Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World: A Concise History (review)

This remarkable book accomplishes what few other succinct accounts of major historical figures are able to do. In readable prose that is both accessible to students and engaging for the specialist reader, Rebecca Karl produces a compelling narrative of the political thought and actions of Mao Zedong that is deftly situated within the local and global historical conjunctures of the twentieth century. Attentive to the complexity of the historical and theoretical struggles in which Mao Zedong participated, the book smoothly transitions from accounts of military encounters and strategy, revolutionary Marxist theory, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) power struggles, details of Mao’s personal life, and critical insights into the historiography on Mao Zedong and twentieth century Chinese history. The result is an informative work that refuses simplistic or sensationalist understandings of the People’s Republic of China; a work that instead insists that the reader take seriously the ideological positions and social goals – and their failures – that animated Mao Zedong.

The book is a welcome addition to existing biographies and intellectual histories of Mao Zedong. First, it is characterized by sustained attention to feminism and women’s liberation, alongside world historical developments. Second, even while Mao Zedong occupies centre stage in her narrative and analysis, Karl never insinuates that Mao Zedong orchestrated a revolution on the people of China as per ‘great man’ approaches to history that locate power in a leader and presume acquiescence by the people. Whether discussing regional differences in peasant participation in land reform or the appeal of the Cultural Revolution outside China, Karl incorporates a discussion of why and in what manner individuals participated in the various mass campaigns of the era. The concise nature of the book precludes Karl from providing detailed information about the motives of specific social groups, but she constantly reminds us that people made decisions to participate in politics and that their actions were part of a broader process of producing and enacting consciousness through political participation. For example, with respect to the Cultural Revolution and dominant interpretations of this tumultuous and disastrous period in Chinese history, Karl addresses the claim that the Cultural Revolution is evidence of the blind obedience of Chinese who lack a tradition of independence and freedom. Karl acknowledges that the magnitude of participation in the Cultural Revolution is one of its defining characteristics yet, contra the above interpretation, she suggests that mass participation in attacks on the CCP reflect people’s decisions to act against the Party for not producing the type of society desired (p. 118).

The attention to agency, history, and politics is personalized in interview interludes with: Wang Yanghua, one of the last living members of the Shanghai Underground Communist Party in the 1940s; Sabu Kohso, Japanese-born New York-based independent writer who encountered Maoism while in high school in Japan in the 1970s; and Wang Hui, leading literary and historical scholar in China and critic of Dengist reform. The interviews provide insight into how Mao’s ideas and practices shaped critical engagement with the politics of China (past and present). They remind the reader that the meaning and practice of the Chinese revolution was and is contested in the everyday. As such, the interviews also reinforce one of the themes of the book: “Practicing politics, in Mao’s terms, is part of everyday life” (pp. 57–8).

As Karl elucidates, Mao Zedong continuously highlighted the interconnected complexity of each moment of struggle. As such, fascism, imperialism, local situations, and so on were all part of the revolutionary struggle. This makes for compelling theorizing, but often for disjointed or convoluted narratives. Yet, Karl successfully leads the reader through the labyrinth of overlapping and intertwined networks that defined and made the Chinese Revolution, including: CCP-PLA relations; Sino-Soviet relations; an emerging Third Worldism; debates within the CCP over the relative positioning of development and revolution; women’s liberation and feminism; personal relationships. The well-written and wide-ranging sub-sections...