Second Question [Parfitt]: You (Lofthouse) mention Mao Zedong in your first question and reference his statement that women hold up half the sky. The Chinese Communist Party’s official line about Mao’s rule is that it was 70 percent good and 30 percent bad. What’s your assessment of Mao’s reign?
Answer [Lofthouse]:
A Museum of Tragedy near China’s port city of Shantou offers evidence of why most Chinese decided Mao was 30%”bad”.
The “bad” refers to Mao’s Cultural Revolution [1966 – 1976] leading to the many suicides of those that could not cope, as Mao’s teenage Red Guard waged war on Confucianism and persecuted people accused of bourgeois tendencies.
In addition, there were millions of deaths by starvation mostly in 1960 caused by droughts and food shortages during Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
Opinions of how many died of starvation from 1959 into early 1961 vary dramatically, and it is a controversial hot-button issue. Claims range from 16.5 million to a high of 60 million.
For example, Henry Kissinger on page 184 of “On China” says, “From 1959 to 1962, China experienced one of the worst famines in human history, leading to the deaths of over twenty million people.”
Judith Banister’s work, China’s Changing Population [Stanford University Press – 1987], agrees with Kissinger’s quote.
In fact, Banister shows that the greatest loss of life took place in 1960 and returned closer to normal in 1961.
It didn’t help that the US had a complete embargo of China (1949 – 1963), which was designed to cause suffering among the people leading to an overthrow of the Chinese Communist Party and a return to power of Chiang Kai-shek.
If Australia, Canada and France had not shipped wheat to China in 1961, the loss of life would have been worse.
What Mao did to earn the 70% “good” rating is due to his early land-reform policies ending feudalism in rural China, in addition to improving health care, which led to dramatic improvements in life expectancy.
In 1949, the average life expectancy was 36 years. By 1970, during the Cultural Revolution, average life expectancy was almost 62 years — a 71% improvement.
Today, life expectancy is 74.68 years.
Facts show that more people benefited from Mao’s “good” policies than those that suffered from the “bad”. However, critics in the West prefer to focus on a glass almost empty instead of admitting the glass was more than half-full.
Response [Parfitt]:
Chinese people believe the reign of the former Communist Party chairman was 70 percent good and 30 percent bad because that’s what the Communist Party tells them.
Historian Jonathan Spence tells a different story, one not muddled by contemporary life-expectancy statistics or charges against America. According to Spence, Mao’s land reform involved the brutal seizure and redistribution of property, with Mao admitting 700,000 “evil gentry” were justly killed.
The program didn’t put a dent in private ownership, but was a violent failure resulting in Party scorn.
Mao responded with his Hundred Flowers Movement and Anti-Rightist Campaign, part one in his trilogy of campaigns, which, along with the Korean War, may have caused 70 million deaths. Since Mao’s death, the Party has made significant strides in material development, the welfare state, national security, and prosperity, but locating a valid academic source concluding Mao’s reign was more beneficial than not is impossible.
Final Word [Lofthouse]:
Proving China prospered [on average] under Mao at the same time it suffered due to his Anti-Rightist Campaigns was easy.
Professor Stephen Thomas [University of Colorado at Denver] wrote for the World Bank’s Forum on Public Policy, “In 1949, the newly established People’s Republic of China designed and carried out economic development policies that led to an annual average economic growth rate of about 4 percent from 1953 to 1978, among the highest in the developing world…”
Then, Compton’s Living Encyclopedia says, “After the Communist revolution in 1949… Private ownership of land was abolished, but each peasant family was given a small plot to farm. Health care improved. The fluctuations in the food supply leveled off and life expectancy increased.”
I do not dispute landowners were tried, convicted and executed by the peasants they allegedly abused and exploited.
As for Mao’s policies killing 70 million—”MAY HAVE CAUSED” proves nothing.
Continued on November 30, 2011 in Discussion with Troy Parfitt, the author of “Why China Will Never Rule the World – Travels in the Two Chinas” – Part 4 or return to Part 2.
See Discovering Intellectual Dishonesty – Part 1
______________
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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Terry,
Right, but you haven’t addressed my questions. Could you kindly address them?
And here are three more questions (sorry, it’s a lot, I know). Would you say because your grandparents weren’t persecuted during Mao’s reign, that has helped shape your view of Mao’s reign? Would you say your views of the Mao era is the same as or similiar to that of your grandparents? Finally, would you classify your assessment of Mao’s rule as primarily objective or subjective? Thank you.
Mr.Parfitt,
All my grandparents and some of my aunts and uncles lived through the cultural revolution. For them, life was tough, but they were never affected by any of the persecutions as they were poor and uneducated(just like nearly all of the other Chinese at the time).
Mr.Parfitt,
Considering that America pushed up all the way to China’s borders, only a coward would not have retaliated.
Have I gotten any facts wrong? In that case, what difference does it make whether I read those books or not. If there are any facts that I mentioned that happen to be false, could you be kind enough to point them out?
Finally, who is the one charging Mao of killing millions of his citizens? Was it his aim to kill millions of his own citizens? How do you count the number of people killed by a policy?
Terry,
You may have a fact wrong in regard to Mao’s promise to attack America. I’ve never read about such a promise, but all because I’ve never read about it doesn’t mean he didn’t make it. Do you think Mao’s sending forces into Korea was justified? Do you think it was prudent?
So, if you haven’t read any books about Mao, and consider the one you skimmed “a joke”, how have you arrived at your understanding of Mao? Film? Formal education? Word of mouth? We’re dealing with a historical figure. You have a position on this historical figure. How did you arrive at that position? Also, your views on Mao are similiar to the Party’s views on Mao. Do you see that as being merely a coincidence? Do you believe the Party would have alterior motives in presenting the rule of its former leader, judged by non-Chinese historians as overwhelmingly awful, in a mostly positive light? Also, let’s say you sat down and read several Mao biographies (inlcuding the one by Dr. Li Zhishui) and, collectively, they presented a Mao much different from the one you present; a Mao with virtually no redeeming qualities and the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese people on his hands. Would you then readjust your point of view? Moreover, do you believe there is any irony in defending a historical figure charged (figuratively) with the deaths of millions of his citizens by stating that figure made life better for his citizens? Do you see any disconnect there? Finally, would you be willing to sit down and read two or three Mao biographies in the future?
Sorry, that’s a lot of questions. Thank you.
Mr. Parfitt,
I have only skimmed through the joke of a biography written by Jon Halliday and Jun Chang.
I do not know why my opinions should be worth any less just because I have not read many books about Mao written by Western sources.
Did I get any of the facts wrong?
Terry. Okay. And what books have you read about Mao? Which biographies have you read? Thank you.
Troy,
Books are not the only sources. Primary sources are where reputable authors and reporters go for the facts they quote in their books no matter how they interpret them and how authors/scholars interpret these facts is often influenced by cultural and personal biases so relying on third party biographies may not be the best source.
For an example of a primary source, my stepdaughter’s grandfather (in his 80s today and retired) on the father’s side was a high-ranking Party official after 1949. Before that date, he fought under Mao before and after World War II in the Civil War and was a CCP spy in Japanese and then Nationalist occupied China.
Today, he lives in a modest flat in an older building in the suburbs of Shanghai and either walks or rides busses to get around because his retirement isn’t enough to own a car or use a taxi often. He is a “very” nice man and there is nothing evil about him. He has been quite open with me about how the Party works without giving any government secrets away, which I do not expect.
We have had many conversations and he told me that the 80 million members of the Chinese Communist Party do not always agree but that final decisions on these issues are often if not always made from the consensus of the majority. Debates and discussions on controversial, hot button topics such as turning China into a multi party democracy take place out of sight of the public arena.
I cannot answer for how many biographies Terry read on Mao but I can say I have read my share (not all) and my wife “has read them all” and in Mandarin (including the memoires of Mao’s personal bodyguards, which have only been published in China) as part of the research she did before writing “Becoming Madam Mao”, and I learned from her what she learned and if I don’t know an answer on a Mao topic, I just ask. Every time we visit China, we hit the bookstores and return to the US with boxes/crates of books in Mandarin, which is the language she grew up speaking and reading. In fact, she thinks in Mandarin and must interpret into English when someone is talking to her in English. Pearl S. Buck did the same thing to the day she died.
My wife didn’t learn English until she was in her late 20s. Her research included interviews with people that knew Mao and his last wife—a much better source than a third party biography. She has also read the biography written by Mao’s physician, which I didn’t do. She has her copy on a shelf somewhere if she didn’t throw it out.
Lloyd,
Well, while we’re waiting for Terry to provide a list of the Mao bios he’s read, perhaps you could kindly list the ones you’ve read. Thank you.
Troy,
You seem stuck on this concept that reading books makes one a world expert. A few borrowed quotes helps clarify what an expert is.
“An expert is a man who has stopped thinking – he knows!”
“For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert; but for every fact there is not necessarily and equal and opposite fact.”
“The media tends to report rumors, speculations, and projections as facts… How does the media do this? By quoting some ‘expert’… you can always find some expert who will say something hopelessly hopeless about anything.”
Which leads to my favorite quote on experts: “The more a man knows, the more he knows, he doesn’t know.”
You asked, “provide a list of the Mao bios…you’ve read”: Jung Chang and Edgar Snow
However, reading a biography is not the complete story. In Mao’s case, it is more complex than that. To form opinions on the work of any third party authors of Mao would be a mistake. For example, Nei Yuanzi’s accounts should be included into this complex mix but she never wrote a book. Her story appears mostly in newspapers, magazines and from interviews and she is not the only eyewitness that lived through Mao’s era in China that has not written books on the subject.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nie_Yuanzi
Since it sounds as if you want to get into a spitting contest, how about my library on China that I use as research in addition to what I find on the Internet such as the NY Times piece on Nie Yuanzi?
To mention a few for I do not want to sit here for the hours it may take to list them all and due to space limitations some of my books on China are now stored away in the crawl space under the house or in the garage.
“God’s Chinese Son” by Jonathan D. Spence
“The Manchu Way” by Mark C. Elliott
“My Country and My People” by Lin Yutang
“Dragon Lady” by Sterling Seagrave
“Around the Bloc” by Stephanie Griest
“The Gateway of Heavenly Peace” by Jonathan D. Spence
“Modern China” by Graham Hutchings
“To Change China” by Jonathan D. Spence
“On China” by Henry Kissinger
“The Lost Colony” by Tonio Andrade
I also have several binders filled with hundreds of printed pages of articles I found through research on the Internet such as:
“Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?” A piece by Joseph Ball that was published in the Monthly Review
“Poverty” (Note: a report of Poverty in China) by David C. Schak
“Confucius” by Jonathan D. Spence published by the WQ Quarterly
“What Confucius Said” by Jonathan D. Spence published by The New York Review of Books
“Why Confucius Counts” by Jonathan D. Spence published by The New York Review of Books
In fact, I’ve read so much on China that I have forgotten more than I remember and realize that I can never call myself an expert on China because there is so much more to learn and many issues have more than one explanation due to the complexity of the time.
A few things that I have learned is that one person or even a group of people cannot judge Mao or China fairly either way since he is a product of another era and another time, and China is influenced by a different history and cultural beliefs than other cultures outside East Asia. To judge China and its leaders from a 20th and/or 21st century Western/American cultural perspective is fated to be wrong almost every time regardelss of how well is may be accepted as the so-called “truth” in the West.
Mr.Lofthouse,
I was about to ask the same question.
Well, I will assume that you are asking me, Mr.Parfitt.
My personal view is that while Mao undoubtedly had his faults there is nothing wrong with the fact that he is regarded as a hero to the chinese people(myself included). He reunited the country and he stood up to western powers who wanted to bully China into submission. He kept his word that he would fight america if they got too close to the Chinese border during the Korean war. It is for these reasons why he is so respected by the Chinese people. Ultimately, he was a jealous man who was scared that other talented individuals would surpass him (But come on, how many people can truly say they don’t like having power?) and he had no idea how to run a country, leading to the cultural revolution and the great leap forward. However, is it ever reported by Western Media that Mao’s daughter currently lives in extreme poverty? Do they ever report that two of his son’s died because Mao sent his own son’s to the frontlines of the korean war? Obviously, he trully believed in his ideals, even if they were flawed. If Mao had been a selfish man that only cared about himself, all of his children would be living in luxury now. There is nothing wrong with Chinese people regarding him as a hero(some of my western friends find it funny that Chinese people do not hate Mao and they always say that brainwashing by the CCP is the reason). He definitely had his problems, but he is not the demon that western media makes him out to be.
Another point I would like to make is that while life was tough for the Chinese people under his rule, it was an improvement to the period of time starting from the first opium war to the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 when China got raped by the western powers, suffered from severe divisions and power-hungry atrocious landowners and warlords, got raped by the Japanese, and then suffered a horrific civil war.
I don’t know if such generalizations can be made, so I think it’s best not to try and make them. What’s your view of the matter?
Troy,
Who are you responding to? It helps if you start with the name of the person. Otherwise, I might think you were asking me that question.
Mr.Parfitt,
I am referring to the livelihood of the general masses.
Define typical Chinese.
Mmm….the sound of someone trying to evade questions he doesn’t know how to answer…