coming to pass.

Thirty-two years after his death, if Mao miraculously woke up tomorrow, would he even recognize the capitalist colossus China has become? Would he recognize himself in the embalmed icon, the distant founding father figure, the Chinese Communist Party has cast him as in the new China?

It seems rewriting history where Mao is concerned is nothing new. He did it himself, big time.

You may have always believed the official line that Mao was the man who transformed China, a heroic leader, even if he did some bad things.

The real Mao, we discover, did horrendous things.

"Mao was responsible for well over 70 million deaths of the Chinese in peacetime, and he was as evil as Hitler or Stalin," said Jung Chang, "and he did as much damage to mankind as Hitler and Stalin."

She and her husband, historian Jon Halliday, are the authors of "Mao, The Unknown Story" (Random House), based on ten years of research.

"In China we interviewed about 150 of Mao's inner circle, in Mao's family, relatives, friends," Chang said, "and many people talked for the first time."

Even Chang and Halliday were shocked by what they learned:

"I did not realize how much of the misery and hardship he caused was done knowingly and so ruthlessly in terms of his own personal interests," Halliday said.

You've heard of the Long March? It changed history. In order to win their war against the ruling Nationalists, the Chinese Communists needed help from the Soviets. So between 1934 and '35, 80,000 Communist soldiers and civilians walked 6,000 miles across China, so they would be in a secure position to receive arms and supplies. Mao, supposedly the hero of the Long March, slogging along with everybody else, in fact, was carried.

"He even designed his own transport, a bamboo litter," Halliday said. "He said in his later life, 'I was lying in the litter. I had nothing to do. What did I do? I read, I read a lot.'"

Mao knew his political future depended on getting to the Russians first, so on the way he schemed to outmaneuver his party rivals, even though that meant the calculated sacrifice of the lives of thousands of Red Army soldiers.

"Whoever linked up with Moscow, had the communications with Moscow, and [was] recognized by Moscow as the party leader, would be the boss," Chang said.

"So at the end of the Long March, Mao is number one?" Teichner asked.

"Yes," Chang said.

"Well, Stalin I think spotted Mao as probably the guy in the Chinese Communist Party most like himself," Halliday said. "And of course Mao also like Stalin had long range vision. I mean, Mao could think strategically. He was very, very smart."

Ultimately he outsmarted Nationalist leader and U.S. ally, Chiang Kai Shek. Defeated, the Nationalists retreated to the island of Formosa, now called Taiwan, where they remain to this day.

On October 1, 1949, Mao declared himself leader of the renamed People's Republic of China. The crowd chanted "Long live Chairman Mao," unaware of the horrific suffering his ambition would bring, beginning with a campaign which, he claimed, was to modernize China. He named it "The Great Leap Forward."

"Thirty-eight million people died of starvation and overwork," Chang said. "And Mao didn't want to stop. He said for all his projects to take off, half of China may well have to die."

Imagine: half the population. And for what? In fact, it was to pay for the technology to build an atomic bomb. China eventually exploded one in 1964.

China's people starved, because Mao was selling what food they produced to Russia and Eastern Europe. Glowing reports to the outside world about agricultural and industrial production were propaganda.

"And when he was shown the report of, you know, food shortages, of peasants starving, Mao said, 'Educate the peasant to eat less,'" Chang said. "He even said, 'Death have benefit, they can fertilize the land.'"

It was China's president, Liu Shao-Chi, who finally stood up to Mao and rallied top Communist Party officials to put an end to the famine. But Liu and the others soon paid: The infamous Cultural Revolution was Mao's revenge.

Beginning in 1966, "It brought trauma, misery, torture, death, to hundreds of millions of people," Chang said.

We've heard the name "Cultural Revolution," but who even knew what it was? Mao didn't just purge the party of anybody who could vaguely be called "elite"; he literally stripped China of all culture. His Red Guards - violent vigilante student groups - pillaged homes, burned books and tortured party officials.

Jung Chang's family suffered, too. It is their story she tells in her hugely successful first book, "Wild Swans."

"My father was one of the few who stood up to Mao and opposed the Cultural Revolution," she told Teichner. "And as a result he was arrested, tortured, driven insane, and he was exiled to a camp and died very young."

Her parents (seen at left) had been conscientious Communists, but even her mother was imprisoned and denounced.

"She went through over a hundred of those denunciation meetings," Chang said, "and she was made to kneel on broken glass, and she was paraded in the streets where children spat at her and threw stones at her."

A child herself, Jung Chang was sent to a work camp, and never saw her grandmother again. She died in 1969.

While literally millions of families like Jung Chang's were enduring the agonies of the Cultural Revolution, Mao had himself photographed swimming. He wanted his enemies to know he was well and in charge. Mao loved to swim, but how's this for weird: He never bathed or brushed his teeth.

"Instead he would have his servants, his mistresses wiping him every day with a hot towel," Chang said. "He didn't like to wash his hair either, and he liked this slightly itchy feeling."

Mao was a serious womanizer, and he was famous for doing government business from his bed.

His rare public appearances were all about the cult of personality. The party faithful would wave the little red book, the collection of Mao quotations everyone in China was ordered to carry - and never to question.

"You know, we were told that socialist China was paradise on Earth," Chang said, "but if this is paradise, what then is hell?

"I blamed people around Mao, I blamed Madame Mao, but I could never contemplate Mao."

Madame Mao Jiang Xing (Mao's fourth wife) was his attack dog. She was one of the so-called Gang of Four, enforcers who ultimately took the heat. Within a month of Mao's death the Gang of Four were arrested and tried. Madame Mao committed suicide in prison.

Mao died in September 1976, after 27 years in power. The world struggled to process his impact.

Given China's secrecy, China watchers had little to go on.
(
What did it mean that in 1972 and again in 1976, President Nixon went to Mao, not the other way around?

The Cultural Revolution ended with Mao's death, and in 1978 Jung Chang was allowed to go to Britain to study. She's lived there ever since.

She keeps with her one of the shoes her grandmother wore (on bound feet), the arm band Jung herself wore as a Red Guard, some Mao badges - a little history of 20th century China in objects.

"Mao left a tattered China," Chang said.

Teichner asked, "How do you explain the economic miracle that's transformed China?"

"The economic miracles happened because Mao died, and people had had enough of living under Mao's kind of rule," she said. "I mean, they wanted a good life."

Jung Chang is equally dismissive of claims that Mao liberated Chinese women.

"They became more equal in, you know, basically slave labor."

"If there's one criticism that has come to light in the book, is that there's such an unrelenting sort of attack on Mao," Teichner said.

"Well, one way to answer that would be to say 'No,'" Halliday said. "Should one be even-handed about Hitler, for example? I mean, Mao did what he did."

Mao has been conveniently repackaged. A generation of Chinese born after his death know only the revisionist version.

"Young people don't know that's the myth," Halliday said. "I mean, they think he is still the great hero."

"So the truth of Mao really isn't out in the open in China, even now, 30 years after his death?" Teichner asked.

"No, not at all," Chang said.

And may never be. "Mao, The Unknown Story" has been published in Chinese, but the book is banned in China.

Last week, Amnesty International released a report claiming that human rights violations in China have actually increased since Beijing was awarded the Olympics.

Repression may, in the end, be what remains of Mao's legacy.

[cicong-2009]

Posted by RNKay at 10:58 PM : Aug 04, 2008

"Dubya has attempted to keep information from the American people about invasion of Iraq and it will backfire on the republican party when the citizens of the U.S. elect their President from a multi-party system."

Backfire on the Republican Party? FYI, right now, the polls are showing McCain is tied with Obama. Don''t forget that no political system is perfect. In MANY ways, America''s dual-party system lacks true democratic characteristics. For example, despite rhetorics, has America ever had a President from the working class? China also has democracy, but a different form of it. One really ought to study Chinese political history in order to better understand its historical progression. So much attention has been focused on China (the faults in its political system and violation of human rights), yet no one seems to want to talk about the faults in the American political system and THEIR violation of human rights, including the use of torture and illegal detention.

Regardless of how the West sees Mao, the means of his action were justified. His goals (despite its utopianism) were to create a non-elitist, true egalitarian society. The goal of the Cultural Revolution before having gone out of control was to abolish old Chinese thinking, such as treasuring boys and devaluing girls. After the revolution''s failure, and China''s retention of the old ways, the West has now come to criticize such ideology.

Posted by SharnCedar at 06:18 PM : Aug 03, 2008

"So either you must criticize Chinese economic success and Mao''s killing of the rich, or applaud both. Because they are directly related."

Once more, I find humor in your remarks!
Mao didn''t just kill the rich. Sasdly, he indiscriminately caused the death of the Chinese people from varied socio-economic levels.
The communist manifesto dictates non-discriminatory practices! ;-)

I don''t applaud the Chinese economic success.
I don''t applaud U.S. dependence on inexpensive Chinese goods manufactured by a people so oppressed that they don''t realize how meager their wages really are and how the new capitalism in China is doubly oppressing the people. This new capitalism will bring the "filth and their spawn" back to communist China and the people will be no better off then they were before, during, or after communism.

Posted by SharnCedar at 06:18 PM : Aug 03, 2008

"Mao had the courage to do what needed done to improve his corrupt country, which was weighted down by many decades of filth and their spawn in positions of all power, just as the US today."

RNKay''s response:

I''m sorry. But, I can''t help but find the humor in your statement. :-D
You believe that the leader of China is better than the leader of the U.S.A. and the truth is that they are very much alike. Dubya has attempted to keep information from the American people about invasion of Iraq and it will backfire on the republican party when the citizens of the U.S. elect their President from a multi-party system. The Chinese are stuck with a govt that denies them access to information about their leaders current and past. Therefore, the Chinese populace is stuck with the same party leaders and their policies whether they agree with them or not. As for "the filth and their spawn" in the U.S. it''s a pot & kettle issue to me. "The filth & their spawn" in China continue to oppress the people of China by not allowing freedom of speech, ideas, or assembly. The Chinese govt continues to oppress their people with denial of freedom of information so that the Chinese people can make an informed descision about the current govt. The Chinese govt continues to oppress it''s people with denial of a multi-party system. For if that were a reality in China today, the current system of govt would not stand.

Posted by cicong at 06:48 PM : Aug 03, 2008

"I learned of the real Jefferson and Lincoln in University; same would go for Chinese students. The real reason behind the Long March and Mao''''s stories are discussed only in the university level."

Once more, the difference between China and the U.S. is that children of all ages are privy to information. Any child regardless of age is able to access the information about Jefferson''s illicit liasons & Lincoln''s abuse of power at any public library. The same is not true in China unless you are a hacker.

[jery8-2009]

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[cicong-2009]

Posted by ubrew12 at 05:22 PM : Aug 03, 2008

"Communist, or Fascist, its the same: appeal to the rural ''''common man'''' to step up to the plate and destroy the ''''urban elite'''' that have seduced our ''''young uns''''. I think America is smarter than that, but sometimes, like with the Bush admin, you have to wonder. "

That is one of the most ignorant statements I''ve heard. Communism and Fascism couldnt be more opposite. And no, Communism doesnt appeal to the "rural common man." Its main target is URBAN working class.

And no, Mao''s policies did not contribute to China''s economic boom today. It was Deng Xiaoping''s economic reforms (one that went totally opposite to Mao''s policy) that contributed to China''s growing Capitalist economy.

[cicong-2009]

Posted by RNKay : Aug 3, 2008

"While much of what you posted is accurate some of it is not. The main difference between the U.S. and communist China is this; You are now knowledgable of the fact that Tom Jefferson owned slaves and fathered children with at least one of them. The suffering caused by Mao in the Chinese Republic is still kept from the people regardless of age..."

I learned of the real Jefferson and Lincoln in University; same would go for Chinese students. The real reason behind the Long March and Mao''s stories are discussed only in the university level.

[sharncedar]

The corporations are telling us that China is the best success story in the world, that all of the future belongs to China, that all of our capital and our gas and our investment money needs to go to China because it is so wonderful.

And the reason is clearly Mao''s butchering of the rich and powerful within China. Those mass murders paved the way for ecomonic reform. It opened opportunity for all people, which is the powerhouse that has powered their growth, just as the Homestead Act and land distribution powered the American miracle.

If we did the same thing here, for example all CEO''s of all corporations were sent to their justly deserved homes in the dirt, plus their families, plus all graduates of Haavad and all the other privilege schools, plus all hollywood celebrities and all Hollywood moguls too for good measure, this country would be ready for more growth and real improvement. That would mean the people themselves would have the opportunity, and they would blossom and shine forth making the country powerful and productive again.

Mao had the courage to do what needed done to improve his corrupt country, which was weighted down by many decades of filth and their spawn in positions of all power, just as the US today.

So either you must criticize Chinese economic success and Mao''s killing of the rich, or applaud both. Because they are directly related.

[ubrew12]

My favorite Mao quote: When asked, ''What do you think of the French Revolution?'' he answered: ''I''ll tell you when its over''

Great response. Sadly, one of the great butchers of history, although much of his butchery [unlike Stalins] was due to misguided ideology. I learned this from another flawed man I greatly admired: Just because you lied to yourself, and then told me what you thought was the truth, doesn''t mean you didn''t lie.

Or, put another way I''ve heard about: "Its not what you know that gets you in trouble. Its what you know that just ain''t true!"

[ubrew12]

Communist, or Fascist, its the same: appeal to the rural ''common man'' to step up to the plate and destroy the ''urban elite'' that have seduced our ''young uns''. I think America is smarter than that, but sometimes, like with the Bush admin, you have to wonder.

[ubrew12]

Whats ironic is how many of the deaths Mao caused, and Pol Pot of the Khymer Rouge caused, are similar to sentiments expressed by the American right on these boards. Basically, they go like this: only people who live in rural environments, close to the soil, have the attitude and understanding to be ''real'' people. People in urban environments are fake, elitist, predators. SOOOO.... we need to force people from urban environments (especially elitist doctors, laywers, professors, etc) to live off the land, scratching the ground for a living for a change, to make their daily bread in the traditional way. That will disabuse them of their ''high-falutin'' notions!''

Mao insisted on this: it killed 20 million Chinese and robbed China of an entire generation of intellectuals who, surprisingly, produce most of the intelligent productions for a country (inventions, works of art, etc).

Pol Pot insisted on this: killing 2 million Cambodians in the same misguided effort.

In America, the American right has trumpeted its ''rural aww-shucks'' roots for a generation. The good ol'' boys, and their NASCARS, are there, waiting for the call from their good ol'' boy President, to descend upon Hollyweird and SF, arrest all those pedophiles, and take them out to the country for a ''real edacation''! In Congress, they have acted to skew American politics so rural voters have as much as 80 times the political power as urban voters.

Posted by aldwal at 02:57 PM : Aug 03, 2008

"China was far from an agrarian society. It was feudal,..."

feudalism & communism go hand in hand in every communist country ever begun in the history of the world. The warriors win the spoils and cover it up under the guise of socialism so that the skeptics believe and the average joe believes they have a stake in keeping the state sound.
However, even people in communist countries have to eat and therefore must provide the means for agricultural development. So, it is quite feesible that the Peoples Republic was capable of doing the very thing that the author accusses them of.

[tulcak]

why would republicans want to condemn Mao? their stories are the same... those who aspire to total power... one party rule

Posted by Credibility2 at 02:49 PM : Aug 03, 2008

"Why does everything invariably have to be hinged on slavery. Let''''s talk real history and that includes black Africans introducing slavery to white Europeans and profiting by selling their own kind to the white Europeans. Blood and injustice is on the hands of black Africans, yet it''''s only the white European settler slaveholders ignoramuses every want to point a finger at."

Response by RNKay : Aug 3, 2008

The question you posed requires me to pose a response.
The reason that "everything is hinged on slavery", as you stated, is because slavery is a blight on the soul of this democratic republic and humanity. To attempt to deny the brutality and inhumanity of slavery by invoking African involvment in the slave trade is the same as jumping off a cliff simply because everyone else is doing it. If the govt hadn''t allowed slavery to flourish by not prohibiting it in the Constitution from this country''s inception, the African slave traders who sold their fellow Africans to European slave traders would have had to ply their trade elsewhere. A country whose very system of govt was hypocritical in the belief that a republic can prosper while allowing this horriffic trade to take place on it''s very shores and by denying justice & freedom to all men/women for over a century should take stock before casting stones.

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Posted by cicong at 02:29 PM : Aug 03, 2008

"...that is the way a nation''''s own history is taught in many countries. In the US, would American children be taught that T. Jefferson was a slave owner? Would they be taught the real motivation behind Lincoln%u2019s freeing of the slaves? Most of America''''s textbook history is indeed myths created to uphold patriotism and national unity, just like China''s."


Response by RNKay : Aug 3, 2008

While much of what you posted is accurate some of it is not. The main difference between the U.S. and communist China is this; You are now knowledgable of the fact that Tom Jefferson owned slaves and fathered children with at least one of them. The suffering caused by Mao in the Chinese Republic is still kept from the people regardless of age. The people of this country are now aware of Abe Lincoln''s reasoning for allowing the U.S. civil war to start. The people of the Chinese Republic are not aware that Mao didn''t walk one step of the 6000 mile "Long March" to meet with the communist liason to obtain weaponry to defeat the U.S. backed forces of General Chiang Kai Shek.
It is a very big difference, you know!

[herunar-2009]

The Western media, by the way exaggerates the effect of the censorship in China. There are bans in mainland China, but these bans are not as strictly enforced as one might think. Moreover, many Chinese have access to books from Taiwan and Hong Kong, and plenty others know ways to avoid the Internet firewall set up by the Chinese government. The Chinese people know their history well - at the very least, better than the Western public.

[herunar-2009]

The legacy of the Communist party under Mao is a difficult and interesting subject that remains debated. I am surprised, though, by the comparisons with Hitler and Stalin - Hitler and Stalin were hated in the Western world for their expansionist ideologies, and subsequently demonized to justify their fall. We speak of repression from their regimes, but the reality is that their people were willing to be "repressed" (and this is no small part due to their hatred of the Western world, ironically)- the enthusiasm of the German people under Hitler exceeds any in history. Hitler and Stalin were threats to the world and to those prosecuted in their own regimes, but they brought prosperity to their supporters, in particular Hitler who in a few years turned Germany into a superpower. Mao, on the other hand, failed utterly in his later years. Nonetheless, Mao''s early achievements were enough to make China a great power, and in the eyes of her people, finally freed from imperialist threats after two centuries of being humiliated first by the Western world then by Japan %u2013 this part of history, if of course, not remembered by the Western world. This is why he is viewed favorably by most people in China.

[herunar-2009]

I''m a Chinese, holding Canadian passport, and studying in Hong Kong where the academic elite is famously anti-mainland China. I''ve read Chang''s book cover from cover and plenty of other books, and from what I''ve read there are inaccuracies in Chang''s book, but few. There lie, however, significant biases overall, as most of Mao''s achievements were omitted or barely described, and his failures amplified. Many critics, Chinese or otherwise, have made such comments - which is why I am disappointed that a mainstream newspaper would publish an op-ed based on such an unrepresentative sample. However, given the quality of the Western media, in particularly on reporting issues related to China, it does not surprise me.

[aldwal]

Martha Teischner seems to believe everything she heard. I read Mao''s biography in 1974, China was far from an agrarian society. It was feudal, and the people were oppressed worse than they were in l960s and l970s. The American peole depend on good reporting, but this is bitterly one sided. China should never have been given the Olympics in the first place, and the U.S. should never have allowed our industry to outsource over there.

[credibility2]

To compare China covering up its genocide in its history books to that of the U.S. covering things in our own past, like slavery, is imbecilic and ignorant. Why does everything invariably have to be hinged on slavery. Let''s talk real history and that includes black Africans introducing slavery to white Europeans and profiting by selling their own kind to the white Europeans. Blood and injustice is on the hands of black Africans, yet it''s only the white European settler slaveholders ignoramuses every want to point a finger at. This was also conveniently not disclosed in our earlier history books. Back on point: Mao was an evil murderous dictator and now China, with its abysmal human rights record is being rewarded with the Olympics while the majority of weaklings think that this is perfectly acceptable. And the spineless IOC President is condoning China''s censorship and blocking of certain internet websites its government deems unlawful, like those on Tibet, human rights and other sites with content that exposes China for what it continues to be, a country based in slavery and control, starvation and torture. China remains evil and is a global threat everywhere to stability, in human flesh and economically. The worldwide press should have refused to cover the Olympics, including NBC. Unfortunately, as long as there is profit, corporations like NBC will close their eyes to the truth.