Brainwashed Chinese?

[Jeremy]

I was reading the comments on this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90pA_qaVAuQ) and realized how brainwashed some people are. The Chinese posting there kept praising Mao and said that there was no proof that he killed 70 million people. Some of them were furious at these "westerner remarks" and dared someone to go to Beijing and say that.

edit - examples:

"chairman Mao is in the crystal coffin protecting chinese people ,blessing china .how selfless and great our respected chairman Mao is ! "

"i cried what a great man"

"great man compared with USA GARBAGE "

"Greatness personified. Scared the shit out of the US running dogs! "

"i'm a chinese too My father adore Mao Zedong but I like Deng Xiaoping more "

"rest in peace mao you are truely a great leader.rip "

"Mao is great anyway though he's not 100% perfect.i dunno exactly why there are so many westerners hating him.Mao is great in almost everyone's heart in our CHINA!!!!!"

"Notice in this video, everyone was smiling and happy when he/she saw Chairman Mao. You can't fake this type of feeling. Chairman Mao was loved by all Chinese at that time and I belive he is the greatest Chinese in the 20th century. (Deng xiaoping is the second one)"

"Glory to the comrade Mao Zedong! Theacher of the proletariat of all county! "

(response to someone saying he killed people) "You know nothing about china and Mao ZeDong !
So ~please ~please shut up your fucking smelly mouth!!!! "

(response to another Chinese person angry at western comments) "bendingnote, the West's professional hand-wringers are doing it because it makes them feel self-righteous, and because it's very chic right now to shout about Tibet. They haven't uttered a whimper for decades, and once the Olympic Games are over, we won't hear any more from them. If the Tibetans want the return of their vile theocracy and serfdom, they're welcome to it."

"Mao was a hero, who saved the nation.
What biddy is saying is a warped western view on a country that did well for itself without the exploitation of the west. "

"We love him forever! "

"Whether Mao was a good or bad leader,let mainland chinese who are living under him decide.Westerners who want to know the answer can try to shout " Mao is a murderer" in front of chinese in Beijing and see what will happen."



Westerner who knows the truth but doesn't care: "
Look, this guy went against a nationalist bastard who wanted also wanted control over China. If Mao didn't win the country, then China would've ended up just like Germany. I would choose socialism over nationalism any day.
" (of course some of the other above could be from non-Chinese as well. the ones with poor English are probably Chinese people

and yah... those are the only ones written in English. There are a lot in Chinese. I click someone's name that had +2 on his comment and his channel was worshiping Mao everywhere

A lot of the comments defending Mao have +3, +4, etc.

"MAO IS THE BEST! " +5

Wow...

[Brassmouth]

Mao is to the average Chinese as FDR is to the average American.

Statist brainwashing occurs everywhere. Are you really surprised?

[Jeremy]

But FDR didn't kill 70 million people. FDR was just a horrible president... Mao was the biggest mass-murderer in human history and these people are praising him still. I thought they had some common sense by now. And this country is about to be one of the leading economies? That's something to be scared about...

[mudhoney]

What are they taught in school?

Is there any sort of formal refutation written against the claims of Mao's deadly reign? Seems like the only counter argument they are using is that you will get murdered if you claim a Chinese dictator murdered people.

[dannno]

Is there any sort of formal refutation written against the claims of Mao's deadly reign?

No solid refutation I could find, but here is some decent revisionism:

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/lofiversion/index.php/t28106.html



Hello. I am very interested in the period of Mao's rule in China, and wrote this assessment of how much responsibility he must bear for the awful death toll of this 27 year period. Its quite long [apologies] but any feedback/comments/discussion would be great.

An Exploration of the Loss of Civilian Lives in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1976

Preface

The human cost of Mao’s period in power in China is shocking- it is hard to imagine how such widespread suffering could happen only fifty years ago, after nations had fought for freedom in the two World Wars. This short study is not a vindication of Mao, but an effort to understand why he allowed such loss of life to take place and what drove his decisions. Hopefully, through such an exploration, the catastrophic nature of this part of Chinese history for humanity will never be allowed to repeat itself in the future.


***

In 1949, Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party won the civil war against Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist Kuomintang Party, signalling the dawn of a new era in Chinese history. The victory in 1949 marked a new era of revolutionary political and economic developments in China. Unfortunately, the story of 1949 to 1976 is tainted by the human cost of Mao’s policies. Historians are in common agreement that 70 to 90 million Chinese died during this 27 year period- as a useful comparison, an estimated 30 million perished under Stalin in Russia and up to 10 million people suffered in Hitler’s Germany. Right the way from 1949 to 1976, Mao headed up the new Communist government, as party Chairman for the entire period and as head of state until the end of the 1950s. He always held a vice-like grip on the political system of China and enjoyed a huge personal following in the CCP and across China as a whole. As a result of these things and more (how Mao kept control is not of central relevance here), there can be little doubt that Mao was the driving force behind the major economic and political policy decisions made by the government of China in this period of so much suffering and human loss of life. Quite understandably therefore, many hold a view of Chairman Mao as a cruel and vicious tyrant whose lack of respect for humanity meant that he oversaw enormous and unnecessary death tolls with no restraining morals, and that he was unjustifiably prepared to sacrifice millions in order to meet his objectives. Although the author would never subscribe to the view that the deaths of so many people were acceptable, it is the intention of the writer to highlight the reasons why so many Chinese died under Mao and to show that 1) Mao cannot be held responsible for the entire death toll, and that 2) his policies were based on serious convictions rather than on a supposed little or no regard for humanity.

It would be best to split this analysis into two components, relating to Mao’s economic and political policies. Turning first to the realms of the economy, one point must be made perfectly clear- the China that the CCP inherited in 1949 was economically in tatters. The Nationalists had fled the mainland with the bulk of China’s gold reserves, the Japanese had destroyed the economic productivity of Manchuria (China’s main economic province with the main deposits of much of China’s raw materials) during its long occupation in the 1930s, and continuous warfare against both the Japanese occupying forces and the Nationalists had blighted China’s agricultural regions- economic output was disastrously low. Obviously, economic recovery was to be at the top of the Chairman’s agenda for the 1950s- programmes of land reform were introduced soon after the Communist’s took power, and the CCP embarked on its first Soviet-style ‘five year plan’ in 1953. Although these programmes had successes in the longer-term, they did not bear fruit in the short-term, meaning that famine was a big killer in the early years of the regime, but was more of an inevitability in the circumstances rather than a direct result of Mao’s early policies.

However, Mao recognised that for the longer-term economic prosperity of China, a more ambitious economic policy was required- this came in the form of the renowned ‘Great Leap Forward’ of 1958-1961. In the ‘Leap’, rural peasants were encouraged to switch from food production to the smelting of steel (pig iron) in backyard furnaces, in order to increase steel exports and the materials available for industrial development. It soon emerged that the steel produced was in the main useless due to its impure nature- at the same time, agricultural production further slipped to just 150 million tonnes in 1960 as peasants devoted the majority of their time to working the furnaces. Therefore, historians have seen the ‘Leap’ as a definite failure, in that it failed to meet any of its main objectives. The consequences of this failure were extreme- from 1959 to 1961, an estimated 38 million Chinese died as a result of the serious food shortages in the countryside- deaths that can be clearly and directly attributed to Mao’s policy of a so-called economic ‘Leap’.

However, it is often the case that the calamitous results of the Great Leap Forward have been interpreted to mean that these people died needlessly at the hands of Mao’s poorly planned economic venture, and that this did not concern the government. This was not the case. Intertwined with the debacle of the ‘Leap’ were problems on a scale that Mao could not have predicted- agricultural figures were falsified and bogus ‘show’ fields were created by cutting down all the harvest and placing it in one field. This (and more) meant that the government’s figures on food production were disastrously out of tune with actual food levels in China, and policy (such as the exporting of 8.22 million tonnes of grain to other countries during the famine years) was decided on these false figures. If Mao had been aware of the real nature of the food crisis in the country, government exporting and provision for famine might have been more sensible, and Mao may have even halted the ‘Leap’ in order to focus on agricultural production. Furthermore, when the regime realised the extent of the famine problems in 1961, grain imports rose from 0.06 million tonnes in 1960 to 5.80 million tonnes in 1961-a move that could not save 38 million people from dying from famine, but averted more deaths.

Furthermore, we must appreciate Mao’s reasoning behind the launching of the Great Leap Forward. China had lived under the cloud of foreign imperialism for decades. The Manchus were effectively foreigners who came to rule, the British, Russians and French had exploited China’s resources and people (especially after the First Opium War of 1839 to 1842) and, in Mao’s lifetime, Japanese forces had marched unchecked through vast swathes of Northern China, leaving a trail of economic exploitation and damage in their wake. As a result, Mao held a deep desire to see China dominant over its one-time imperial oppressors- this meant catching up and overtaking the Western economies in record time. The Great Leap Forward was Mao’s intended way of achieving this, for the long-term benefit of the Chinese people and Sinizised Communism- a benefit which was enough for him to overcome the risks associated with launching such an ambitious policy after only ten years of Communist government.

The Great Leap Forward was by far the most important economic reform programme of the Maoist era in China, and had an aftermath for much of the period up to 1976. It also represents the most significant example of an economic measure that led to huge loss of life, and sums up the economic side of this study well.

The other complementary part of Mao’s policy programme was in the area of political policy. Communist government was very much politically orientated and Mao was responsible for many different political movements and developments during his 27 years in power. In 1949, the newly-formed government instigated a process of land reform, where the land of local landlords was seized and re-distributed to the Chinese peasantry. Akin to this was the trial of these landowners in so-called ‘people’s tribunals’- trials which led to the execution of one million people. The way in which the majority were killed (a bullet in the back of the head) speaks of the barbaric nature of Chinese society and politics in the early years of Communist rule, yet whether these deaths can be laid at Mao’s door is questionable. It was after all the peasants in the tribunals who judged the guilt of the landed class and an appropriate sentence- Mao did not have the resources to oversee the execution of individuals on his personal whim. Instead, the peasant majorities that spoke in the tribunals have the responsibility for these early one million deaths.

Furthermore, it is important to consider another question: was Mao justified in introducing a policy that had such potential for barbaric loss of life? Morally the answer would be in a negative, but Mao recognised that the only way of achieving widespread and essential (both ideologically and practically speaking) land reform was through the elimination of the landed elements in rural society. The executions provided land to be the foundations of the Chinese commune and co-operative system, and also signified the serious and revolutionary intentions of the CCP. The landlords also represented China before the Communists took power- the eradication of this class in Chinese society marked a break with the past, so that its people could start afresh. Therefore, it is clear that this loss of life did not represent personal and needless barbarism on the part of Mao- instead, the policy was adopted for its value, both in the sense of helping China’s longer-term development and in translating into political currency for the government.

As commented on earlier on, 1959, 1960 and 1961 were the worst years for post-liberation China, with widespread famine in which millions perished. In their relatively recent biography of Chairman Mao, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday have been critical of the way in which Mao spent about $4.1 billion (at 1957 prices) on giving China ‘the bomb’ between 1962 and 1964- an amount which they calculate to have been worth about 300 calories per day to every single person in China for two years. Investing this money in famine relief rather than atomic weapons would have saved the life of every person who died in the Great Famine. This spending did not however occur just because Mao enjoyed death. As alluded to above, the government was unaware of the true extent of the famine problems even by 1961- figures were still falsified, and the system of feeding back information to Peking was far from streamlined- there was no way that Mao could hope to have a clear idea of the situation in every part of a country that numbered 11 000 counties. Furthermore, Mao’s decision to spend billions of dollars on achieving nuclear capability was made in the context of the world climate at the time. In the early 1960s, having atomic weapons was everything for all countries that did not have nuclear capabilities. The Russians and the Americans were continually vying to achieve global military supremacy, investing vast sums of money in project after project. In addition, the world had come several times close to nuclear war, most notably in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Quite understandably therefore, having similar weapon capabilities to the other superpowers was of paramount importance in Mao’s mind- he wanted China to be able to stand up to other countries (especially the USSR, which was causing problems on the Sino-Russian border at the time) rather than being walked over (as had happened in the 19th century), and China had to be able to hold its own in a nuclear war to ensure its survival- a nuclear war which, in 1962, was a real possibility (something which is not appreciated enough with the benefit of hindsight). Of course, few would regard nuclear weapons as a suitable trade for millions of lives, but it is definitely understandable why Mao decided to invest so much money in achieving nuclear capability quickly whilst at home the Chinese people starved. His decision was taken out of a wider concern for China’s position on the world stage, not because he held little concern for the lives of his fellow Chinese.

Finally, although not the only other time that Mao’s political decisions would cost lives, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976 was by far the most important example of this in the second half of Mao’s Chairmanship. By 1966, Mao thought that both party and people had become complacent with the victory of the Communist’s, and he genuinely feared for the future of the Chinese Revolution. Already, traces of capitalism had begun to seep back into government policy and Chinese society (e.g. the breakdown of the Commune system of in favour of more individualised farming), and Mao saw the return of the exploitative landlordism of the early part of the 20th century on the horizon. His answer to this problem was the GPCR. Essentially, with Mao’s concerns in mind, the GPCR was an ideologically inspired movement that was Mao’s attempt at re-invigorating the CCP and the general populace with an ideological inner compass. Exactly what the Chairman wanted to achieve by the GPCR is a point of historical controversy, but he launched the movement as a programme of re-education, encouraging students in particular to form into ‘Red Guard’ groups and study his ideology (‘Mao Zedong Thought’). The Red Guards were also tasked with the re-education of the population and rooting out ‘bad’ political and social elements in China. What followed was several years of anarchy and suffering. The Red Guards took their ‘rooting out’ duties seriously, and persecuted many people- some were actually ‘bad elements’, but many were innocent, often targeted for convenience or as a result of personal grudges (the best example being school teachers). As a result, over one million people committed suicide in the GPCR’s first year, rather than face the humiliating and shocking Red Guard denunciation rallies. After turning on ordinary civilians, the Red Guards turned on each other in what was effectively a civil war, with all groups proclaiming loyalty to Mao but hatred of each other. Many were killed in this struggle, and the involvement of the army in 1969 to resolve the conflict fanned the flames of strife, as Chinese fought Chinese, civilian fought military and young fought old. The situation mellowed after 1971 with the final disbandment of the Red Guard units but small-scale strife continued until Mao’s death in 1976 ended the GPCR. In these calamitous ten years, million died as a result of Mao’s political movement, and the death toll has been attributed to the Chairman- after all, wasn’t it his creation?

However, this is an over-simplification of a situation that sinologists still do not fully understand. It must be appreciated that events soon spiralled out of anyone’s control, even Mao’s. Red Guard activities soon went out of the remit of the regime to control. Units over-zealously went about their mission, and soon got caught up in the hype of the whole movement-power went to the heads of many of the students, with disastrous results. The one million suicides in the first year was because the Red Guards pursued innocent people with a vengeance and favoured cruelty over re-education, not because of Mao’s original policy. By the time the Red Guard groups started to turn on each other, the regime was unable to claw the movement back to its original principles. Charged by strength of feeling and reluctant to abandon their new-found purpose in life, the Red Guards ignored repeated directives from the centre to cease their activities, and the major decision by Mao to send in the army (which was the point at which the death rate ballooned) was one over which he had little choice- it was the army or face civil anarchy. There was no way in which Mao could anticipate the events of the GPCR when he launched the movement and very quickly after its start the regime lost the ability to direct its activities- the main factor in explaining why so many people were killed in the movement. Even after the army prevailed in 1971, this was only in the major cities and inner provinces of China. Localised difficulties which the regime could do little to prevent continued for another five years and just added to the death toll.

In conclusion, there is evidence to suggest that Mao has been given an unfairly bad press over the millions of deaths in China during his 27 years in power. Nothing can ever justify the deaths of so many people but, through the several policy examples discussed here, it has been shown that Mao’s policy decisions cannot be seen as simply him killing millions of people for no reason. Sometimes Mao was driven by a logic that put the ‘greater good’ above the adverse effects to the individual (e.g. his nuclear spending during the famine years), and sometimes he was not directly responsible for suffering. Rarely however, did Mao simply kill people because he could- he always had a purpose, and this purpose he could justify in the context of the time.