THE COMPLETE
IDIOT’S GUIDE TO MODERN CHINA (Indianapolis, IN: Alpha Books, 2002)
By Vanessa
Lide Whitcomb and Michael Brown
Rev. by Hugh
Murray
This
is a good, short guide to China’s long history.
But there are problems. In a
chapter on the “Lay of the Land,” the authors include much essential
description of the vast and varied areas of China. However, the one map is utterly inadequate,
with no markings for major rivers, the great wall, the grand canal, or the size
of territories included within major historical dynasties. Next, there seems to be a left-leaning bias –
thus (p. 266) “ the Korean war broke out,” rather than the North’s leader Kim
Il Sung had received Stalin’s permission to invade the southern half of the
peninsula. The authors twice quote Owen
Lattimore (44, 51) not because his words were so incisive, but as a way to
reject the Cold War Republican charges that Lattimore and other “progressive”
authorities who bashed Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek, may have helped Mao Zedong
and the Communists seize power in China after WWII. Indeed, the book devotes only one page to the
civil war between Chiang and Mao that followed WWII.
Interesting
also is their treatment of the “Hundred Flowers Debacle.” (141) The authors vacillate on the sincerity of
Mao’s call to let a hundred flowers bloom, “to let a hundred schools of thought
contend” for what should be the best policies for China, following the
establishment of the People’s Republic of China by the victorious Communist
forces in 1949. When many scholars and
intellectuals responded with open criticism of the Party and of Mao during the blooming
flowers campaign of 1956-57, Mao suddenly reversed his policy and the Communist
Party cracked down. Soon “some 300,000
intellectuals were denounced, their lives and careers ruined. Others, not so fortunate, were
executed.” The authors wonder if Mao was
sincere in calling for free speech, or simply using his call for openness as a
ploy to expose and entrap dissidents.(141)
The
History Channel in 2016 telecast a special on Mao, and it asserted that when
the Long March was completed, and Mao’s residue forces finally reached Yanan,
the Left was already dominant in the area.
But it was less organized, more student centered, more tolerant. Mao planned to change that. His military took control and he imposed more
“discipline” on the area. Then he urged
criticism, and a wall of public announcements and critiques was suddenly
plastered with suggested improvements and criticism of Mao’s policies. Mao discovered the main critic, had him
arrested, and was there when his men began their lessons on the imprisoned young
critic. For starters, they began by
bending his knee in ways that are unnatural but cause incredible pain. Then they tortured him in ways to inflict ever
more pain. Finally, they killed
him. When word got out, criticism of Mao
ceased. The implementation may have been
original to Mao, but the process can be traced back to Lenin and the early days
of the Communist state. The Communists
had asked author Maxim Gorki with help in organizing a large gathering of
Russian authors and intellectuals. Gorki
did so. Soon, many of the participants
were arrested by the Bolshevik government.
When Gorki complained, Lenin quoted Gorki’s own words that intellectuals
were often “irresponsible,” and how the new state could not afford such
irresponsibility by bourgeois intellectuals but required instead those who
could speak for the workers. Mao’s flowers,
like those of Lenin earlier, seemed to bloom and quickly wilt, at die, in
prison.
There
are some errors in this book. Not in 2002
when it was published, and not even now in 2017, is the population of China 3.4
billion!(6) The population then was more
like 1.4 billion. The authors got
something else backward – China is a huge importer, NOT exporter, of chicken
feet.(273) The authors appear wrong in
their prediction: “By fits and starts the process of [North and South Korean]
unification seems to be underway.”(238)
While the authors rightly credit Chinese with many inventions, the
authors can exaggerate: “The invention of paper [by the Chinese] had a profound
influence on the world. Prior to its
existence, parchment was the only writing material available…”(105) Wrong.
Papyrus scrolls had filled the shelves of the Library of Alexandria and
other places. We all use initials and
other forms to save time and space. I
suspect one of the authors used “CM” to mean one thing; and the other mistook
the meaning. So the book notes that in
1848 Karl Marx published “The Common Man.” (43)
In 1848 Marx published The Communist Manifesto. And one can dispute the number of Chinese who
died in various social engineering experiments by the Communists under Mao – 20
million? Or 50 million?
Strangely
missing from the book is mention of Mao’s policy that pre-dated the well-known
“one-child policy” of his successors. As
Mao pondered the possibility of nuclear war against the capitalist nations, or
even against the USSR, he believed that China could survive if its population
were large enough. Thus, large families
were encouraged. Later, his successors
sought to raise the standard of living, in part, by imposing the one-child
policy, at least on urban dwellers.
Missing entirely from the discussion of the WWII era are the different
types of experiences - as few Chinese
resided in Mao’s Communist-run areas of China, more in Chiang’s Nationalist
China, whose temporary capital was Chungqing, while probably the largest number
of Chinese then resided under Japanese occupation: in Manchukuo, and in Wang
Jing-wei’s “Reorganized” Chinese government located it Nanjing (a
collaborationist government like Marshall Petain’s in France.), and in other Japanese
occupied areas of China. On the other
hand the authors report that when the terra cotta soldiers of the ancient
emperor Qin were discovered during the Cultural Revolution, Zhou EnLai ordered
they be reburied; he feared the Red Guard fanatics of the Cultural Revolution
would destroy them. He ordered, rebury
them to save them.(148)
The
authors do make some important conclusions.
China’s efforts in WWII were important for the Allies. “The bulk of the Chinese fighting had been
done by Chiang’s forces, while the communists stayed on the sidelines and built
party solidarity.”(127) The authors calculate
that during WWII, 1.3 million Chinese were killed, and another 130,000 missing,
for a total 1.43 killed and presumed dead.(127)
Mao had many plans for China, and he and the CCP implemented the Great
Leap Forward, to industrialize the nation and collectivize the peasantry. The result was a man-made famine, 1959-61, in
which “it is estimated that as many as 20 million Chinese people starved to
death.”(144) In 1976, with the deaths of
Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, Deng Xioaping defeated “the Gang of 4” to succeed
Mao. “Deng took over the government of a
country that had just lost 30 million people to famine and the purges of the
Cultural Revolution.”(155) Some anti-communist
estimates of the cost of Mao’s egalitarian efforts range up to 50 million
Chinese killed. With such a high cost for
“equality,” might China have fared better under Chiang Kai-Shek and the
Nationalists? Or even by making a deal
with the Japanese, as sought by Wang Jing-wei and his “Reorganized,”
collaborationist government?
Despite a few errors, one can
learn much from this fast-paced guide to China. A
