Biography:Mao: the known story-------A bomb (1 Viewer)

[uni_dust]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...-reviews/ref=cm_cr_dp_2_1/026-8947807-0995654

Please notice!! Ugly Chinese propaganda might be here!!, August 30, 2005
Reviewer: another Chinese person from London
There are several reviews here giving lowest mark to the book. Some are justifable, while I've noticed that there are several suspicious comments. A guy called AChinesePerson might well be a commentator from the Chinese propaganda. Nearly nobody holds such an communist ideological view like he does. If he is not a propaganda person, he is an idiot. The way he tried to defend Mao and Communism is an typical way which is often used by the Chinese propaganda.

Although the book could be regarded as emotional sometimes, most its comments is reasonable. The author's emotive expression is really understandable to a Chinese who suffered in the Culture Revolution. Unfortunately, having been brainwashed so thoroughly, and having been horrified in those years, few people are able to face the truth, like the author does.

Chinese people need to know the truth of their own history, particularly the period after 1949, including Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Massacre. Their ideology has not changed at all since Tiananmen Massacre, despite the economic success. The Chinese Communist party still can not face to them, therefore, the possibility of damocratic reform is zero!

How disgusting the Communism is! They are employing commentators commenting the websites, forums and blogs! They are desprately trying to controll and go on brainwashing Chinese people! Unfortunately, their effort is somewhat effective. Most people in China do no have a objective view towards Communism, and most people do no dare to critisize the Communist Party.

Chinese people still suffer from Communism! The democratic world should help!

anyone has read this book since its so popular in the west these days
anyone has any thought about this book?
is Mao a real monster? or whatever
how a person judges Mao will reflect his level of thought

 

[supercharged]

Communism? What Communism? Communism has died with the Soviet Union

There is nothing 'communist' in China except for name of the government. Someone has had their head in the sand for the last 20 years.

edit: Mao has a very mixed legacy. He was a good military leader but had terrible economic policy which wasted many years of development time. Deng was the first to set China on the right path again.

 

[uni_dust]

SORRY the name of book should be "Mao: the unknown stories"

SORRY the name of book should be "Mao: the unknown stories"

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[Comrade nathan]

Sounds boring.

 

[leetom]

I'm reading it now. Mao is absolutely condemned by Jung Chang. According to the Unknown Story, Mao was a relentless, power-hungry thug who readily massacred his own Reds if he thought that they would challange his position in the party. He was a terrible military leader, often going to battle in order to sacrifice a unit of troops because he didn't like that unit's particular commander.

He was entirely detatched from the communist ideology who expressed little sympathy for the peasantry, using it only to label his opponents as 'AB' (anti-bolshevik) as a cover for his purges, which took place regularly.

Mao's perceived strength as a military man came solely from those beneath him, namely Peng de-Huai and Zhu De, who led any successful Red campaigns. Mao's terrible personal ability to lead on the battlefield was so woeful that he was exiled from the party at one stage after overseeing the slaughter of Red Army troops against the Nationalists.

It is the only text so far I have read on Mao, so it's in need of some corroboration, but if half the things in the book are accurate (Chang and her husband are reknowned historians, Halliday in particular I suspect would not put his name to something he believed to be even partly fabricated) Mao was indeed terrible and to celebrate him now is to celebrate total brutality and thuggery.

 

[Comrade nathan]

My main problem with these types of books is that they are anti scientific. We should be discussing material conditions not individuals. The book is aimed to sell copies, so it focuses on indiviudals, so it is naturally going to stretch the story or emphasise parts of Mao's life to make it look interesting. So anything outside of Mao's control becomes inside Mao's control, any act of violence on Mao's command, is not a tactical or political reason, but a reason of Mao's mental health.

The problem is that idiots believe this and believe that Mao was actually crazy. They believe that famine and political crises are accountable on someones mental conditions. That is what is crazy.

Then again it is so much easier to quote this book and say "Mao was a monster" then to actually read Mao and study the Chinese political, economical and technological scene of that era in Chinese.

Apart from that, many Chinese scholars are questioning the validity of the book.

But many agree with Thomas Bernstein, of Columbia University in New York, that "the book is a major disaster for the contemporary China field".

"Because of its stupendous research apparatus, its claims will be accepted widely," he said this week. "Yet their scholarship is put at the service of thoroughly destroying Mao's reputation.The result is an equally stupendous number of quotations out of context, distortion of facts and omission of much of what makes Mao a complex, contradictory, and multi-sided leader."

http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/throwi...562936768.html#

And thats from another idiot author who likes to write about individuals instead of the conditions.

There is nothing 'communist' in China except for name of the government. Someone has had their head in the sand for the last 20 years.

Just to let you know, the CCP statement as a party is that it aims to acheive Communist society via building the needed base of Socialism through modernisation and economic liberalism. The revisionist/rationalist came to the conclusion that China did not have the structure to feed it's nation, so that when they originally tried to socialise industry and collectivise argiculture the people starved due to lack of infrastrucutre. So it's aim is to put on hold Marxism-Leninism and remove Maoism from its party ideology, then open the country to investment which would build infrastructure. Then once the infrastructure is built it would buy back the private industries and build Socialism through a multy class coalition.

This is contrasted with Stalin's and Mao's methods of 5 year plans and rapid industrialisation.

So in words they are building towards Socialism through what they call a Peoples government, not a proleteriat dictatorship.

 

[supercharged]

Just to let you know, the CCP statement as a party is that it aims to acheive Communist society via building the needed base of Socialism through modernisation and economic liberalism. The revisionist/rationalist came to the conclusion that China did not have the structure to feed it's nation, so that when they originally tried to socialise industry and collectivise argiculture the people starved due to lack of infrastrucutre. So it's aim is to put on hold Marxism-Leninism and remove Maoism from its party ideology, then open the country to investment which would build infrastructure. Then once the infrastructure is built it would buy back the private industries and build Socialism through a multy class coalition.

This is contrasted with Stalin's and Mao's methods of 5 year plans and rapid industrialisation.

So in words they are building towards Socialism through what they call a Peoples government, not a proleteriat dictatorship.

You made some good points about Mao, BUT the CCP is NOT trying to build a communist society. There is nothing communist about the economic and social policies. The CCP puts big trade and investment interests on the top of the tree NOT the common 'model worker' of communist ideology.

The whole failing point of communism is that without a price setting market system, resources are always used inefficiently and there is little incentive to innovate, unless you have competitors breathing on your neck to protect one's profit margin (as in a market system). Also it is not possible to 'buy back' infrastructure that has been privatised without bankrupting the treasury in the process. Once SOEs have been privatised, the new investment allows the business to expand rapidly so that it's market worth is many times greater than when it was first privatised.

Also the CCP doesn't actually follow Mao's ideology. As soon as Mao was dead the CCP arrested the 'Gang of four' for starting the cultural revolution (including Mao's wife) and put them under house arrest. Deng then introduced market reforms and ditched Mao's incompetant economic policies. Mao exists only as a CCP party figurehead, Maoist China is long gone.

Also on the subject of Mao:

China ready to help India to crush Maoists

MR Narayan Swamy(IANS)

In a significant announcement, China's top envoy has declared that his country is ready to help India to crush its nagging Maoist insurgency that it once actively supported.

Chinese Ambassador Sun Yuxi said at an interaction here that Beijing did not even know why the Maoist guerrillas in India called themselves followers of the man who led the communists to victory in China in 1949.

"If there is any help (you expect) from us to India to get rid of them, we will try to do our best," the top diplomat said candidly.

"We are also wondering why they call themselves Maoists. We don't like that. We don't like that at home. We don't have any connection with them at home.

"If they call themselves Maoists, we can't stop that way. But definitely it (the Maoist movement in India) does not have any connection with the government of China."

While China has been distancing itself from Maoist guerrillas in India for years, it is the first time a top Chinese official has gone to the extent of saying that Beijing would have no hesitation in providing help to crush the Maoist rebels.

The ambassador said it was possible some of the Maoist guerrillas might possess Chinese weapons. But even that, he said, did not mean that they had any links with Beijing.

He explained that China had supplied a lot of weapons to the anti-Soviet mujahideen guerrillas in Afghanistan during the 1980s in cooperation with Pakistan and the US.

"A lot of them (were) lost in the black market and they spread everywhere. Even some Chinese terrorists were trained in Afghanistan. They went back with the Chinese weapons and they waged terrorist activities inside China.

"So, we were very sorry to see that... If there is anything that we can help to stop them (Indian Maoists), we would do."

The Maoist movement in India erupted in May 1967 in a West Bengal village called Naxalbari, giving its adherents the sobriquet Naxalites. China then actively supported the movement, and Indian Maoists vowed to pursue China's revolutionary path.

China began distancing itself from the Indian Maoists in the 1980s and now has no institutional linkages with any of the Maoist groups, including the dominant Communist Party of India-Maoist.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1529667,0008.htm

 

[Comrade nathan]

You made some good points about Mao, BUT the CCP is NOT trying to build a communist society. There is nothing communist about the economic and social policies. The CCP puts big trade and investment interests on the top of the tree NOT the common 'model worker' of communist ideology.

I never said thats what they are doing, i said thats what they claim to do. They recently held a meeting for the Communist parties around the South East Asian area and that's basically what they proposed.

The whole failing point of communism is that without a price setting market system, resources are always used inefficiently and there is little incentive to innovate, unless you have competitors breathing on your neck to protect one's profit margin (as in a market system).

The errors of socialist planing was that there was no infrastructure. When they began building infrastructure there were droughts, local authorities lied about grain production and the USSR removed all technical support.

The revisionist said they would overcome this problem with allowing foreign capitali.

Which on that point and your avator, they allowed imperialist to enter the country. Imperialism is more then just invading a country, the US largest imperialist base is China, not Iraq.