New Book On Mao Details Evil

"He was as evil as Hitler or Stalin, and did as much damage to mankind as they did. And yet the world knows astonishingly little about him."

That's Jung Chang, author of the wildly popular novel about her Chinese roots, Wild Swans, who just published along with her historian husband Mao, the Unknown Story. The result of 10 years of research, the Mao book includes details like the fact that Mao did not march in the near-mythical Long March; instead he was carried in a bamboo rig of his own design. And this:

"Seventy million killed at the absolute minimum. We didn't even count people like my grandmother's death - which should really be on Mao's account. That figure only includes people who were murdered by Mao - and in peace time, which is completely unprecedented in the history of the world."

Who was Mao? What drove him? Certainly not a love of the people, according to Chang:

His complete lack of ideological belief underpins the book: far from being the great peasant leader of communist mythology, it argues, Mao was motivated simply by a pursuit of personal power; he despised equality and introduced a succession of disastrously anti-peasant policies. Not content with his tyranny over China, he wanted to conquer the world, and became obsessed with acquiring nuclear weapons at great cost to his country. This quest to become a world superpower, according to Chang,"was at the core of his thought".

This man was the heroic myth that fueled the men who are running China today. One wonders what they would have said to Chang if they were free to do so. Would they have criticized Mao, or would they have fallen in line, giving an indication of how they intend to deal with the growing desire for freedom among the Chinese?