'The Unknown Mao'
By Halliday
People often get more conservative as they age is unfortunately true of this author. His Marxist oriented histories of Japan published in the 1970's are likely still second to none - at least in English.
I've read about Mao both for and against finally settling in favor because the Chinese are certainly much better off during and after Mao than before he came along, but concluding he did have some mistakes especially from about 1965 onwards such as the Cultural Revolution.
So I was disappointed to see a book by an apparently former Marxist totally lambast him as killing more people than Hitler, etc, and every other accusation right down the line. The book could have just as well been written by a Kuomintang or Japanese fascist propagandist.
More sensitive and balanced pro-communist books which are critical of Moa include Sam Marcy's essays and Jonathan Authur's book 'Socialism in the Soviet Union'. Both written in 1977 and both criticizing Chinese propaganda against the USSR from 1965 onwards as doing the CIA's bidding. These two books by a Trotskyite and a Stalinist respectively come to essentially the same conclusions and are quite worthwhile in understanding this era of the 60's and 70's.
An opposite perspective and perhaps equally worthless as Halliday's book is a book by Mobo Gao which says the Cultural Revolution and Mao were without mistakes.
'My China Eye' is the autobiography of Israel Epstein and published in 2005, the year the 90 year old Jewish author died. Magnificent book. Like many other Chinese communist leaders, he was imprisoned during the cultural revolution, but he did not lose faith in the overall benefit of communism for China. Zhou Enlai apologized to him, and he subsequently continued his career in China. The author was a journalist and later an active participant on the communist side in events in China from before and during the 1930's, 40's, 50's, on up until his death.
It contains an interesting view of the Tiananmen Square riots of 1989 as involving instigators coordinated through the American CIA which definitely has a history of such in communist China.
The fact that the author was a friend of Deng Xiaoping and editor of an edition of his selected works set me reflecting about Deng. I think I still disagree with much or most of his foreign policy such as his alignment with Reagan and against the USSR in the 1980's, but I think it is an error to view his domestic policy as wrong generally or to view Deng as a dictator. That would exist in right wing propaganda rather than reality. Deng's policy is also what made China into an economic powerhouse without exploiting people.
Deng Xiaoping was denounced during the cultural revolution, but the conclusion that that era was exactly the height of Mao's errors set me to reevaluate Deng letting his actions speak for themselves.
One other error of Mao's in his early days was to reject participation in the Comintern since he took power in the Chinese Communist Party about 1935. The logical conclusion of this unfortunate policy was Nixon's later exploitation of the Sino-Soviet split in the 70's to side with China to weaken Russia. The Stalinist Wang Ming was Mao's chief communist rival in the 1930's who wanted China's participation in the Comintern to maintain international unity. He later wrote an interesting book entitled 'Mao's Betrayal' which never the less does not include the reckless accusations in Halliday's book the 'Unknown Mao'.