Moron Mao More on Mao...
I had written about a very interesting book here: "
Mao more than ever"
Now, thanks to
Roger L. Simon, we find that the book is gaining traction.
Here are two links worth looking at:
The first one is from
Japundit:
Pictures of Chairman Mao
At 814 pages, it may be a bit heavy for summertime reading—and may take the entire summer to get through—but Mao, the Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, seems to be a book that should be required reading for anyone interested in East Asia.
The second one is a Book Review from
The Japan Times
The Red emperor's new clothes
Latest study on Mao exposes the true scale of his oppression
It is savagely ironic that just when China is viciously attacking Japan for trying to rewrite its history, here is a book that claims that the whole official history of the revered founding father of Communist China is a myth written to cover up the evil of a monster.
The authors, Jung Chang, who wrote the best-selling "Wild Swans," and her husband Jon Halliday, estimate that Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong) was responsible for killing 70 million of his own people in his determination to enforce his rule over China. This is far more than Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin, who are widely recognized as evil dictators. Yet Mao's portrait still has pride of place overlooking Tiananmen Square at the entrance to the historic Forbidden City, seat of power of Chinese emperors.
This is a nuclear weapon of a book: It devastates the reputation of Mao and most of his henchmen, and raises questions about the legitimacy of the ruling Communist Party. Among the authors' claims:
- The famous "Long March," under which the barefoot Communist armies beat a retreat from Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist) armies surrounding them, was inglorious. Chiang let the Red armies go. He needed them as a buffer against warlords in Guizhou and Sichuan and was constrained because Stalin held his son Chiang Ching-kuo as a hostage in Moscow.
- Mao and his leading comrades never actually marched, since they were carried in litters and generally treated "like landlords."
- The renowned battle of the crossing of the Dadu River was a myth. Supposedly the Reds, under KMT machine-gun fire, bravely crossed a bridge that had been set on fire with its planks removed so that they had to pull themselves across using the incandescent chains. A 93-year-old eyewitness said the Red soldiers borrowed doors and coffin lids to replace planks that had been broken, but there was no attack and no deaths at the bridge.
- Mao never tried to pit his Reds against the Japanese: He was too busy plotting to destroy his own rival commanders and to maneuver Stalin to help give him control of China on a plate.
- In Yenan in 1941, Mao funded his operations by turning 30,000 acres of fertile land to opium production.
Much more at the Japan Times site.
It is interesting that the left holds Mao up as a god when he is just another stinking turd in the punchbowl of life...
Posted by DaveH at June 28, 2005 10:29 PM