MCLC: Death of Mao review

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Death of Mao review
***********************************************************

Source: Taipei Times (1/31/12):
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2012/01/31/2003524293

Book review: The Death of Mao: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Birth of
the New China, 
by James Palmer
Review by Rana Mitter

==========================================
The Death of Mao: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Birth of the New China,
by James Palmer. 
288 pages. Faber
=========================================

On 12 May 2008, a devastating earthquake ripped apart Wenchuan county in
Sichuan province, southwest China. Military and civilian rescuers arrived
swiftly at the scene, saving countless lives. Although more than 68,000
people died, the number of fatalities could have been much higher.

An indication of how much higher had been made clear on 28 July 1976, when
the nondescript mining city of Tangshan in northern China was hit by an
earthquake that measured 7.8 on the Richter scale and killed some 250,000
people. At the time, many Chinese regarded the disaster as a portent of
great change. Already that year two major Chinese leaders, premier Zhou
Enlai (周恩來) and senior marshal Zhu De (朱德), had died. And just two
months 
later, on Sept. 9, Mao Zedong (毛澤東), the man who had led China for more
than quarter of a century, himself went to meet his maker — Marx, of
course.

James Palmer’s book weaves together these two narratives of natural
disaster and elite political intrigue to provide a lucid account of one of
the eeriest moments in modern Chinese history. Palmer takes us inside
Zhongnanhai, the party complex formerly inhabited by the emperors in the
heart of Beijing, and brings to life the personalities jockeying for power
as Mao lay dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. On the left, the Cultural
Revolution group radicals were led by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing (江青), who once
declared “Sex is engaging in the first rounds, but what really sustains
attention in the long run is power.”

The Chinese (and Western) prejudice against powerful women has tended to
give Jiang a uniquely demonic quality, and Palmer does well to remind
readers of the role of figures such as the venal and overpromoted Wang
Hongwen (王洪文) who whiled away the time during Mao’s deathwatch by riding
his motorbike and watching imported Hong Kong movies (although not
simultaneously). On the right, the dying Zhou, stricken with cancer,
sought to promote Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), whose economic reforms he thought
essential to rescue China from the inward-looking xenophobia of the
Cultural Revolution. Yet this was not a melodrama of evil and good, or
even radicalism versus reform. Even Zhou had plenty of blood on his hands,
voting for all Mao’s decisions to deepen the Cultural Revolution; in
Palmer’s telling phrase, he “saved more monuments than people.”

Just a few hundred kilometers away from the chairman’s deathbed, thousands
of ordinary Chinese were about to meet a sudden and much more horrific
end. The earthquake hit Tangshan with the force of 400 Hiroshima-sized
atomic bombs, and its effect was felt as far afield as Beijing. Yet the
help that arrived was patchy and almost all concentrated on the city,
where the economically vital industrial equipment was located, rather than
the rural areas. There were many heroic tales of people rescuing each
other. There were also numerous cases of rape and looting. Palmer has
interviewed survivors of the earthquake, some of whom had never before had
a chance to tell their stories of struggling to survive in a city whose
streets were lined with corpses and where help seemed very far off. One
theme emerges clearly: the state was distracted by the crisis of
succession and unable to deal with a more immediate and unexpected shock.

Palmer’s account is written in enviably elegant prose. The narrative never
flags and its judgments are humane and nuanced. The book argues that 1976
marks a moment of transition; after Mao’s death, a swift series of
internal coups and arrests brought the Gang of Four low and set the stage
for Deng to take power within two years of Mao’s death. The concentration
on human stories means, however, that some of the factors that complicate
the transition between the Rultural Revolution and the China of Deng are
underplayed. We tend now to think of the era since Mao’s death as the
emergence of China into a capitalist world (in which Beijing has become
one of the most skilled players). But during the first decade of reform,
immediately post-Mao, the aim of Deng and his faction was to create a more
market-oriented socialism in a world where they would engage with the USSR
as well as the US. In addition, important legal and economic reforms had
already begun in the early 1970s, along with the opening to the US. The
death of Mao was a moment when China sought to rethink the Cold War,
rather than escape it.

Yet the significance of this book is reflected in the fact that a book
entitled The Death of Deng would hardly have the same impact. Mao was the
last Chinese leader whose death would unleash a personalized factional
battle that could end in violence. Last year, Hong Kong news sources
wrongly reported the death of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民).
The moment was embarrassing but not politically relevant. Yet just four
decades ago, leaders did not retire and die peacefully. Former president
Liu Shaoqi (劉少奇) died as a prisoner in agony from medical mistreatment in
a basement in 1969. Mao himself hung on as chairman to the last possible
moment. Deng’s achievement after Mao’s death was to use his own force of
personality to create a regular changeover of distinctly uncharismatic
leaders.

Palmer ends with a reflection on the Sichuan earthquake of 2008. There,
effective rescuers arrived within hours, unlike in Tangshan. But the
aftermath of 2008 has been just as murky as in 1976. Locals who have tried
to investigate official corruption that might have allowed substandard
construction that caused buildings to collapse have been arrested and
intimidated. The artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未), who has spoken out on behalf of
the earthquake victims, has been subjected to a (still ongoing)
cat-and-mouse strategy by the authorities. This account of the links
between natural disaster and elite politics in China is a fine work of
history. But its real relevance may be that it shows how much has changed
in China, and yet how little, since 1976.