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Dwarkesh Podcast Episode Summary: Jung Chang - Living Through History's Largest Man-Made Famine
Episode Overview In this episode of the Dwarkesh Podcast, Jung Chang, author of *Wild Swans* and *Mao: The Unknown Story*, engages in a deeply insightful discussion about her experiences growing up during the Cultural Revolution in China. This episode touches on the broader implications of Mao Zedong's policies, the psychological effects of living under a totalitarian regime, and the continued reverence for Mao in contemporary China.
Key Themes Discussed
- Growing Up During the Cultural Revolution
- Personal Background: Jung Chang's privileged upbringing in Sichuan with parents who were Communist officials.
- Impact of the Cultural Revolution: At age 14, Chang's father was denounced, arrested, and tortured, leading to a family upheaval.
- Survival and Resilience: Despite immense oppression, Chang's mother refused to denounce her husband, showcasing strength amid systemic brutality.
- Mechanisms of Totalitarian Control
- Psychological Manipulation: Discussion on the depth of indoctrination and the intense brainwashing that made questioning Mao unthinkable for many.
- Community Control: Mao's regime implemented a strict control system that organized society down to the grassroots, making dissent nearly impossible.
- Use of Terror: Fear was a primary tool to suppress dissent and encourage conformity, further complicating any attempts at rebellion.
- The Great Leap Forward and its Consequences
- Mass Starvation: Mao's policies resulted in the Great Leap Forward, leading to the deaths of approximately 40 million people due to famine.
- Food Export Policies: The regime prioritized exporting food for military goods over feeding its own populace, illustrating the regime's disastrous economic policies.
- Cultural Impact: Chang vividly recounts personal experiences of witnessing starvation and suffering during this period.
- The Cult of Mao and Contemporary Repercussions
- Legacy of Mao: Despite the atrocities committed under his rule, there remains a significant cult of personality around Mao, even among some who suffered under his policies.
- Comparative Analysis: Discussion on how Mao's image is maintained in China, contrasting this phenomenon with how other oppressive regimes are viewed globally.
- Pragmatism vs. Ideology: Chang argues that Mao's actions were often driven by pragmatism rather than ideological commitment, leading to catastrophic outcomes.
- Psychological Warfare and Self-Criticism
- Self-Denunciation: The regime demanded that individuals confess and criticize themselves, which served to break down personal relationships and instill fear.
- Community Dynamics: This atmosphere of distrust prevented organization against the regime, highlighting the psychological manipulation at play.
- Understanding Modern China
- Elitism and Western Education: Many children of Chinese officials educated in the West may not uphold the same Marxist-Leninist ideologies as their parents, indicating potential shifts in future governance.
- Censorship and Information Control: Since Xi Jinping's rise to power, there has been a crackdown on literature that critiques Mao, leading to a new generation of citizens increasingly unaware of historical truths.
Key Takeaways
- The Personal Experience: Jung Chang's firsthand accounts bring a deeply human perspective to historical events often reduced to statistics.
- Importance of Historical Memory: The continuous struggle for understanding and documenting history reflects the challenges faced by those who lived through totalitarian regimes.
- Critical Examination of Ideology: The episode underlines the necessity of critically engaging with ideologies that may lead to grave injustices, reminding listeners of the importance of history in informing current and future governance.
Conclusion The conversation with Jung Chang offers profound insights into the human costs of ideological extremism and the complexities of remembering and confronting a painful past. Her experiences and reflections serve as a powerful reminder of the importance of understanding history to avoid repeating its darkest chapters.
Listen to the full episode: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/-VeZp2d7mDs) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jung-chang-living-through-cultural-revolution-and/id1516093381?i=1000636931465) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4XJRFIvfRetdzq3pffmMUL?si=FGzMVzV1QfSbZl522jD5_g)
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Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00My father spoke up against mouse policies. He was arrested, tortured, driven insane. My mother was under tremendous pressure to denounce my father. She refused, and my mother was made to nail on broken glass. She was paraded in the streets where children spat at her and threw stones at her. The desire to write never left me. So in the following years, when I was working as a peasant and as a bad food doctor, as a steel worker and the electrician, I was always writing in my head with an imaginary pen. Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Yongchang. Her first book, Wild Swans, has sold over 15 million copies worldwide.
0:51The US diplomat, George Cannon, described the Gula cargo pellagoe, he said, this is the greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever to be leveled in modern times. And when I read that quote I realized this is exactly how I describe your books, wild swans obviously, but also your biography of Mao titled Now the Unknown Story, both a wish we'll talk about today. It is a true honor to speak with you. Thank you very much for having me. So we will get it to Mao and his atrocities in a second, but let us begin by... which am I The scene for us, what was it like? You grew up under in China, under Mao.
1:30Let's begin there What was it like as you started to grow up during this time? I was born in China in Sichuan in 1952 So I grew up under Mao When I was a child, I led quite privileged life because both my parents were communist officials And we lived in this camp with seven cook strivers. It was a very class -ridden society, and I grew up so much taking class and privilege for granted that when I first came to Britain, I thought Britain was wonderful, they classless. And of course, my views were slightly modified over the years. And then in 1966, when I was 14, Mao launched his cultural revolution, which was his great purge.
2:33And my father spoke up against Mao's policies. So as a result, he was arrested, tortured, driven in sane. he was exiled to a camp and died tragically prematurely. My mother was under tremendous pressure to denounce my father. She refused. As a result, she went through over a hundred of these ghastly denunciation meetings, which were everyday features in China at the time. Basically, the victims were put on a stage, and their arms were ferociously twisted to the back, and their heads were pushed down. They were kicked and beaten. My mother once made a nail on broken glass. She was paraded in the streets where children spat at her and threw stones at her.
3:32But she survived. And today she still lives in Chengdu, age 92. My family was scattered and I was exiled to the age of the Himalayas and worked as a peasant and then as a barefoot doctor, which was a doctor basically without any training. Because Mao had said, the more books you read, the more stupid you become. So schools were closed, you know, books were burned. I mean China was literally a cultural desert without books, cinemas, theaters, museums for 10 years. And then I became an electrician. And again, there was no training. So I had five electric shocks in one month. And then in 1973, partly, you know, after Nixon's visit to China, I mean, but more, also because for the internal political reasons, and universities began to reopen.
4:51And I was able to get into such one university to learn English. But our teachers had never seen foreigners themselves, because China had been closed to the outside world after the communists took power in 1949. So our textbooks were written by these teachers who had never been abroad. I remember the first lesson was long leave, Chairman Mao. The second lesson was greetings, because the Chinese in those years, when we bumped into each other and we said, Chi Fan Lema, Shan Nairu, which means where are you going? Have you eaten? So those were the English greetings I learned. So when I first came to London, I used to go around and ask people where they were going and whether they had eaten.
5:48Well, the only foreigners I had spoken to were some sailors in the port in South China, where we as English language students were sent to practice our English. So, and that was, well, that was 23. But, I mean, of course, we were at the port eagerly waiting for our sailors. And we had no idea what must be on their minds, how different this must be from the expectation of a port life. In 1976 Mao died and China began to change. In 1978 there was a national exam to select people to go abroad. For the first time on the communist rule, going abroad was based on an academic basis. So I did very well at the exam.
6:59So I became one of the first 14 people to come to Britain. And as far as I know, I was the first person to get out of such one province, the province then of 90 million people to come and study in the West. So when I got my doctorate in linguistics at the University of York in 1982, I became the first person from communist China ever to get a doctorate from a British university. So I was in Britain and for ten years I didn't want to think about the past because it was too painful and my father died, my grandmother who brought us up and died. And there was two, you know, I just wanted to spend time enjoying the West.
8:02I actually always wanted to be a writer. When I was a child, I loved writing. But when I was growing up on the mile, it was impossible. to dream of even become a writer, because nearly all writers were condemned, in the center of the Gulag, and driven to suicide, some were even executed. I mean, even writing for oneself was dangerous. I wrote my first poem when I was 16, on the 16th birthday in 1978. I was lying in bed, polishing my poem, when I heard the door banging, and some red guards had come to raid our flat. And if they had seen my poem, I would get into trouble, and my family would get into trouble.
8:57So I had to quickly rush to the bathroom to tear up my poem and flush it down the toilet. And so that ended my first venture in writing. But the desire to write never left me. So in the following years, when I was working as a patient and as a barefoot doctor, as a steel worker and the electrician, and when I was spreading manure on the patty fields and checking electricity supplies on top of the electricity post, I was always writing in my head with an imaginary pen. But I couldn't write in China. When I came to Britain, for 10 years, I didn't want to write. And then my mother came to stay with me in 1988.
9:54And first time she told me the stories of her life and stories of my grandmother. And then while I was listening to my mother, I thought I must write all these down. And then I realized how much I wanted to be a writer and how much I had always wanted to be a writer. And so after my mother left, I transcribed the tapes she left for me, 60 hours of tape recordings. And then I wrote Wild Swongs, which was published in 1991. 1991 first and I became a writer. Yes, and I mean, that is saying you became a writer is understanding it. The global impact of wild swans has been tremendous. And in fact, I, you know, I, a former guest of mine, Sarah Payne recommended it to me and I read it.
10:51And it's the most moving book I've ever read. It's truly tremendous. Let me begin by asking what it was like growing up there in terms of the psychology of living in a totalitarian system, you mentioned in the book that until very late you could not even bring yourself to question Mao despite seeing the consequences of his policies and the cult of personality that was there. Tell me about the psychology of living in a system like that. Well, when I was growing up in China, you know, we were all subject to intense brainwashing and indoctrination. When we were children, Mao was, we were told, you know, sorry, Mao was like our God.
11:39If we wanted to say what I say is true, we would say I swear to Chairman Mao. So Mao has been given these God -like status. And also at the same time, we could see how dangerous it was to question Mao. You know, this being China, there were these periodical, political campaigns, and many people were victimized. And the biggest crime was to question Mao. And my father in the culture of Lushin suffered tremendously. And it was also because he was so questioned Mao. So when I wrote my poem, one of the sixteen years old, I, while it already started to doubt and to dread the society I was in. And we were always told, you know, socialist China was paradise on earth.
12:47And I thought on that day, actually, if this is paradise, what then is hell? because my parents were away being detained. My grandmother was a waping next door because she's heard, you know, these ghastly things that were being down to my mother. So I questioned the society, but my mother never entered my mind. And he was beyond questioning. This may be difficult for people to understand maybe, I mean, in the West. But in China, in those days, there were two most important things that enabled this brainwashing. One is the complete isolation of the society from the outside world, from alternative information and from any other information.
13:50Even parents never told the children, you know, things that were different from the party line, because they were worried about the future of their children, and they were worried that if children blabbed, it would be disastrous for the children as well as for the family. So no alternative of information. And the other is terror, this intense terror, which you really scared people into suppressing any unorthodox thoughts. So I was living in that kind of society, and and it took me a long time to question Mao. Since my first 16th birthday thought in 1968, for many years, I blamed what was happening in China to Madame Mao and to the so -called Gang of War, which were basically assistants of Mao's.
15:01But I never dared to question Mao. And then I remember very well, 1976, I had learned a little English and a friend showed me a copy of Newsweek. And there was an article about Mao and there were two little pictures with the caption, Madame Mao is Mao's eyes, ears, and mouth. And suddenly, Mao's name was spelled out for me. And I suddenly realized, of course, it was Mao. You know, without Mao, none of this could have happened. Mao was responsible. And you know, I'm an intelligent person. But it took me eight years. Even from the moment I said to myself, I disliked the society to the moment that I felt Mao was responsible.
15:58You mentioned that your father was a purged because of his criticism of the government at the time. In fact, your father's story through the book is a tragic tale. What I found interesting was that the way he criticized the party was to go through the official mechanism he wrote a letter to Mao, which suggests that he, even then, still believed that that sort of the mechanism of the party worked. And then you know, it would be imagining like somebody has a problem with North Korean government today and he then writes a letter to Kim Jong -un, you know, which is obviously you're gonna get in trouble for that.
16:36So tell me about how your father thought about that. And in retrospect, how should a high official, like your father was the governor of Seshwan Province, which you said 90 million people. Wasn't a governor, sorry. My father was a governor of a region in the initially. And then by the time of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, he was the head of a department of the Sichuan Party, government, whatever they were. Yeah, a high official. A high official. What should he have done when he realized things were going? Well, there was nothing one could do. I mean, if you try to say, you'll spell out your thoughts to other people, you will be instantly denounced and instantly, you know, the executed.
17:31I mean, nobody was allowed to say anything against Mao. My father and theoretically, in the charter of the Communist Party, a party member had the right to right to the leadership. So my father was using that as the kind of theoretically permitted way to voice his descent. So that's why he wrote to Mao. And in any case, all these things, atrocities, the violence, I mean, only Mao could stop them. So writing to Mao was the the only way, with the only way he could express his opinion. And of course, he also said something, in the context of the denunciation meetings, but there were outbursts at denunciation meetings rather than he's well sought out, an expression of dissent.
18:37So this is something I thought was confusing when reading accounts about the cultural revolution is China is a society, they've rebelled in the past. They rebelled against the emperors, they rebelled against the Japanese occupation. The nationalists were at one point in charge of lots of parts of China, the communist rebelled against them. How was Mao able to instill a regime where that became unthinkable? Despite the fact that it was an incredibly chaotic and destabilizing time, how did the Chinese, as you have a great sense of history, how would they allow this to happen? Well, that's a very good question.
19:15That is the key of a communist society, of a totalitarian society, is the control, the organization. I mean neither the empress nor any other rulers under the nationalist, under Chang Kai -shek, was China so thoroughly organized down to the grassroots, controlled by layers of party organizations. It was totally thorough. That's what 20th century totalitarianism was very different from the previous authoritarianism. I mean, the key was the control. It is the total control of a society. I mean, the power highly concentrated at the very top, the one person. The thing that's really interesting is Mao is obviously a person who doesn't understand economics and we'll talk about that greatly forward and the disastrous consequences it had because of his complete ignorance when it came to economics and industry and things like that.
20:29But what it did seem to have an incredible sense for and I was styling another titality and leaders as well is the psychology of people and how to organize a society that has 800 million people, how to organize it so that you know every society has petty, sadistic, arrogant, and cowardly people and how to organize them so that they're elevated and you use them to grow advantage so that there is no no nook and cranny in the entire society where a single person can be have a dissenting voice or even have an independent life. Maybe you can talk about the commune life and the way in which how can you possibly have a society of 800 million people where each person is under such direct retaliatory control?
21:15How is that even possible? The thing is that in the cultural revolution, for example, Mao used the young people and and used the bad things in their nature, the prone to violence, the destructive, you know, sadistic, I mean, any society, there were these people, but they were given license to indulge their bad instincts in the culture revolution. Now this took place for a couple of years in the culture revolution, then Mao reigned them in, you by using the army and the red guards, the former red guards, particularly the most militant, most aggressive, most sadistic, and violent ones, were dispersed, and they were sent to the villages, sent to the mountains.
22:08I mean, the disobedient ones were condemned themselves. They became the targets of the second round of Persia, so to speak. All the time Mao made sure that the barrel of the gang was in his hand. The army. He always needed this person to control the army for him to make sure he could wreck havoc and maintain control. He always used the limbel until 1970. Limbel was completely cynical. He would come to Mao's rescue when there was a descent from most other colleagues, like during the famine and when the mouse died, the culture revolution. And until the day that he fell out with Mao, which was why Mao was suddenly a bit lost because he lost his arm with which he controlled the army.
23:27And so that's why in 1972, after Lim Bel died trying to flee to out of China, things suddenly became better. And then because the Mao had to rely on another person to control the army for him. And this other person was a Deng Xiaoping. And then suddenly, the the universities began to reopen things were much better from 1972. Yeah. And by the way, this is a great instance of, as soon as Mao dies, the Gengafor is rounded up and arrested, and the Cultural Revolution stops. So which goes to show you that this was Mao is doing. This is also an interesting example where you have these cases where there's Stalin in Russia or Mao in China, where when the tyrant dies, you know, the system automatically improves because nobody else is as crazy as that guy.
24:27What does this show us about if Kim Jong Un died? Would we, should we expect a similar sort of reversion to a more sane set of things? Again and again, we see tyrants dying, things are not as bad as they used to be. Well, I haven't studied North Korea, so I don't know the, in the world, teams of the regime. I mean, in that sort of a Stalinist society really so much depends on one person. I mean, the Kim dynasty, they have arranged their kind of succession. The first Kim Jong -un died, and his son succeeded, and the grandson succeeded. Now it seems that the grandson has begun to look into a succession of him by grooming perhaps, I don't know, his daughter or someone close to him.
25:24I mean, Stalin couldn't do that, couldn't do the family, the dynasty thing. I think partly because his children were not like the Kim children. I mean, Mao also, I mean Mao basically only cared about how he could enjoy life. While he was alive, he indulged in his desires, which was mainly power. And he didn't care about what comes after him. I mean, he was completely materialistic, you know, in that philosophical way, in that sort of way. Sorry, for example, when he was in Russia in Moscow, he went, he visited Lenin's tomb. He said, it's all very well, you know, we are visiting Lenin's tomb, but Lenin can't feel anything.
26:26He's dead. So it doesn't matter. It means nothing to Lenin. So, you know, Mao, when he died, he didn't leave well -structured. He didn't even care about his own legacy. What I thought the entire purpose of the Cultural Revolution was that he was concerned that because of the Great Leigh Forward, that his legacy would be destroyed in the way that Khrushchev denounced Stalin, and therefore that that was the entire point of the Cultural Revolution was to protect his legacy. That may be a factor, but the main factor was Mao's policy that had led to the great famine of nearly, you know, around 40 million deaths of the people was so unpopular that his number two, Lu Xiaoqi, then spoke up against him.
27:23Again, there was no way even for Mao's number two to topple him. And because basically, you know, on this tyrant, his colleagues couldn't get organized, which was necessary to topple him. They couldn't lay their hands on the army, which was controlled by Lin Biao. So what Liu Xiaoxi did was that in January 1962, Mao had wanted to continue his policy of exporting food in exchange for arms, industries to build, you know, for him to build a superpower so he could dominate the world. And you wanted to stop that. And he used the disaccation of a party congress to speak to the 7 ,000 party officials in that conference hall, and my father was in there.
28:26So these party officials spread over China. They were the vast majority of them were against mouse policies that had led to the famine. And so they suddenly found Liu Xiaoqi as their champion. And so together, they managed to stop mouse policy which was how the famine was stopped from 1962. Mao was furious. He didn't like being thwarted and being ambushed, which he called that ambush. This was why he launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966 to punish Liu Xiaoqi and the party officials. I mean, so that's how this great part took place. For a while, it was much less of... It was calculated because he wanted to have his way.
29:30He wanted to purge these people. But there was also the gut feeling of revenge. And he wanted revenge on his number two who died in the most appalling way in the culture of Luci. So sorry if this question sounds naive, but if you have somebody like Lu Shaoqi and Dengjoping and these other party officials who are seeing what is happening, and in the case of Lu Shaoqi, he was denounced before he was officially purged and removed from power, right? So there was a time when he knew he was going to be purged, but he was still in power. It's confusing from the outside of why at that time, you don't, if you can't control the army because Lin Bao is going to control a bit.
30:14At that point, you don't, I don't know, try to tell the people what is actually happening. Go to the people's daily and say, here, you got to publish this article about what is that? What Mao is actually like? Go to the all the communist officials, organized a coup. Why didn't that happen? Well, it did happen. Well, in the Mao biography, there were, I have a couple of chapters about Liu Xiaoqi, exactly what you were suggesting, what he should have done. I mean, but I'm going to expand it in my next book. Basically, Liu Xiaochie knew Mao was going to purge him in 1962 after the Congress. He's hit the ambushed Mao.
30:55And so he had started to build his own power base. First of all, by stopping the famine, making sense to himself popular among the party officials because only they mattered. The ordinary people were too far away from power. So, Nushouchi became very popular. In 1965, a few years later, when Mao tried to purge Nushouchi, he found he couldn't do it. Nushouchi had been powerful enough to put up a resistance. I mean, there was a lot of, I mean, the Mao did this horse trading with Lim Bel. And so Lim Bel spoke very forcefully in support of Mao. So there was all that going on. And why, I'm do you know she was already, I'm sorry, the Mao used the red guards to create such violence and terror in China from 1966 to basic 19, for a few months before he even mentioned Liu Xiaotchi's name, as you said.
32:13But Liu Xiaotchi was already under house arrest. I mean, it's just he didn't make it public. So Mao first created this gigantic upheaval in China. In order to create the kind of terror that people would only obey him, not Lu Xiaoqi, not even the party, but only him. That's how he operated. So that's why, in the culture of Lu Xin, his first victims were school teachers. I was in the secondary school in China. I saw how the teachers were being abused, beaten up, denounced, driven to suicide, and so on. When Mao actually didn't even dislike teachers, and he said, for example, to let us know that he'd like to be known as a great teacher, or whatever, he was a school teacher in his youth.
33:20And he didn't care about them. But he just used them because the teachers were the obvious target to excite, to arouse the passion, the violence, their atrocities in the young red guards. And so he used them as a victim in order to route the victimizers, which were the school children. That's how he maneuvered. He spent quite a few years before the Atmosphere was ripe for him to be able to purge Liu. So maybe for context it'll be helpful first to start talking about the great leave forward. The number you gave was around 40 million people and this becomes a statistic for people that you just think, oh 40 million people died, whatever, it's a number.
34:25I want to make it concrete for people. How much tragedy and suffering is involved in just a single person dying for starvation. Okay, can you talk about the months long agonizing process of what starvation is? Will you see it happening to you, your family, your children, your spouse, your village? And what peasant life was like during the Great Leap Forward? Well, during the Great Deep Forward, my family was among the privileged. So I personally didn't starve. But there was a lot of starvation around us. For example, I remember when I went to school, I was eight, I was eight, nine, and when I went to school, one day I was munching a steamed bread and a young lad, a child, a boy.
35:25started over and snatched the bread from my mouth. Then he stuffed those into his mouth and disappeared. Then afterwards, when I told my father, my father was very sad and he sort of touched my head and said, you are very lucky, other children are starving. Another thing that happened near home was our made, our domestic help, could come from a village. And the her family had been classified as a landlord, which was one of the categories of the desirable, destined for discrimination and horrible treatment. And I remember very well one day she, after visit to her family, she came back and she was weeping.
36:32And remember we lived in this courtyard and she had so much, a lot of tears that the frogs that were just thriving in the courtyard, were leaping up and down. So that was in my memory as a child. And my grandmother, with whom she was very close, was sitting in the mosquito net and also crying and said, the communists are good, except all these people are dead. I mean, so I was because this was so much against my indoctrination about the communists that one of the few things I heard that made me really scared. And then before she and her whole family died, in fact before that her mother came to see to report the news that her father and the brother's or something had died.
37:39And her mother, as soon as she came into the house, she threw herself on the ground and the cowed out to my mother and said, you know, thank you, you know, for having saved my daughter. otherwise, you know, they would have been dead. I mean, after soon after the mother went back, she died herself. But when she came, she was already like a skeleton, you know, as though any wind could blow her away. It's just on terrible. And one thing that made my father speak up during the culture of Lucio, which is only a few years later, He felt so guilty and he volunteered to stay in the village. And then he saw these horrible things, which I didn't see.
38:37And one day a man was sort of walking on the ridges of the patty fields. unsteadyly and suddenly he disappeared. My father rushed over and this man had died. It's just like that. My father just thought he's a month of living in village. He came back very seriously, famished and suffering from this illness called Enemars, which was because of lack of food. And yes, am I even my family? And we all drank this little seed that fed on urine. I remember we all had to collect urine. We don't throw away our urine. We collect urine. You wanted to grow this seed, which was supposed to have a lot of vitamin or a lot of some nutrition that could sustain people.
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39:54And I remember how revoting the taste was. I mean, I didn't suffer much because my family put all our food together and the adults were starving. I knew my mother, my father, my particular, my grandmother, in order for our children, not to starve. And also now today, if you read, if you see the memoirs of China's super reaches, I mean, I think most of them had memory of my generation, of the generation who had lived in a countryside. They all remembered being hungry. Yeah. As children, how hungry they were in the villages. And that sort of was partly what gave them the impetus to change. Well, we're on this.
40:52Let me just ask you about this before we return to the Great Wraithly Forward. Now that you've mentioned it. So, Xi Jinping actually had a very similar experience to you in that his father is also a high communist official. He also gets denounced and purged. Xiushan Peng has also has to go through these denunciation meetings and then he has to work as a peasant. And in fact, there's a story where he tries to come back, but his mother to get a meal from his family, but is supposed to be next up, but his mother then chases them away and denounces him. And so it's like gruesome stuff, right? And then when he gives these speeches, he talks about we need to return to Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong thought, how is it possible that somebody who has gone through your experience can still have any sort of sympathy left for Mao or Marxism, Leninism?
41:41I actually don't understand. I'm trying to understand. I'm afraid I don't understand either. I mean, don't fully understand. I mean, everybody is different. A lot of people had similar experiences And they still, with Sam Mouse, prays and wanted to return to the Mao era. I think only, not seriously, return to Mao era, but they were dreamed of the perhaps, the title, you know, the Come 12 or something of the Mao's era, but not really. I mean, well, everybody was different, but I mean, there were more indoctrinated people than others under the same indoctrination system. I mean, maybe he was just not, he was just more sorry indoctrinated.
42:35And there were many reasons among the communist officials whose parents suffered the children of. A lot of them regard identity very mild with the rule of the Communist Party. And they don't want the Communist Party to be discredited. So because they are the beneficiaries of Communist rule. I mean, this is not necessarily Xi, but in a more general sense, because I haven't studied Again, I don't know the working of the regime, but I think a lot of children of the old communists, in spite of the suffering from their parents, they still want China to be under this one party dictatorship. And I think one reason now is this made them a lot of money.
43:38I mean, all the corruptions or whatever, if you are associated with the regime, you stood to gain, you stand to gain. So I think that that is one very important reason, which would not have all the privileges if the party and it's one party dictatorship. Yeah, and you know, in no other society is attirant to like Mao still respected by the current regime. With Germany, nobody is, you know, yearning for the days of Hitler. There's a few people in Russia, for example, Stalinism is because of Putin's changing of the curriculum. But it's not a common thing. Whereas in China, the regime officially had derives its legitimacy from Mao, it hangs his picture up TNM and Square.
44:36And this is doubly insidious, not only because this is a gruesome mass murderer or killed 50 million people, more than anybody else in history, but because his victims were the people of China, the people who are expected to bow down to his figure and respect him are his own victims, or the children of his victims, It would be like if a picture of Hitler hung off the temple mountain Israel or something, right? So it mean how yeah I guess maybe the question then is how do the Chinese people who this happened to the Chinese people in living memory? How are they okay with having the figure of Mao up on Tiananmen Square?
45:16What why is there so respect for Mao in China? Well, first of all a China as you said is still a communist regime For many years, I mean, that was underplayed, partly because the memory is fresh, partly in the 1980s and 90s, particularly. The memories were fresh. I think that was probably the main reason. And gradually, after that, the memories of pain were gradually fading. and particularly a generation, two generations have grown up without suffering. And so given that there is no religion for people to worship, unlike any time in Chinese history. And before Mao there was Confucianism. You could have something to hang out to.
46:15And then there was Maoism, which didn't obviously open the endorsed violence and atrocities. It could sound quite attractive, which was why Mao's little red book was invoked for a period in the West. And so people hanged down to that. And in a post -small time, money was the God. But some people, a lot of people, made money. But a lot of people lost money, not only lost money, but was these advantages in this money is God's society. I mean, you know, in the society where there was no proper regulations and law and people who were not very savvy with money lost out, they were conned, they were, you know, they were whatever.
47:20So, there were some people who probably yearned for a more simple life where, you know, you were given what you were given, you, they wouldn't like to be staffed and they wouldn't like to be a political victim. but a lot of people could live a very simple life, more of being just fed. I mean, there may be a certain nostalgia. But the most important thing, of course, is the promotion of the regime. I mean, particularly since she came to power. I mean, you were taught from school all these lies about Mao. And so people grew up with this regarding Mao has got back to my childhood. Yeah, what has been the impact of your books?
48:16You know, Wild Swan sold 50 million copies. Your biography Mao is also best seller. I know they're banned in China, but have they secretly been able to access how was that revised understanding of their own history? Well, when these books were first published in the 1990s and year 2000s. There were lots and lots of ways to get them into China. Hong Kong, for example, Taiwan, pirated dishes, which there are many, many, many. But now, since Mr. Xi came to power in 2012 -2013, China has a total camp down of band of band literature and you could go to jail. If you and the foreign official to possess these books, I mean band books, including mine, you could face, you know, ghastly punishment, which you don't want to feature and for the general population as well.
49:25And when you enter China now, you see on the screen warnings of not to bring bad literature. And not particularly not to bring books that said not very nice things about the previous revolutionary leaders or revolutionary martyrs or someone. So total, total campdown for beating of people, doing research on history, trying to understand history, which created another generation of brainwashed people. And there was one also, one very important thing. The Chinese are very pragmatic, and they don't want trouble. They are very different from a lot of other people. And so parents who had bad experiences under Mao tend not to tell the children.
50:36And so there are a lot of children who are genuinely not getting any alternative information from different from the official line. Yeah, I do want to get back to the actual great leap and a culture revolution in a second, but on this theme, Asgisian pings own daughters got studied at Harvard. Chinese elites are, their kids are studying in America. When they take power in a generation or two, will they still be devoted Marxist -Leninists? I can't imagine them coming back from Harvard and then we're still believing in. Well, I mean, in the West, in the American universities, there were a lot of Marxists.
51:24I mean, you know, a lot of people, if they're interested, they're not subject. Sure. And then they come to the West to have their views confirmed. And Maoist, you know, for example, of Guinalain Mao biography was published. There were some academics who published, published the book, a collection of their cartoons against our book. And the title was, was Mao really a monster. I mean, you know, the preface was written by someone who was a senior lecturer in the LSE, Lunderskold, the economics. I mean, the language was Maoist, language. You know, Mao was a great revolution, a great Marxist land in this and so on.
52:13I mean, the West would certainly not put off this put off a potential Mao successor. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up actually because I read that book actually in preparation for this interview and because I wanted to see if there were criticisms that I should to be a wearer. And honestly, I mean, there were certain quibbles about the part before Mao got into power about the long march and stuff, which I don't know enough about to comment. But the actual, when they start talking about the important things, the great before the cultural revolution, they are not at all contesting the facts. It is the most sort of the most sort of excusatory language of it is the same sort of stuff, by the way, that is said about Cuba and Stalinist Russia of the literacy went up and this and that.
53:07North Korea today has high literacy. Are you going to say that North Korea was okay? Actually, can you talk about this? What do you think explains the Western, some parts the left who want to find excuses for these regimes, whether it's Venezuela or whether Edgar snow, Edward snow writing his book about Mao. There's a sort of need to excuse these communist regimes and socialist regimes. Why are, what, what, what explain this? From what I know, I think there were people who had illusions about these regimes and a lot of the academics who were kind of controlling the faculties to do with Mao and universities, probably had got their sort of illusions because they had access to Edgar Snow's book.
54:09They were radicals in the 1960s. I mean, they want to hang on to their own, no, sorry, let me just not get into it. They're subject. Sorry. I'm faltering on this because I don't know. I don't know why. But I don't know why. I don't know why they are like that. I mean, they don't know the facts. They don't care to know the facts. And also, I think probably some people think, China has always been awful, you know, under the end person, and so on. And so somehow the orientals must feel different today. I know when Deng Xiaoping visited America in 1979 and established diplomatic relations with America, with Carter.
55:04And he was seated at the banquet with some deluded film star or something. and the people were saying to him that when they visited China, they'd seen professors who'd been subject to forced labor. But they told that they enjoyed it because all these hardships and being in the labor camp had turned them into the new men. And Deng Xiaoping just said they were lying. But I mean they were lying, I mean to the westerners who didn't know the truth just took their words for it. They didn't know people couldn't tell them the real truth. Even in the case of Stalin and Russia there was a famous New York Times reporter who was doing the Russian coverage for the New York Times.
56:12And the reports would come in about the Ukrainian famine or these other atrocities. And he would write his columns, you know, no, this is not happening. I think there was a famous headline that says Russians are hungry but not starving. So actually let's talk about Deng Xiaoping. And I want to ask about, so during the Cultural Revolution, he is exiled and purged. And his son, because he is known as, I don't know, the black. Basically, the five, the blacks. That's one of the racist sides of the Chinese society, black is bad. So the son was one of the five blacks. And then you know, so on. His son is chased out of a window by red guards.
56:59The doctors refused to operate on him because he's dangling son. so he's paralyzed for life. And he's forced to do manual labor. This guy who was basically kind of running China under mail, he's doing manual labor out on the countryside. When he comes back into power after the cultural revolution, from the outside, I don't understand how he doesn't immediately denounce Mao, talk about the horrible things he did. How did he allow, there's a quote from him, he says we must be careful not to overemphasize the crimes of Mao or something. For somebody who was so personally harmed by now, how is he not immediately condemning now?
57:37This is something I don't understand. And I also think he made a big mistake. If he had dissociated from Mao, like Khrushchev had with Stalin, I mean, it would not have just been the right thing to do, but it would have been the popular thing to do. Because there is a grand, great, grand swell of unicentment, for denouncing Mao, or at least dissociating from Mao, not just from the population, from the victims, which virtually everybody was in China, but from the leading elite, from most of his closest colleagues. I mean, for a few others who were in favor of Mao, he could easily have dealt with them, like Khrushchev had dealt with the Stalinist, the hard -lineist, but he chose not to.
58:35What got into his mind, I haven't studied him very carefully, but I did know something about him. I think he was probably thinking that if you reject Mao, it's inevitable that communism will collapse in China. I mean unlike Kushe of Stime in 1956, he could denounce Stalin without indengaring communist rule in Russia. But then at his time could not, or at least probably he thought, could not have denounced Mao without indengaring the rule of the party. Yeah. Because we're talking about 1980s, late 70s, 80s now. There is a ground, you know, it's near, it's garbage of, near garbage of time. So I think that's probably his devotion to the party.
59:39Yeah. And, but I think he might have been right in that, and then obviously the point is that he would have been right to say that, well, this is actually inherent in the communist regime. In Russia, when in the 80s, when they have glass and medicine in Paris, and they talk openly about the Goulac system, that is one of the main contributing factors than people say, well, how can a regime that allowed this to happen be allowed to exist anymore? How can this be a governing regime? And that does lead to the collapse. Yes, exactly, exactly. Exactly. Which was the one by the way, Mr. Cheese argument?
1:00:16I mean, because he was against the Gorbachev, against the Paris Storic Congress, and he's exactly that. The communist regime would collapse. That is, in today's terms, that is the wealth, the money, that associated with the power. In the book, you point out that Mao is acting in his self -interest and selfishly doing all these things. But it seems to me that a strong, if not motivation, at least enabling factor and organizing factor is definitely provided by the ideologies of communism and socialism, which sort of organize this whole society. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense to collectivize farms and to close down shops.
1:01:07And it also necessitates the purges because communism is a science. It has to work. And if it doesn't work, there must be internal capitalists, saboteurs who must be condemned, brought out and killed. Do you think that the communism and socialism are the heart of the issue here? I think some people undoubtedly think that way. But having researched Mao for 12 years, my conclusion about him was he was highly pragmatic. And the Communist ideology suited him. I mean, he joined the Communist Party, not because he was a passionate believer, but because it gave him a livelihood. I mean, he was asking to open a left -wing bookshop selling Communists and left -wing literature, and his life was changed.
1:02:03And before that, he was poverty -stricken. and then that started his life. But I mean, the few things about the ideology that you just mentioned, for example, the collectivization, it's highly conducive to mouse requirements, to mouse what Mao wanted, which was food. He wanted these food from the peasants. If they had been private farmers, they would farm their food first, and pay tax, so to speak, pay to them. And then it's far more difficult to control these hundreds of millions of peasants than to organize them into units, into communes. Then it's much better to control. I mean Mao said so himself, they are the, you know, they are, what it said, the great advantage of collectivization, the communes, is easier to control, BMW, Gwani.
1:03:13This was not just an ideology abstract ideology, but it's for what he wanted to get. Yeah, but then at least we can say the one of the problems with the ideology is that it attracts and is highly conducive to to Opportunity like Mao and Stalin and the Kim family, but so let's go back to the greatly forward and and to these communes These communes are really a little bit like to be a peasant is like chattel slavery Can you talk about the working conditions how hard they worked while not being given food? the punishments, tell us more about what the past in life was like. Well, I was working in the commune for several years in the culture of evolution in two places and our lives consisted mainly of work.
1:04:08I mean, there were fixed hours. You were given, you were allocated food and you know fuel and other things. depending on how many hours you worked. So your life is centered on work. I mean, everything in the commune controls everything. If you want to travel, go somewhere, you need the commune to give you a kind of a note, a kind of a passport, to allow you to travel. If you want to get married, you have to get permission from the commune. And during the famine, this is how Mao ensured that the peasants didn't rise up in arms, because the control from the commune. I mean, the reason thing, every now and then the regime would issue, they stiff orders to stop peasants fleeing their villages.
1:05:15I mean, if the peasants did manage to flee into the cities and the bag, for example, for some food, the communes were told to get them back. So the communes, is this thing we control, to control our entire lives? And of course, when I was in the communes, I was, again, in a privileged position because when we were sent down from the cities, we were guaranteed a certain food. I mean, it's too complicated, the details. But basically, the communes is the organization. It may be in some ideology, but in reality, it's how the party controls China's 500 million peasants. I mean, there were only, I think, some few tens of thousands of communes.
1:06:08I mean, imagine this highly concentrated organization. So people were no longer individual farmers, like what they were before the communist rule. And this is exactly also what happened in Russia. And when the famine happens, again, they're not allowed to leave Ukraine. They're forced, there's roadblocks, so their forces are starved there. So you have this really remarkable anecdote in the book about talking to these peasants about what life was like during the Great Leap Forward while you're working there. Because now there's no fuel left. All the trees are taken down. And at the time, so many of the list are, because they were all distracted by keeping the furnaces.
1:06:53We talk about the effort to double steal output and what catastrophes that caused. Well, basically Mao's ambition after he took power in China was to build a superpower to dominate the world. He needed to buy these machines, military industrial complexes, mainly from Russia and from Eastern Europe. But he didn't have the money to pay. China wasn't rich as today. So he exported the food. So he needed a lot of food. Whereas in China, traditionally, we didn't, we never produced enough food to feed the population. The empires banned food export and bought a lot of food into China. So traditionally China was a food importer for a few hundred years and Mao stopped that.
1:07:56So to start with, there was always a food problem throughout his rule. Now the great leap is basically to import vast quantities of technology and equipment of many from Russia. That's why it's called the Great Leap. He wanted to build industrialized whatever system. In a few years, to be fast, fast, fast, you know, that's what he said. I mean, that's why he's demand for food was vastly elevated, most demand for food. And this food had to come from the peasants. I mean, so he basically sees this food to export to Russia and the Eastern Europe, knowing his people would die of starvation. And there was a time when I kept saying seemingly philosophical, I mean, there is a good thing if we don't have death, you know, we, the Earth can't contain us.
1:09:08You know, these seemingly philosophical things were to take that face value by some academics. But what he really said these things to his officials, in order to harden their heart, when they went to seize the food from the peasants, seeing how pitiful their conditions were. And that's the origin of the famine. It's as simple as that, it's food export. I mean, Liu Xiaoqi, his number two and his main target in the culture of Lushin. It was thanks to a visit back to his old village that made up his mind to stop mouse policies because he went back to his village. His brother -in -law had died of starvation.
1:09:57His sister was on the edge of dying of starvation. He saw the villages saw the just heart -wraiting things and he opened the lid of a work, a saucepan, and he saw there was nothing, just water, a few drops of grain. He did a very unusual thing, and he bowed to the peasants and said, you know, I'm very sorry. And it was after this in 1961, he made up his mind to stop mouse policies, which he led to the culture of Russian and his tragic death. And then you also talk in the book about how these peasants, not only was all this grain being exported, which caused a starve, but they weren't even allowed to harvest the grain because they had to talk about the turning their own walks and their own stuff into iron and spending time doing that instead of farming.
1:11:00So Mao was partly defeated by his own ignorance about economy. I mean, because when you want to build a modern super industry, you needed steel. and still was the most important thing. And China's still producing capacities in the 1950s was very low. So he had this idea of making the whole population to make steel. I mean, it really is quite ridiculous, because I was a primary school, I was six years old, I was in the primary school. And I remember that my main occupation was somehow my contribution to steel, which is every day we walked on the street trying to find the little nails, the cogs, something to steal and to hand into our teachers, because there is a backyard furnace in our school, or the teachers had to feed things into the furnace.
1:12:09The furnace also had to be kept going 24 hours a day. It couldn't go off. To feed that furnace is consumed everything. In my village, we struggled every day to find a little fuel, fast forwarding to the 1960s. Because the mountains which used to be covered with grape trees have been laid bare for the fuel to feed the backyard furnaces. And the teachers were exhausted in my school. And so we were organized to babysit for them. When I was a child, it was just huge wasteful. Huge wasteful. I mean, because for all these efforts, this was 1958. Actually, most of what the Bantia Fernises produced were completely useless.
1:13:14So he died, Mao died, thinking of himself as a failure, because China was still poverty shaken at the time of his death, and he felt himself a failure, but he was partly sabotaged by his own ignorance about the economy. The other thing about Mao's ignorance was because food was so important and because sparrows eat food. So he ordered the whole population to kill sparrows. So as a child, I sat with other people in our courtyard, we beat the source fence to make a tremendous thing. So the sparrows will draw upon the ground, and so all these people will go and catch the sparrows. And it was just catastrophe, because it not only killed the sparrows, but many other birds, other birds as well.
1:14:22And of course the worms, the pests, insects, pests, they were, they flourished without their natural enemy. So it's the unbelievable situation that has consumed China for more than two decades. Just a complete lack of sense here. It would honestly be a joke if it obviously didn't know what to 40 million deaths. But the thing is, you know, in the West, I indirectly know somebody who was a steel magnet. It was a great steel producer. And he thought Mao's still banking out of furnaces were brilliant idea. I mean talking about people in the West, not just academics, but many other people completely irrational.
1:15:32And I think maybe in their eagerness to find an alternative to the Western capitalist democracy. Hmm. Say more about that. I know we did touch on that earlier when we were discussing, you know, why are people still defending Mao, but what motivated at the time, and even still now, what would people were so disillusioned with Western capitalism that they thought they would rather have Mao? I think there were a lot of people like that with a young generation. I mean, they grew up after the collapse of the Soviet empire. I mean, a lot of facts have come out. So people are no longer probably so starry -eyed and so wishful thinking about the communist regimes.
1:16:22But there was time in those years when communism seemed to be going strong in so many countries. There were a lot of wishful thinking westerners. As I said, they may be pursuing for an alternative to a society they have a lot of discontent with. I mean, so they so wanted for such a miracle to happen. And they believed in what they otherwise might have rejected as fantasy. Yeah. Speaking of which, tomorrow, I'm interviewing Neil Ferguson, who has written a volume one of his back of Kissinger and volume two, which will cover this period, will come out later, he's writing it right now. What should Kissinger have done differently?
1:17:18Should they not have tried to open up China? Under Mao? What should have been the policy of the United States at the time? China was not opened up by Kissinger and Nixon. I lived in China then. I knew after Nixon and Kissinger's visit in 1971 -72. China was not opened up. All the liberalization seemed relaxation after the Nixon's visit was mainly because of the collapse of Lim Beel. Mao's lost his arm with which he controlled the army. So I think to say Nixon and Kissinger opened up China is wrong. That's not the case. Kissinger, I think, Kinsh is a very, very smart person. I think he probably was too fascinated with power.
1:18:20I mean, Mao had the kind of power. He could turn the lives upside down of a quarter of a million of the world's population. I think he was very fascinated with Mao. I mean, he said nice things about Mao. And even after Mao died, you know, with the regime, was reviving Mao, there were a few people reviving Mao like the current Mr. Xi and his political rival, Mr. Bo, with whom Kissinger seemed to be very close. he attended these rallies to eulogize Mao, big rallies, and then lending his whatever status he had to the Chinese regime's effort to stick with Mao's legacy. I think that's unforgivable.
1:19:21That's one thing. And the other thing is China's opening up to the West. And And that happened only after Mao died. In 1976, and Deng Xiaoping came to power. I knew this very well because I was one of the first Chinese to be able to leave China. In 1978, I mean, to see, you know, that's the very beginning of the opening up. I think it's a good thing. China has grown, teaching Mao's economic lunacy and the ideology that has wrecked China. The Chinese people are leading a much better life today. All this could not have happened if the country had not opened up. And also, through all these contacts with the West, any attempt to go back to the Maoist time would be futile.
1:20:25Because people knew what the West was like. The people don't want to be isolated again, to lead a life of Maoist time. No matter how they may say they worship the Mao, how matter, no matter how they make pilgrimage to Mao's birthplace and so on. But deep down, I think nobody wants to go back. So I think that's a very good thing, this opening up. But of course, then it can't be made grow into a maness to the world. I mean, that's another matter. It's a challenge that the world needs to face now. But it's certainly not to make it's not certainly not to say China shouldn't. We shouldn't have the West shouldn't have a lot to open up.
1:21:24Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can't just dismiss a billion people coming out of poverty. Exactly. It's the best thing that's ever happened in history. Exactly. So let's go back to the cultural revolution. One thing that I find really interesting about eucominism, especially in China, is that need for the victims to then incriminate themselves to confess. Even Hitler wouldn't have the Jews and Auschwitz talk about renouncing their Semitic ways and I've been an enemy to Germany in World War I. Explain why it was important that the victims of these purges had to then talk about, oh, you know, I'm guilty, I'm complicit.
1:22:08Why couldn't they just be ostracized? I think Mao knows people's psychology very well. And I think he uses this as a weapon to break people. I mean, to humiliate them and to break them. I mean, so even his opponents then started to grow out about their own opposition. So I think that's the main thing. I mean, I tell you, it's not very nice. I mean, in China, when I lived in China, I wasn't denounced, but we all had to attend criticism and self -criticism meetings. I mean, it really stirs up some very basic discomfort
1:23:02and unsettling, upset feelings. If you have to criticize yourself, I mean, you know, not do it cynically because you have to win all days, it's not, you couldn't do it cynically because nobody has reason to understand the whole thing in order to be cynical. So you are starting with being quite sincere. I mean, so it's certainly breaks people. And also it makes people, it makes people turn people against each other because on people criticizing each other, you create a lot of animosities among the people, which is one reason why no opposition can get organized. I mean, people can't, don't dare to talk to each other in case they were denounced.
1:23:56I mean, in case they were, it's all, it's very psychological warfare against his own population, which is quite effective. So, meaning that it wasn't just a campaign against political opposition. It was literally every part of your life. Yes. I think in the book you talk about embracing your family is anti -mauis because it shows you're closer to your family than you are to Mao. Exactly. It's this warm feeling is just, I mean, I was concerned to criticize Thorfe because of my feelings for my family. And Deng Xiaoping, when he wrote to Mao about his son, the son you talked about who was crippled.
1:24:45He wrote to Mao to ask Mao to allow his son to join him so he could look after his son, his wife, who was so heartbroken seeing his son, she wanted to kill herself. Anyway, Dong had to preface his appeal with, I'm afraid, you know, I'm committing warm feeling is, But could you allow my song to join me to be locked after? Yeah, it's a device that really separates the society and making people against each other and being on guard against each other. Earlier you were talking about why can't people get together? Right. Because I mean, these are the persons at the next criticism or self -criticism meetings could well say.
1:25:42So and so had said this to me, and I hadn't reported to the party. Therefore, I'm guilty. And talk about the way in which it forced the good people to be immoral. You have these quota systems where, if you're in charge of a department or something, the mile says 5 % are rightist, 5 % are capitalist rotors. And so if you don't give 5 % of names who are capitalist, we're going to get denounced, then you must be a rightist yourself. Talk about how that aspect of the system. Well, I mean, the result is you are in a tremendous dilemma of either sacrificing your family and other people, which is another way of breaking these people.
1:26:30I mean, these are all his weapons, psychological weapons, to force people to do what he ordered them to do. Why was there such a big reservoir of support for communist ideas? and also the personality cult that formed around Mao in China. People give different explanations of the Emperor worship beforehand, let it this or peasant rice farming. What explains why China got taken over by this ideology? It's again not an ideology. Mao himself said in 1923, he didn't believe that the Chinese would go for communism. I mean he thought communism could only be brought to China by the Russian Red Army. And he was right.
1:27:31I mean in the earlier years, the Comintern, the Moscow's representatives to China and to other countries, and said it was China was a lot, last course. People didn't, last people, to go for communism. I mean, much easier in India, for example. So Mao was wise, because after the Second World War, the Russian army, Red Army invaded China and occupied the North and the North East of China, a large chunk of land that was more than the entire Eastern Europe. So with this land, starting the supported Mao to fight war against the Changkai Shik, I mean Mao of course was the main man who ensured his success because during the war against Japan, all his colleagues wanted to fight Japan.
1:28:43Mao was the only person who was against it and tried everything he could to take advantage of the war, which destroyed Chang Kai Xie's government, whereas Mao grew, the red grew during the war. Mao was very smart. This is one reason why Deng Xiaoping and a lot of other communist leaders were so totally devoted to Mao, because they realized if it were not for Mao, they would never have come to power. Right. By the way, what do you make of the analogies people make when they say what happened in the US and other countries a couple of years ago with the BLM movement? Of course, it's not a total compromise.
1:29:30Right. I mean, the culture of losing. I mean, I think maybe people just saw statues being toppled. I don't know what else. I mean, you know, a few things, superficial things. Because the culture of evolution was nothing like that. Nobody could, you know, you couldn't even comprehend the horror of the culture of evolution in the society, the fear, the destruction, I mean, you know, China is really totally destroyed. I mean, there was no antiquity in the private hands, you know, wiped out, taken by the regime. It's nothing like that. For ten years, there were no books, no cinemas, no theatres. My mother was in cinemas and theatres were turned into prisons and torture chambers.
1:30:25My mother was in prison in one. I knew how to get cold of one book. I mean, it was how difficult and how much, how impossible that was. And that was 10 years of the culture of evolution. It's nothing like what happened in the West. Hey, everybody. I hope you enjoyed that episode. As always, the most helpful thing you can do is to share the podcast. Then, to people you think might enjoy it, put it in Twitter, your group chats, etc. Just blitz the world. I appreciate your listening. I'll see you next time. Cheers.
From the publisher
A true honor to speak with Jung Chang.
She is the author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (sold 15+ million copies worldwide) and Mao: The Unknown Story.
We discuss:
- what it was like growing up during the Cultural Revolution as the daughter of a denounced official
- why the CCP continues to worship the biggest mass murderer in human history.
- how exactly Communist totalitarianism was able to subjugate a billion people
- why Chinese leaders like Xi and Deng who suffered from the Cultural Revolution don't condemn Mao
- how Mao starved and killed 40 million people during The Great Leap Forward in order to exchange food for Soviet weapons
Wild Swans is the most moving book I've ever read. It was a real privilege to speak with its author.
Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.
Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Growing up during Cultural Revolution
(00:15:58) - Could officials have overthrown Mao?
(00:34:09) - Great Leap Forward
(00:48:12) - Modern support of Mao
(01:03:24) - Life as peasant
(01:21:30) - Psychology of communist society
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