The Final Chapter of Mao's Legacy?

Mao: A Life, by Philip Short. A John Macrae Book/Henry Holt & Company, 1999. 782 pp. $37.50.

To this day, the image of the Phoenix and the Dragon resonates strongly throughout China as a symbol of eternal rebirth, power, and potential. It is no wonder that this image has survived, for it continues to tell the country's history from the ashes of the Warring States period (475 B.C. to 221 B.C.) to the cultural and artistic majesty of the Tang Dynasty (6 to the rise of the Chinese Communist Party and the ensuing mayhem of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. These themes, ensconced in bitterness and happiness, were recurring ones also in Mao's life, especially during his days as a struggling student--struggling both economically and academically--and at the apogee of power, when he earned the moniker the "Great Helmsman."

As a youth, witnessing first-hand the devastating effects of foreign intervention in China, Mao lamented that Confucian values and Chinese tradition tethered the country's political and spiritual growth. ¹ Somehow, in order for China to survive and remain a nation, Mao concluded, it would have to undergo its own rebirth. But rebirth requires death, and for Mao this meant the destruction of the existing political and social order in China.

What are we to make of Mao, a man both revered and despised for his role in Chinese history? He is at once the Phoenix and the Dragon. Mao the individual became Mao the ideology, and iterations of Maoism tested the limits of the strength of the agrarian class. There are dozens of Mao biographies that attempt to tackle this complex man. A few stand out for their groundbreaking treatment of the subject and continue to inspire contemporary analysts: Stuart Schram's lucid early portrait in Mao Tse-Tung, Lucien Pye's "psychohistorical" analysis in Mao Tse-Tung: The Man in the Leader, and Ross Terrill's prescient investigation in Mao: A Biography. ²

While numerous biographies examine Mao's background and key experiences, no single work has fully revealed his psyche--and so Mao remains very much an enigma to this day. The fiftieth anniversary of the People's Republic of China offered another opportunity for reassessing Mao's legacy. That is precisely the task Philip Short takes on in a 782-page tome entitled Mao: A Life. Along the way, Short skillfully transports the reader through the political, social, and psychological hutongs or "alleyways" that shaped Mao's beliefs and later his actions.

Short takes advantage of material released since the end of the Cultural Revolution almost a quarter of a century ago as the Chinese government has gradually permitted access to previously classified archives. In addition, he draws on oral histories that have seeped into the public domain and that fill the gaps remaining after his archival research. Armed with this new material, Short revisits some conventional Western interpretations of Mao's politics. Unfortunately, his unorthodox and confusing citations turn out to be a major weakness of his work, for they discourage independent research on the part of the reader.

For instance, Schram's 1966 classic work Mao Tse-Tung suggests that the Cultural Revolution was a "deliberate and nostalgic attempt on Mao's part to relive the cultural revolution of the 4 May period...." In line with the more recent literature, Short confirms that events during the Cultural Revolution were not so meticulously planned. In fact, Short gives us the impression that Mao's decisions were primarily made in an ad hoc manner during this period. On the basis of new but unnamed oral sources, as well as a 1988 research article circulated only in China, Short reveals a "bizarre sequence of events," in which a clash erupted between conservative and radical factions during a People's Liberation Army [PLA] dance performance. PLA "[g]irl dancers in the conservative troupe," who frequented...