A Book by Jonathan Spence

Western opinion of many Communist leaders throughout history is generally very poor, if not outright dismissive at best. It is of no mystery that Mao Zedong, especially, is largely seen only by his faults and transgressions as a historical figure and not a fully-formed three-dimensional being with his own story and opinions. In Jonathan Spence’s Mao Zedong: A Life, the author pulls the curtain back a bit to look at the early years and upbringing that came to create one of the twentieth century’s most notorious public figures. This book follows his days as a self-educated farm boy destined to follow in his father’s footsteps, all of the way to his many years as a charismatic revolutionary, a state leader, and eventually his death. It’s a fully faceted look at the life of a complicated man.

“From humble origins in the provinces, Mao Zedong rose to absolute power, unifying with an iron fist a vast country torn apart by years of weak leadership, colonialism, and war. This sharply drawn and insightful account brings to life this modern-day emperor and the tumultuous era that he did so much to shape. Jonathan Spence captures Mao in all his paradoxical grandeur and sheds light on the radical transformation he unleashed that still reverberates in China today.”

Jonathan Spence has largely constructed this book in two-halves – one being his younger years and the other being details of Mao’s work as a politician after 1949. Spence uses a lot of Mao’s own writings as well as the writings of his contemporaries to get an idea of his values and opinions on a lot of things going on in China at the time. Spence paints the portrait of a man that seemed to have the foundation of being a great leader, but eventually fell into the very pitfalls and vices he raged against as a youth. It’s interesting as to how we get there in this book, especially when you start to realize that Mao often did not practice his own policies, a frequent criticism of many authoritarian leaders.

By looking at some of Mao’s early writings, one can see the young man building up his ideas of what he felt China should be like, as well as his disdain with what he often saw around him. One of Mao’s earliest writings is an essay extolling the virtues of Shang Yang’s implementation of Legalism during the Qin Dynasty. He lamented what he saw as a general slide into cultural entropy and seemed to pine for the nearly two thousand year old official’s laws, many of which seemingly inspired his own political philosophy. He was particularly inspired by a story in which Yang built confidence by laying out a seemingly preposterous proposition – he would leave a wooden pole on the south gate of the Qin capital with the promise of ten gold pieces to the first man that moves it. With no one budging, feeling it was a trap or joke of some sort, Yang upped the bounty to fifty gold pieces. Finally a man moved the pole and Yang, true to his word, paid up. This helped establish trust in the government, and allowed for reforms to be accepted by the populace.

It’s interesting to note that even in the early twentieth century, these policies that Mao was fascinated by, were largely seen as brutal and despotic, and the Qin leadership as tyrants. “It is an analysis of one of the Qin’s first famous ministers, Lord Shang. Lord Shang was condemned by later Chinese scholars for his ruthlessness and deviousness, and for imposing savage and inflexible laws that terrified the people and reduced them to silence or to sycophancy. The historian Sima Qian said that Lord Shang was “endowed by heaven with a cruel and unscrupulous nature” and was a “man of little mercy.”” (pg. 16)

Mao often spoke of his feelings about the treatment of peasants and the poor, and a lot of this was ironed into his politics from early on. Events such as seeing the corpses of two of his friends, Jiao and Chen, laying in the street after a well-intended stint in the Revolutionary Army, a sacrifice that earned them nothing more than death by mutiny because their needs and goals as poor country boys did not live up to the needs and goals of landlords and merchants (pg. 12) Before he became Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao had slowly moved his way up into being somewhat of a businessman and politician at a relatively young age. Not only was he dipping his toes into what was seen as increasingly radical political movements, such as Peter Kropotkin’s framework for Anarchism, and later full-blown Marxism, he somehow balanced that with working as the manager of a series of bookstores ran by the Cultural Book Society and status as the Communist Party secretary for Hunan. He was very active in Union work and other labor movements, but somehow was able to slide under the radar of the eye of the Hunan governor who routinely made examples of anyone that tried to undermine his strict warlord authority. No matter where Mao went and what he accomplished, he still felt for the plight of the poor and peasant class that were often overlooked by even the staunchest Marxist.

Mao learned importance of having a strong military force to back up one’s goals, he also learned that empowered the poor and peasantry was the secret way he was going to try to build his power-base. He witnessed the defunct Guomidang/Communist alliance collapse after the Nationalists turned on Communists in the city and did not want to suffer the same fate. This is likely why he gathered a peasant military force, ultimately hiding out in the mountains on the outskirts of Jinggangshan City, an area of the Jinggang Mountains. From here he attempted to not only spread Communism, but take part in the Chinese Civil War, even if standing at odds to the more established Soviet-backed politicians elsewhere. Eventually, the two sides somewhat “teamed-up” to face the common enemy of Japan during Sino-Japanese War, but the Nationalist’s days were numbered. Through all of his sacrifice and leading his peasant army through often forgotten areas of China, he captured the hearts and minds of his people and became the leader of the Chinese Communist Party largely in part of being the face of the people rather than a group of politicians sent from Russia. It is for this reason that one can definitely see the greatness of Mao and why he was so well-regarded during his time. 

For all of his accomplishments, Mao can be looked at as a flawed man in many ways, but in what way can any historical person be seen as perfect? I mentioned before that Mao seemed to hold himself and other members of the Chinese government above any rules set aside for his people, and as with many leaders he did not “practice what he preached”. In his later years, Mao became driven by ideology versus flexibility, a fact that clouded his judgement and allowed the modern world to somewhat slip him by. He was also VERY promiscuous, being rumored to be quite “a ladies’ man” at many points in his life. A lot of this could likely be traced back to the death of his second-wife, for who he was madly in love with, but was kept away from for a long time until she was executed due to associations with him. Having his wife and many of his children killed out from under him likely made him feel that he alone knew what was right for his country and only added to the erasure of his once humble temperament.

Jonathan Spence’s Mao Zedong: A Life is definitely more of a biography than a standard history book focusing on the centralized topic of China through the eyes of Mao Zedong. This was achieved through using his own words and those of his contemporaries to help get a fuller idea of who Mao really was. Spence has done similar things in other books, such as God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan and Emperor of China: Self-portrait of K’ang-Hsi: Self-Portrait of K’ang-Hsi, both of which take the source material and try to get into the minds of these great or influential men and see how they operated in relation to the times they lived in. I really like this approach, because it’s easy to see a name on a historical outline and think of a person as a disjointed literary archetype of sort, a character with no agency outside of their accomplishments.

I’m sure that writing in this way can lead to embellishment and assumptions, and one could accidentally veer too heavily into the realm of writing “Historical Fiction”. When studying or writing about history, there is really no way to avoid making assumptions in the first place, but there is a line that can be crossed. Mao, compared to another one of Spence’s topics – Emperor K’ang-Hsi, left behind far more writings about his opinions, his thoughts, and his upbringing that a lot of the guesswork could be omitted from the discussion entirely. In that way, the shortfall of this type of writing was largely avoided entirely, in no way did I see this as “historical fiction”.

Spence does a great job of fleshing out the life of a man that, as mentioned previously, is often seen as some supervillain to democracy through the lenses of decades of anti-communist “Red Scare” ideology that is still ingrained into American culture. While he had his flaws, Mao was a great man that did many great things and was loved by the majority of his people. Looking back, it’s easy to blame Chairman Mao for all of his countries shortcomings he oversaw in his later years, but that would be ignoring everything else. I think I learned a lot from this book, and while my opinions of him did not largely slide too much as I somewhat lack reverence to any politician I read about, I feel like I understand him a lot more.