If anyone wants to know what I mean by the “New Reactionaries,” they should have a look at Nicholas D. Kristof’s review of MAO, The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday in today’s NYTBR. After paying some homage to the biography and condescendingly evincing surprise that the author of a popular book could write such a work (even though her husband is a professional historian), Kristof gets to the crux of his argument:
This is an extraordinary portrait of a monster, who the authors say was responsible for more than 70 million deaths. But how accurate is it?… (some Dowdification on my part here but you can easily check) Take the great famine from 1958 to 1961. The authors declare that “close to 38 million people died,” and in a footnote they cite a Chinese population analysis of mortality figures in those years. Well, maybe. But there have been many expert estimates in scholarly books and journals of the death toll, ranging widely, and in reality no one really knows for sure – and certainly the mortality data are too crude to inspire confidence. The most meticulous estimates by demographers who have researched the famine toll are mostly lower than this book’s: Judith Banister estimated 30 million; Basil Ashton also came up with 30 million; and Xizhe Peng suggested about 23 million. Simply plucking a high-end estimate out of an article and embracing it as the one true estimate worries me; if that is stretched, then what else is?
Okay, so, accepting the lowest estimate of only 23 million dead – roughly three times the population Mr. Kristof’s own New York – what’s his point here really? He’s copacetic with killing only 23 million? Well, evidently he is:
Finally, there is Mao’s place in history. I agree that Mao was a catastrophic ruler in many, many respects, and this book captures that side better than anything ever written. But Mao’s legacy is not all bad. Land reform in China, like the land reform in Japan and Taiwan, helped lay the groundwork for prosperity today. The emancipation of women and end of child marriages moved China from one of the worst places in the world to be a girl to one where women have more equality than in, say, Japan or Korea. Indeed, Mao’s entire assault on the old economic and social structure made it easier for China to emerge as the world’s new economic dragon.
Never mind that the real architect of current Chinese prosperity was Deng Tsaio Peng, not Mao, Kristof’s blithe “the ends justify the means” contempt for human life boggles the imagination. 70 million dead? 40 million dead? At numbers like that who could know really? The Great Helmsman was a mass murderer beyond comprehension. To excuse it in on any level is morally repellent and deeply dangerous to the future of humanity.
Yet, Kristof does. Why? If I were still a marxist, I would examine it on the level of (most probably unconscious) economic self-interest. Kristof (correctly) accuses Mao of having been a bourgeois, but there is no one more bourgeois than an oped columnist for the NYT. And like any bourgeois (including me), he has a position to preserve. Kristof’s paying audience doesn’t want to believe that Mao was all bad. After all, many of them marched or chanted in his behalf. I know this full well, because I was one of them. I even went to China in the Seventies and wore, once upon a time, a Mao cap. Of course I was one of Lenin’s “useful idiots.” So is Kristof.
UPDATE: BizzyBlog has more.
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51 Comments
1. ex-democrat:Isn’t it funny, Roger, how the arrested development of those we’ve, ahem, left behind is so screamingly obvious?
Oct 23, 2005 - 9:02 am 2. Sandy P:Or just tres chic, Roger.
How do you feel about the style today?
Do you roll your eyes at the child and move on or tell him/her about the mass murderer?
Oct 23, 2005 - 9:05 am 3. Grumpy Old Man:So a taste for overpriced smoked salmon and bialys goes along with nostalgia for mass murder?
Hmm.
Actually, unfortunately, you might be right. A Ché T-shirt would probably elicit fewer glowers at Zabar’s than a Bush one.
But Kristof, who seems to me a humane guy from his columns on the trade in children and Darfur, does have a point, even if he may be minimizing Mao’s evil. Napoleon tried to conquer Europe and millions died. Not a moral exemplar, M. de Villepin to the contrary notwithstanding. But he changed Europe.
Even evil régimes and horrible acts change history. Condoleeza Rice wouldn’t be Secretary of State if not for the slave trade. Does that make the slave trade a Good Thing? No, but it was not a trivial thing.
Oct 23, 2005 - 9:34 am 4. Charlie (Colorado):Why is 23 million okay, because it changed history, while a (wildly inflated) 100,000 isn’t?
Oct 23, 2005 - 9:47 am 5. reliapundit - the astute blogger:roger,
remember too that kritsof is one of the BETTER columnists at the times.
hey roger, do ya think that the NYTIMES can regroup… AGAIN?! after jayson blair and raines and now the keller/miller/dowd eruption and calame’s indictment of gail collins, it seems to me that the NYTIMES is THROUGH. and good riddance.
somehow, i have the sneaking suspicion that PINCH&Co will comew to believe that the remedy will be to move even further to the Left.
same result.
the question really is: when does the TODAY show (and the rest of the MSM who follow the NYTIMES lead) turn to another resource to determine the next days news?
i think it should be combo TECHNORATI and google news and yahoo news and memeorandum – and other internet news/opinion aggregators. it would work like this: at 5AM (ET) the managing editors would complie a list of the hottest news items by “most blog posts”, “most emailed”, and of course “most hits”. and then they could gage their leads for that day’s AM TV by that.
Oct 23, 2005 - 9:58 am 6. chuck:Indeed, Mao’s entire assault on the old economic and social structure made it easier for China to emerge as the world’s new economic dragon.
This is a mere assertion, not a fact. One could argue that Taiwan is more advanced than mainland China, got there with less trauma and murder, and perhaps mainland China could have followed the same path if Mao had never gained dominion.
Kristof has a fascination with China, due perhaps to his wife WuDann whose family came from southern China. In a sense, I would class Kristof as a Chinese nationalist, fascinated with China’s rise to power. Would that he was as much an American nationalist.
As to the numbers, I too thought they may have been on the high side. I would not use them in an argument where I would inevitably be challenged on their validity. Lancet, anyone? On the other hand, 40 million or 70 million? As soon as one speaks of tens of millions one speaks of evil, an unnecessary evil. What did all those deaths accomplish? Nothing whatsoever, IMHO. There is simply no excuse, and Kristof betrays a certain romantic attachment to brutal power in offering a historical justification. Such attachments are sadly common among intellectual elites. A variety of pencil-neck syndrome, I suppose.
Oct 23, 2005 - 10:10 am 7. David Thomson:
Oct 23, 2005 - 10:14 am 8. Mark_Belt:How is this any different from the arguments that Hitler restored the German economy and Mussolini made the trains run on time–or the claims by neo-Nazis that Hitler was only indirectly responsible for the deaths of “a few hundred thousand” Jews? Moral relativism at its finest by the useful idiots at the NYT.
Oct 23, 2005 - 10:23 am 9. Grumpy Old Man:No doubt China could have emancipated women, adopted science, and begun to develop without Mao and without mass murder. If Kristof was making light of Mao’s atrocities, he’s wrong. The scales haven’t fallen from his eyes as they have from those of ex-lefties like Roger Simon’s and me.
History’s atrocities are to be condemned, first of all, especially if the ideologies behind them continue to resonate today.
Their consequences, however, are many, and some are positive. In time, without excusing the crimes, we can draw a balance.
That’s all. No omelets today. We are out of eggs.
Oct 23, 2005 - 10:25 am 10. beautifulatrocities:HA! I saw that article & didn’t read it because of Kristof’s byline. Guess I was right. He’s like Hitchens, fulminating against morally equating Communism & Nazism. Sorry, there is no moral difference
Oct 23, 2005 - 11:29 am 11. TigerHawk:It is a shame that Kristoff seems to be suffering from the Stockholm syndrome that takes over New York Times columnists. His book China Wakes, about the flowering of China in the eighties and early nineties, is fascinating and very good.
His quibbling over the number of peasants Mao starved to death is depressing, though. It reminds me of an absurd exchange I had when I visited Mao’s tomb in Beijing in the summer of 1984. I was visiting China very shortly after it “opened” to individual travellers. Mao’s tomb being de rigeur, we visited the Chairman who resides, bizarrely, under glass and very well preserved. We got a big speech from the Red Army guys about being respectful, but the line was long and soon enough my friends and I fell into chatting. None of the guards gave a damn, but an American woman in front of me turned around and hissed “Show some respect!” with a very nasty look on her face. I responded “I should respect this guy because he killed 50 million people?” If looks could kill, I would have been a little puddle of goo on the floor of Mao’s tomb.
Oct 23, 2005 - 11:29 am 12. Terrye:Mao was a monster and I do not believe it was necessary to kill and terrorize tens of millions of people to bring China into the modern world..
Oct 23, 2005 - 11:43 am 13. beautifulatrocities:BTW, did u see the Newsweek piece on whack-job Anne Rice, who’s found Christ & says “Nicholas Kristof is a hero to me”? She should hang out with Babs Streisand, whose favorite columnist is (cough) Krugman
Oct 23, 2005 - 11:50 am 14. Patrick Tyson:The world would be a vastly better place if Mao, Stalin, Napoleon, and other despicable monsters never existed.
How do you know? Would you even be here?
Oct 23, 2005 - 12:09 pm 15. larwyn:Dr. Jack Wheeler spoke to an Accuracy in Media luncheon on Oct 13th. The title of his talk
was:
“Why Liberals are Incapable of Defending America”
http://www.tothepointnews.com/
I only caught the end of the CSPAN broadcast
on the 14th and the Q&A was cut into by live
event.
He identified the “envy deflection” and “envy
appeasement” of the left.
It is the best explanation for the behavior of
the Limo Libs and the Champagne Left.
His example of a Hollywood star who get paid
$20,000,000.00 dollars for 3 to 6 months work
feels some guilt and needs to be “loved” not
envied. He therefore sets out to deflect or
appease any envy of his status.
Kristoff, Dowd et al – that whole LIMO LIB
crowd in massively invested in this behavior.
Dr Wheeler realizes how serious this is and
said that defeating Islamist will be impossible
until we defeat the “envy appeasement” and
the “envy deflection” syndrones of the LEFTIES
amongst us.
CSPAN has the video and I have supplied Dr.Wheeler’s site link – it is a pay site, but
with all those Hollywood $$$ out there – hope
you will use a few to take a look.
Oct 23, 2005 - 12:25 pm 16. madawaskan:The emancipation of women and end of child marriages moved China from one of the worst places in the world to be a girl to one where women have more equality than in, say, Japan or Korea.
Kristof-in Japan if a girl is born she doesn’t get her head slammed against a brick wall. Idiot.
In Japan they don’t FORCIBLY sterilize the “womenfolk”–gawd shut the hell up.
Am I the only person that is GROSSED OUT by China’s One Child Policy?
Well you know the population control is good for them.
Geez if Instapundit figured out they were slamming the heads of Baby Boys against the wall and his wife was making a movie about the subject-then he’d be all up in arms about it.
{I hope Instapundit hasn’t been hypocritical enough to write “crony” down when critcizing the Miers appointment because he pimps the wife -Dr. Helen a plenty.}
I’m going to continue on Kristof with another quote from his article-but let me get this posted so I don’t lose it while grabbing the other quote.
Oct 23, 2005 - 12:34 pm 17. madawaskan:Then this is the pivotal paragraph-
Mao is not only a historical figure, of course, but is part of the (tattered) web of legitimacy on which the People’s Republic rests. He is part of the founding mythology of the Chinese government, the Romulus and Remus of “People’s China,” and that’s why his portrait hangs in Tiananmen Square. Even among ordinary Chinese, Mao retains a hold on the popular imagination, and some peasants in different parts of China have started traditional religious shrines honoring him. That’s the ultimate honor for an atheist – he has become a god.
Legitimacy!?!?! for a government that has a human rights record of death penalties-hey buy the bullets, the One Child Policy, the freedom of the press-not!, the jailing of dissidents, the oppression of Tibet, the threatening of Taiwan-constantly…I could go on but he is worried about the current government of China’s legitimacy?
They’re illegitimate bastards.
Oooh and good Kristof let the peasants worship Mao-hey let ‘em eat cake what the hell.
Obviously he’s got PM Barnett syndrome-he with the China blindspot and also with the personal conflict having adopted a child from there.
At least the Navy finally fired Barnett but the arrogant SOB is still lecturing CENTCOM where sometimes they get over-impressed because at least he doesn’t bore them to tears.
Yep always this happens-militarily let’s bury our heads in the sand, let the press and Liberals soothe us into it and then bamb! all hell breaks out we find ourselves playing catch-up again like in just about every war that we’ve been in-the big ones anyway and guys that volunteer,or get drafted get to die because they’re CHEAPER than keeping up technologically against a regime -China-that somehow we are suppose to trust will remain benign when they treat their own people like a cancer.
Ya right Kristof go do that evil deed-it always repeats itself. We can loose tens of thousands-because it makes Liberals feel better to ignore pure evil.
Oct 23, 2005 - 12:53 pm 18. madawaskan:Here is a good site for Human Right’s watch in China-
China Human Rights Watch
Oct 23, 2005 - 1:04 pm 19. madawaskan:Here is just a starter of what is at their website-
Statement of Ma Dongfang
Victim of Planned Birth Policy
My name is Ma Dongfang. I came to the United States in 1998. In 1991, I became pregnant with what would have been my second child. I was already married with one legal child, and to become pregnant again was a violation of China’s one child policy. I was forced to abort this child, as many women are who become pregnant with second children. The incredible heartbreak of losing my second baby was followed with even more despair. After this abortion, the doctors inserted an IUD device into my uterus without either my knowledge or permission. I soon became very ill as a result of the IUD and endured months of horrible pain and discomfort. Excessive bleeding, weight loss, insomnia and fatigue nearly cost me my job. I begged the doctors to remove the device, but if they had removed it, they themselves would be breaking the law. Still, my body could not tolerate the device, so instead they inserted Norplant into my arm. The Norplant proved to be no less distressing. The Norplant gave me night sweats, anxiety and depression. Again, I begged the doctors to remove the Norplant, not because I intended to have another child, but because I was suffering so greatly. Bound by Chinese law and fearful of the consequences, the doctors refused. Had I found a way to remove the device myself, I would have lost my job and possibly undergone a forced sterilization or re-insertion.
{They are pigs.}
Oct 23, 2005 - 1:09 pm 20. Niko:Roger – you have to understand where Kristoff is coming from. Or, as a matter of fact, where his wife is coming from, Mrs Sheryl WuDunn. Happy digging!
Oct 23, 2005 - 1:25 pm 21. David Thomson:
Oct 23, 2005 - 1:27 pm 22. JK Ribera:I am not sure I understand the point of Niko above. Is it that because Kristof’s wife is Chinese his opinions on Mao are therefore correct? If so, that’s absurd.
Oct 23, 2005 - 1:29 pm 23. Rick Ballard:JK,
It may refer to the nepotism – cronyism involved in his wife also working for the NYT on occasion. A Time’s columnist having a thing for Mao falls under the “water is wet” category for me. Isn’t the anniversary of the Long March a paid holiday for all NYT employees?
Oct 23, 2005 - 1:40 pm 24. Richard Nieporent:It appears that Kristof would not disagree with Stalin’s infamous statement: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” There is a much better review of the book in the article Mao Lives by Arthur Waldron in Commentary Magazine. Waldron shows his revulsion for Mao without any “begrudging” admiration for this monster. Kristof is not along in his belief that Mao was beneficial for China. In the article Waldron states that in 1972, Harvard Professor John K. Fairbank on returning from a visit to China observed “the Maoist revolution is on the whole the best think that has happened to the Chinese people in centuries.”
Oct 23, 2005 - 3:27 pm 25. bigger:The claims of the Chinese Communist Party to have eliminated foot binding et cet. are contested by the Guo Min Dang, the Nationalists (who were founded by Sun Yat Sen as a socialist party) who maintain that they were the ones who forbade footbinding and emancipated women well before the Communists came to power. How successful they were at this when the country was wracked by a civil war, warlordism, and the war with Japan is another matter. However, on Taiwan, after being expelled from the mainland, the Nationalists engaged in a successful land reform that put land into the hands of the peasants (as opposed to first doing that, then taking it all away again and forcing everyone into communes.) The death rate from Chinese nationalism (and there was one) was considerably less than that inflicted on the mainland by Mao.
I do not have a copy of the source, but I seem to recall the number of 30-40 million being bandied about a British geography magazine in the 1980s when I still had access to Harvard’s Widener Library (before they added new security procedures and kicked hangers-on like me out. I used to go in for the Russian magazines and newspapers.)
Oct 23, 2005 - 3:37 pm 26. Patrick Tyson:Hey, David, you “moderate realist” you, the “radical skeptic” responds…
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil….
So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
…and…
Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless distinguishable, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.
You’re talking about mass murder, General, not war!
Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
—a smattering of verses from Chapter 3 of The Book of Genesis in the King James version of The Holy Bible and dialogue from the screenplay of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb by Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George, the author of the adapted novel
Applicable song lyrics…
Don’t know much about history and We’ll meet again…
Oct 23, 2005 - 4:00 pm 27. Niko:JK – sorry for not making myself clear enough. The point is that not only is Kristoff’s wife being a foreign policy journalist for the NY Times, but she’s also – surprise! – of Chinese origin. In actual fact, Kristoff wrote several columns the other year in which he pointed out the great Chinese marvels he had the pleasure to experience during extended trips together with his wife.
Oct 23, 2005 - 4:46 pm 28. trainer:My oh my. For someone who has never been left, I am amazed that the intellectual moonbat is always suprised by some of the things they discover about Mao. Pol Pot, or the rest of that ilk.
Maybe the difference between the right and the left is that the right sees today as it is, while the left sees today as they want it to be. That would make the flow of history a learning experience for the right, and a constant embarassment for the left.
Oct 23, 2005 - 5:55 pm 29. madawaskan:Richard-
Well guess where Kristof went to college-
Harvard.
Oct 23, 2005 - 6:15 pm 30. Kevin P:Roger:
Kristof suffers from the same disease that many on the left do. The complete inability to buy into the idea that the Communism of Stalin, Mao, and all the rest of the cult of personality murderers were evil. Not misguided. Not “good at the beginning, overcome by power at the end”, just plain old fashioned power hungry murderers.
He killled 23 to 73(pick either one, please explain the moral difference) million of his own people “but don’t forget the good things he did.” Kristof buy’s into the myth that those practices of old China could only changed by Mao’s genocidal tactics. If the Rwanda economy picks up in a generation or two will he point to the machete slayings of a million as the starting point of the economic rebound? Does Kristof think that Mandela should have used the Mao method of land reform by murder in South Africa? Reform has been slow in South Africa, maybe Mandela should quit pussyfooting around and round up a million or two of his own citizens and kill them to speed things up!
If you wear a swastika in public you are correctly considered a social deviant and you are relagated to the margins of society. But even though Stalin and Mao killed more(I have no problem with those who feel Hitler was worse, I lump them all together myself and I am sure they are all suffering in Hell together but if someone wants to put Hitler number one I don’t argue) the Hammer and Sycle can still be worn with pride in public, in fact it is still chic in some circles. I am not talking about Marxists. It’s a worthless and scary economic system but it does not make someone evil. The Kristof’s of the world have been giving rationalzations for Stalin (that got harder after Solzenitsyn so they let up a bit on that gem of logic) and Mao because they can’t give up on that utopian leftist dream of government enforced equality. So they continue to rationalize and minimize truly evil regimes and leaders of the left. They have no problem with the notion that Bush is evil. But Mao, in their twisted universe, deserves a more nuanced approach. If Bush reinstates the 95% top tax rate, legalizes gay marriage,keeps Roe v Wade on the books, institutes national heath care and living wage laws,signs Kyoto and ban’s Hummers, he too can kill off his political enemies, starve millions of his own population, and Kristof will argue for posting his image on the Washinton Monument
Oct 23, 2005 - 6:19 pm 31. WichitaBoy:
Oct 23, 2005 - 6:47 pm 32. thibaud:Kristof is just offering a lite version of a fashionable poli-sci notion that was all the rage when Kristof went to college in the late 1970s: modernization theory. It was held by Chalmers Johnson and many others on the left that the slaughterhouse regimes in communist Russia and China were not qualitatively different from the west’s own political economy during the nineteenth century (and earlier); the violence differed only in degree, not in kind or in the motivation of the “elites” perpetrating the violence.
Under this theory, Stalin was merely hauling “backward” Russia by its ears into the modern age, just as (so the theory went) Henry VIII brutally enclosed English pastures and made small farmers wage slaves to large agricultural barons and Lincoln and his successors brutally paved the way for industrial wage slavery perpetrated by yankee industrialist hegemonists.
The basic notion here was convergence
Oct 23, 2005 - 8:05 pm 33. thibaud:preview, etc. sorry
Oct 23, 2005 - 8:05 pm 34. Anthony (Los Angeles):I didn’t read Kristof’s questioning of the exact figure of famine deaths in the same way as you Roger. Rather than saying the deaths of 23 million were less heinous than 38 million, I believe he was chiding her for using an absolute figure rather than a range that took into account available sources. That’s a valid criticism, as almost any historian would recognize.
What struck me, however, was his attempt to “put Mao’s crimes into perspective” (my words, not his) by pointing out the “good things” he did. As if land reform (Some “reform.” The State takes everyone’s land.) or a faux emancipation of women, could be balanced against the murder of tens of millions. That’s no different than saying “Yes, Hitler built the death camps, but he also built the autobahn, too, giving Germany a modern highway system.” The two just don’t compare.
Oct 23, 2005 - 8:10 pm 35. Luther McLeod:And it’s not done yet.
http://www.zombietime.com/red-color_news_soldier/
Explore the site, zombie has… nerve.
Oct 23, 2005 - 8:21 pm 36. beebop:I wonder if Kristof would write such a balanced and nuanced review of a book condemning Pinochet. Of course not, because Pinochet committed the only unforgivable atrocity; he did not despise the US.
Oct 23, 2005 - 8:23 pm 37. chuck:It was held by Chalmers Johnson and many others on the left that the slaughterhouse regimes in communist Russia and China were not qualitatively different from the west’s own political economy during the nineteenth century…
I think this attitude goes back further than the 70’s. I have gotten the impression that such as Lenin and Stalin actually felt that the “brutalities” of the robber barons had to be met by an equal brutality and that the brutality in itself was part of the reason for the success of industrialization. It was the romanticization of the destruction of tradition that Marx pointed out as one of the salient features of capitalism. In a ways, it was a cargo cult where destruction would magically bring the benefits of capitalism. It was the trappings without the realities. What else could one expect from such ignorant savages who knew nothing of how things were actually made? In their rush to improve on capitalism, these people committed far greater crimes than any capitalist ever did, as if that would lead to even greater progress. Superstitious nonsense, all of it.
Let us not forget that the Ukraine was once the breadbasket of Europe and that Russia had the fastest industrial growth in Europe in the years prior to WWI. Communism was a disaster for Russia and the country has far to go to recover. China was fortunate to escape before the culture was completely ruined. Russia had no such luck.
Oct 23, 2005 - 8:51 pm 38. Richardphx:I am a bleeding heart liberal and proud of it. But I generally agree with the comments here and I have written many, many scathing posts about Mao, one of history’s most atrocious butchers. My only request: Don’t generalize by saying “Liberals always say…” There are many kinds of liberals. Almost all of my own readers are liberals, and we all detest mao. The only people nowadays who wear Che and Mao t-shirts are misguided kids on college campuses and left-over radicals from the 60s. They are relatively scarce. But when they do speak up and defend Mao, as Kristof did today, I feel a true sense of embarrassment and shame. The late Harrison Salisbury – a truly great Times journalist – would never have been so irresponsible. But I wouldn’t ascribe it to Kristof’s “liberalism,” just as I wouldn’t ascribe Judy Miller’s journalistic sins to “conservatism.” Such brushes are way too broad, and they leave no room for nuance.
Oct 23, 2005 - 9:43 pm 39. Patrick Tyson:thibaud—
Chalmers Johnson as I remember him:
“I was a Cold Warrior”
My career at Berkeley is relevant background to “Blowback,” because one of the things that has bugged people is that I was certainly a Cold Warrior in those days. I think today, as I say in the preface to “Blowback,” that I probably knew more about communism than I did about the United States. I was irritated in many ways by the anti-war movement in that they knew nothing about Vietnam. One day, at the height of the protests on the Berkeley campus, I went to the library and every single book on Vietnamese communism was on the shelves. Nobody had checked them out. Nobody was reading them. At the same time I would have to say that I was clearly not very good on McGeorge Bundy or the particular kind of Americans who were staffing our government at that time.
…
The Chinese Cultural Revolution
I enjoyed the meetings of the O.N.E. simply because the CIA had some of the best analysts on China at the time. It was more stimulating than the campuses were in those days. People tend to forget that Mao ZeDong was enormously admired on campuses all over the world — students believed that Mao was the scourge of bureaucracy and the herald of a New World.
Although I had first been attracted to the Chinese Revolution in a rather idealistic manner, with the development of the Cultural Revolution I became convinced these people were going badly off the tracks. This was getting to be very much the equivalent of the purges carried out by Stalin in 1937 and 1938 against the old Bolsheviks. This was the revolution eating its own. If Mao had died in 1956, he’d have gone down as the greatest modern Chinese leader. As it is he’s going to go down in history as an important revolutionary who, as so often is the case, turned into a tyrant.
Japan in 1972
So I drifted away from Chinese studies because I became disgusted with what was going on in China, as well as by what I thought was campus Maoism. In 1972, I spent a summer in Japan and decided to leave the China field and work on Japanese studies because a new and interesting phenomenon was just then developing there. Japan was becoming an incredibly rich country and yet it was an example of successful socialism — of state-guided capitalism. It had begun to square the circle, to achieve state goal-setting and very high rates of economic growth, but without the known consequences of socialism, as we’ve understood it in the Leninist variety of misallocation of resources and tremendous inefficiencies.
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/global/cj_int/cj_int2.html
He gave the Saturday night lecture at my freshmen orientation weekend in August 1976. His subject was international terrorism in the context of the Cold War. Memorable.
Oct 23, 2005 - 9:43 pm 40. chuck:Japan was becoming an incredibly rich country and yet it was an example of successful socialism — of state-guided capitalism.
I believe that the correct name for this variety of socialism is corporatism, the economic model introduced by Mussolini and employed with much success by the Nazis. I wonder why Chalmers didn’t name it as such.
Oct 23, 2005 - 10:02 pm 41. Kevin P:Patrick:
The main problem I have with Johnson’s “if he had died in 1956 he would have……” is the fact that if you have a single party revolution that downgrades the rights of the individual completely and gives all power and control of everything to the state you can’t help but end up with a tryant. It is the nature of the power structure that is a top down system. Mao didn’t change from good to bad,he was always a tryant, as he grabbed more power he was able to inflict more damage. Once someone buys into the ‘revolutionary” idea that the Democratic form of governments are more repressive then the enlightened leadership of the few that will have complete control of the proletariat the ability to kill great numbers of those prols becomes easier because the needs of the Party, which proclaims to have the needs of the many as their highest concern when in reality they despise the prols since they think they are too stupid to have a say in who runs the party, supercede all other concerns. Mao didn’t become a tyrant because he got too much power. He became a tyrant because he believed from the start in a political and social system that is a tyranny from the start.
Oct 23, 2005 - 11:20 pm 42. HA:AAARRRGGGHHHHHH!
It is better to be THOUGHT a Marxist then to pen an op-ed and remove all doubt. And with this kind of reality inverting air-brushing, Kristoff and the NY removes all doubt.
Kristoff opens with some wishful thinking:
If Chairman Mao had been truly prescient, he would have located a little girl in Sichuan Province named Jung Chang and “mie jiuzu”- killed her and wiped out all her relatives to the ninth degree.
His Kingdom for a Flux Capacitor! But Kristoff’s closing is the clincher:
But Mao’s legacy is not all bad. Land reform in China, like the land reform in Japan and Taiwan, helped lay the groundwork for prosperity today.
Gotta break some eggs to make the trains run on time, eh Nick? The train is leaving for a future of prosperity! All aboard!
The only problem with Krisoff’s lame attempt at rehabilitation is that it is the exact opposite of reality. Mao’s land “reform” laid the ground work for mass starvation and China’s inability to feed itself for a generation.
Contrary to Kristoff’s ignorant assertion, it was Deng’s REVERSAL of Mao’s disasterous land “reform” that served as the prototype for China’s economic revival:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/countries/cn/cn_overview.html
1980-1984: Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the South and innovative agricultural reforms in the countryside fuel stunning economic growth.
And Deng justified the SEZ’s based on the success of his agricultural reforms!
How is it possible that someone so incredibly ignorant can become a mainstream op-ed columnist? Oh yeah, its the NY Times. Nevermind. This guy should be writing ANSWER pamphlets.
What will it take to kill Marxism once and for all? If I had a Flux Capacitor, I would go back in time and kill Marx and wipe out all his relatives “to the night degree.”
Oct 24, 2005 - 3:52 am 43. Bostonian:Richardphx, well, good for you.
Being from a liberal family myself, I know that you’re right, that many liberals do indeed condemn Mao and Stalin.
On the other hand, what’s up with Codepink and Cuba? Or the Kos Kids and Chavez, whom they consider a hero?
There is no shortage of tyrant lovers among the ranks of the Left. And I’m not talking about “library records” tyranny–I’m talking “take you out back and shoot you” tyranny.
Oct 24, 2005 - 6:54 am 44. nittypig:I read the article, and I find the conclusions about Mao equally disturbing. Saying that Mao lay the foundations for China’s growth without even considering the counter example of Taiwan is ridiculous.
But his point on the estimate of the number of people were killed by the Great Famine is a pretty good one. He says that there are a huge range of estimates on the number, which is undoubtedly huge. If the authors chose only the highest estimate without any qualification (like “some estimates are as high as”) then one has to question how the authors marshal their evidence. And his stronger critisicisms were, in my mind, very valuable – if Mao was really so ineffectual and simply lucky, how did he remain in control for so long? I find it hard to believe that Mao wasn’t a very clever politician and a charismatic and powerful leader, just as Hitler was.
Kristoff is quite sympathetic to the authors revisionist version of the Long March, and even endorses the idea that Mao used the Korean War to wipe out political enemies.
I found the review to be very useful – I don’t want reviewers with neutral political opinions, I’d rather see a negative portrayal of Mao reviewed by someone sympathetic to Mao. Made me think it’s probably a very good book. That’s the goal of a review after all.
Oct 24, 2005 - 8:46 am 45. Pat Curley:Kristof should spend some time looking at these pictures before he comments on how excellent life is for Chinese women compared to their Japanese counterparts. Warning: Extremely violent and disturbing images as you scroll down.
Oct 24, 2005 - 12:13 pm 46. Kevin P:Nittypig:
If Kristof was strictly complaining about the numerical accuracy of the death figures I would have no problem with the review. And because, just as in Soviet Russia, the state controls all information and a true study of the figures are not possible becuse the state has the ability to change the records and restrict open, honest study of their history. But when he launches into the absurd “look at the good things Mao did” song and dance I get the sick feeling in my stomach that I got when I read the “Gulag Archipelago” and realized that the propaganda lies that I had been spouting, very similar to Kristof’s, were truly vulgar and I had been a dupe. The “good things” could have been acomplished without the mass murder. Mao was a mass murderer.Of multi millions of Chinese people. To promote a politcal and economic goal, not in self defense. Once you commit those acts I don’t want to hear a rationalazation. And that is exactly what Kristof wrote.
Oct 24, 2005 - 12:34 pm 47. WichitaBoy:Richardphx,
I agree with Bostonian. I consider myself “liberal” too but I wonder how many liberals are willing to be honest enough to agree with the following statement. Communism was and continues to be a great evil, the greatest evil ever seen in this benighted world.
Oh, and yes, I did have a Chairman Mao poster myself.
Oct 24, 2005 - 2:26 pm 48. RogerA:How anyone can look objectively at communism and somehow claim it has the remotest claim to legitimacy escapes me. Conquest has attempted to come up with figures; now we see them with respect to Mao; we know what Pol Pot inflicted on the Khymer people; we dont yet know what Castro has done but one suspects………Probably on the order of 100,000,000 deaths attributed to communism.
And the MSM is about the commemorate the death of the 2000th American soldier in Iraq.
as an aside: looks to me like Pat Turley’s link clearly establishes women have equal rights in china
Oct 24, 2005 - 3:03 pm 49. SinoMatt:Sorry folks- I read the Kristof piece quite differently. Just because he stated that some “good things happened under Mao” doesn’t mean he defends his brutal reign in China in toto. From what I can tell from the many reviews I’ve read, Chang and Holliday’s book is such an unrelenting polemic that it does not account for China’s reverence for Mao.
Believe me, the Chinese are aware of Mao’s atrocities in The Great Leap Forward and The Culutural Revolution. No Chinese person I have ever spoken to has defended these disastrous episodes in their history. I don’t think the publication of this volume, even if it were allowed in China (where I live), would come as such a surprise for its people.
So the question arises….why do they still honor him? An analysis of that question seems necessary in a volume about Mao, and from the several reviews (including Kristof’s), Chang and Holliday do not provide one.
Oct 24, 2005 - 7:13 pm 50. Kevin P:SinoMatt:
I don’t claim to be an expert on China. Since you have some knowledge on the state of mind of the Chinese people I have some questions. Are the Chinese people taught about the mass starvation caused by Mao’s insane economic policy’s? (The steel production in the backyard’s from melting pots and pans is a classic in meglomaniacal thinking). Or are they given the standard myth building history of lies and propaganda. There are Germans who died thinking Hitler was a great man. Stalin stills has a following in Russia. The Dear Leader in North Korea will have sincere tears shed for him when he dies. Does this mean we should change the conventional wisdom that most sane people have about these leaders because the people who were spoon fed propaganda about these tyrants from birth still love them. Do poll ratings cancel out mass murder? There are battered spouses who will claim that their significant other is really a great person aside from the beatings.
Oct 24, 2005 - 7:49 pm 51. Sandy P:Don’t forget Bubba in that list.
Some will go to their grave thinking he was wonderful.
I hope to be around when they open the impeachment files.
Oct 24, 2005 - 10:02 pm