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Title: Hungry Ghosts : Mao's Secret Famine by Jasper Becker ISBN: 0-8050-5668-8 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 15 April, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.06 (18 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A brave look at Mao's malignant megalomania
Comment: Books like this are important since they set the standards for others to follow. No one - to my knowledge - has seriously tried to quantify the extent of the suffering brought on by the famine that began in the late 1950s. In Hungry Ghosts, author Japser Becker might not get his numbers absolutely right, but this is a highly engaging look at the downside of thuggish megalomania. I don't think I've ever read anything so morbid, yet so utterly fascinating.
The basic thrust is that China's communists repeated the mindless agricultural policies designed by their Soviet counterparts in the 1920s. Russia's communists destroyed learning, promoted ignorance and brought famine to the Ukraine. China, following in their footsteps, made exactly the same mistakes. Strangely enough, the result was exactly the same. Famine and over 30 million deaths.
What follows is the story of a country in the grip of mass delusion as moronic agricultural policies caused a collapse in crop production and an authoritarian government demanded ever higher taxes in the form of grain. Of course, communities attempted to please Mao by lying about the true level of grain production. Since they exaggerated, their grain tax quota was higher. When they couldn't pay their taxes, their food stocks were confiscated. Villagers then died, en masse. Anyone found with food was assumed to be counter-revolutionary and was either starved to death or executed in gruesome circumstances. The madness only ended when Mao's own family intervened. But only after tens of millions had perished.
Some reviewers - expecially those who grew up in a stable and judicial country like Hong Kong - seem to think that the murderous circus just north of the Shenzhen river is something to be applauded and anyone who thinks differently is out to get at China. How sad can you get? Four Stars.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Astonishing, Horrifying, Catastrophe...
Comment: It has often been said that, to understand China, you must know of its past. Here is a compelling treatment of a chapter in China's history that is almost a black comedy. Mao's Great Leap Forward is predicated upon such preposterous silliness that we chuckle at its absurdities (eg, the crops will improve with "deep planting" at up to 12 feet; steel can be made by all in back yard smelters, etc...). Yet...the consequences are so awful, that any thought of smiles is quickly erased.
Historians differ, but here was want and famine on a scale unprecedented in the 20th century. Perhaps as many as 30,000,000 died. Another reviewer scoffs at this number and says that it was "only" 10,000,000. Whatever the number, this is still an unthinkable tragedy, and one that happened in our lifetime. Like the Taiping Revolution that claimed as many as 22,000,000 lives (read "God's Chinese Son"), it left an indelible, but largely unknown mark on China - one that shapes the country today as it emerges as the only "other" super power.
Well written and fascinating.
Rating: 5
Summary: The greatest peacetime disaster of the 20th century
Comment: -----------------------------------------------------------
A horrifying and well-researched history of how Mao's "Great
Leap Forward" became the worst famine in history, killing
perhaps 30 million Chinese (1958 - 1960) -- it appears
unlikely an exact fatality figure will ever be known. Which
adds to the horror, I think, that millions of people, with hopes
and dreams like our own, could vanish without leaving
a trace, even a number, in the world outside their homes.
Not to mention uncounted millions of children whose lives
were blighted by brain-damage from malnutrition....
FWIW, Jasper concludes that Mao's Great Famine was more
omission than commission (in contrast to Stalin's): Mao's
absurd ideas of backyard industrialization, plus turning
loose the Red Guards chaos, ruined the harvests. Then
Communist Party officials simply denied the problem, and
concocted elaborate coverups -- even painting the tree
trunks to hide that the bark had been eaten by starving
people -- when Mao or senior officials were to visit famine
areas. And a smiling-peasants "Big Lie" for foreigners,
which worked for years.
It's a remarkable, and depressing, account. Highly recommended.
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Title: The Private Life of Chairman Mao by LI ZHI-SUI ISBN: 0679764437 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 02 April, 1996 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: The Chinese by Jasper Becker ISBN: 0195149408 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: The Search for Modern China by Jonathan D. Spence ISBN: 0393307808 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang, William C. Kirby ISBN: 0140277447 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: November, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Family by Li Fei-kan Pa Chin, Sidney Shapiro ISBN: 0881333735 Publisher: Waveland Press Pub. Date: 1989 List Price(USD): $8.50 |
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