review of mao biography by ross terrill

Mao: A Biography by Ross Terrill; The Role of Ch'i in Mao Tse-tung's Leadership Style by LamLai SingReview by: Nick KnightThe China Quarterly, No. 139 (Sep., 1994), pp. 822-824Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/655159 .Accessed: 06/06/2014 06:34

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822 The China Quarterly in place. If The Man Who Stayed Behind is flecked with contradictions, the more remarkable fact is that after 16 years of torment Rittenberg could write such a fascinating work. He even offers an apt motto for his China career: "I wanted so hard to believe that I saw what I wanted to see" (p. 448). Idealism and fanaticism danced in tandem; how absorbing it is to observe the coupling!

Ross TERRILL

Mao: A Biography. By Ross TERRILL. [New York & London: Simon and Schuster, 1980, revised edition 1993. 524 pp. $16.00. ISBN 0-671- 79803-0.]

The Role of Ch'i in Mao Tse-tung's Leadership Style. By LAM LAI SING. [San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1993. 322 pp. ?39.95. ISBN 0-7734-2224-2.]

The centenary of Mao Zedong's birth in 1993 was celebrated in China by the publication of numerous books and articles about his life and thought. While it did not pass entirely unnoticed in the West, it received in comparison very little fanfare. The occasion was not lost, however, on the publishers of Ross Terrill's Mao: A Biography. Published first in 1980, the book has, according to its publishers, been "fully updated" for republication to coincide with the centenary. This is an ambitious claim, and unfortunately is not true. Terrill does utilize some new sources from China and elsewhere, but many previously unknown texts by Mao published during the 1980s, particularly his writings on philosophy, have been largely ignored; so too have most of the writings of the huge field of Mao studies in China.

This material may have been ignored because it points in a direction different from the one Terrill wants to take. In particular, the new material on the sources of Mao's philosophical thought suggests that he was far more influenced by orthodox Soviet Marxism during the 1930s than was previously realized; indeed, this is a conclusion which has been drawn by a number of prominent Chinese Mao scholars. However, throughout Mao: A Biography, Terrill insists that Mao's life is over- whelmingly to be understood by reference to Chinese tradition and the Chinese context, and that Marxism, if significant at all, was merely a foreign veneer overlaying the real substance of Mao's thought and actions. Terrill consequently provides the reader with such deep insights as "Mao seemed more traditionally Chinese than 28B [the Twenty-eight Bolsheviks], or Chiang [Kai-shek], or the leaders of the Democratic League ... He often wrote with a brush. He still liked to sink his mind into the archaic realm of Chinese historical novels" (p. 184). Elsewhere, Terrill suggests that with Mao's recognition of the importance of the peasants to the Chinese revolution, "Karl Marx sank into the rice paddies of Asia" (p. 104). The traditional concept of datong (great harmony), particularly as interpreted by Kang Youwei, is given more credence as an


Book Reviews 823

influence on Mao's socialist leanings than the ideas of Marx and Lenin. The image of Mao the Chinese is constantly impressed on the reader through frequent quotation from his poetry. It is a shame that Terrill could not have given equal space to theoretical texts by Mao which suggest the powerful influence of Marxism.

One of the problems with Mao: A Biography is the style in which it is written. Terrill peppers the reader with assertions which pass for facts, glued together by his imaginative and, in places, fanciful prose style. The book is full of throw-away lines which beg deeper and more extensive analysis. And I wonder too what readers not versed in modern Chinese history will make of Terrill's construction of Mao's life. Mao is placed at centre stage, with numerous other characters wandering on and off as required, usually with only the most perfunctory of explanations as to their identity and significance. There are also dubious factual assertions. For example, Terrill suggests, almost certainly incorrectly, that in 1938 Mao wrote a manual for military officers entitled Basic Tactics (p. 172). He also claims that the four volumes of Mao's Selected Works (what happened to the fifth?) include "all his main philosophic pieces" (p. 195); again, this is not the case, and if Terrill had genuinely "fully updated" his biography of Mao he would know it.

If Terrill's book leans heavily to the view that Mao's life is to be understood through the prism of China's culture, history and contemporary context, Lam Lai Sing's analysis of the origins and nature of Mao's leadership style goes even further by focusing entirely on China's political culture as a tool for understanding him. Indeed, Lam argues that Mao's approach to leadership drew almost exclusively on the concept of qi (ch'i) to be found in traditional Chinese poetry, novels, classics and proverbial sayings, and particularly in the writings of China's traditional political figures. Qi, the "spirit of the cosmos," is "a kind of conscious- ness, an internal human force expressed outwardly in terms of super- human phenomena"; it is represented in traditional Chinese writing as "hyperbole and astronomical power" (pp. 7-8). Consequently, when Mao made statements, common in his poetry, such as "Dare to command the sun and the moon to bring forth a new day," this was an instance of qi. Mao's writings are, according to Lam, replete with this exaggerated conception of his capacity to alter the universe according to his own prescriptions.

If Mao could acquire what he needed in terms of qi from traditional Chinese culture and philosophy, why should he have been interested in Marxism-Leninism? Lam suggests that Mao perceived in Marxism- Leninism a doctrine for "revolutionizing the earth," for it represented the "conscious magniloquent demand for a new world" (p. 109). In other words, Marxism-Leninism not only stimulated Mao's qi, it provided it with a focus; the target of Mao's "hyperbolic and astronomical power" thus became imperialism, feudalism and the capitalists. The same is true, according to Lam, of Mao's glorification of Chinese utopian movements, for these also suggested the possibility of dramatic transformation


824 The China Quarterly

through a "sweeping movement of history" (p. 105). Lam proceeds to trace Mao's qi in action through the various stages of China's revolution and socialist construction. Lam has no trouble identifying passages from the Mao texts which supposedly demonstrate his application of qi to the achievement of his earth-shattering goals, particularly the elimination of capitalism.

Lam's argument gives a new twist to the portrayal of Mao as a voluntarist and revolutionary utopian. This tired argument has conven- tionally been cast in terms of Mao's deviation from the "determinism" of Marxism: where Marx supposedly perceived the forces of production as the motive force in history, Mao emphasized the superstructure (political, ideological and military struggles, the human will) to force the pace of historical change. As unconvincing as this simplistic opposition has been, Lam's deep penetration into traditional China's political culture to seek the origins of Mao's political behaviour is even less convincing. Mao was Chinese, Marx was German, Lenin was Russian and Althusser was French: are their ideas only to be understood by reference to their location within a particular cultural context? My impression is that cultural relativism is much more pronounced in analysis of Mao than it is in Western analysis of European thinkers. This is not only inconsistent but unconvincing. It is clear that Chinese have adopted quite radically differently political and ideological stances during the course of this century. How is this to be explained if a cultural determinist perspective is invariably adopted? Not only is China's cultural tradition diverse, its influence has been modified and, in the case of many Chinese, diminished as a result of intellectual currents and political movements from abroad; individual Chinese have been influenced by and reacted against these influences in many different ways. Mao's thought and actions, like those of most humans, were the product of a very complex web of influences, and his response to them. Continual harping on his "Chineseness" (as though this is a palpable and unified entity which dictates a uniform cultural response) precludes the possibility of a sophisticated and bal- anced analysis of the major influences on Mao, one of which was undoubtedly Marxism. In 1936, Mao told Edgar Snow that "by the summer of 1920 I had become, in theory and to some extent in action, a Marxist, and from this time on I considered myself a Marxist." If the volumes by Terrill and Lam are anything to go by, Mao might just as well have saved his breath.

NICK KNIGHT

Deng Xiaoping and the Making of Modern China. By RICHARD EVANS. [London: Hamish Hamilton, 1993. 339 pp. ?20.00. ISBN 0-241- 13031-X.]

In a Nelsonian gesture, Deng Xiaoping once turned off his hearing aid at a Politburo meeting where the Gang of Four was savaging him. This is the kind of detail which enlivens what is otherwise a necessarily dull


Article Contentsp. 822p. 823p. 824

Issue Table of ContentsThe China Quarterly, No. 139 (Sep., 1994), pp. 597-902Front MatterIssues in China's Foreign RelationsAmerica's China Policy in the Age of the Finance Minister: Clinton Ends Linkage [pp. 597-621]Human Rights in Chinese Foreign Policy [pp. 622-643]

Focus on Rural to Urban MigrationThe Origins and Social Consequences of China's Hukou System [pp. 644-668]Rural to Urban Migration in the People's Republic of China [pp. 669-698]

State of the FieldThe Contemporary Study of Chinese Politics: An Introduction [pp. 699-703]Trends in the Study of Chinese Politics: State-Society Relations [pp. 704-713]Trends in the Study of Political Elites and Institutions in the PRC [pp. 714-730]Trends in the Study of Chinese Political Culture [pp. 731-740]

Concepts and MethodsSurvey Research in the Study of Contemporary China: Learning from Local Samples [pp. 741-765]

Research NoteTarget Zhou Enlai: The "Kashmir Princess" Incident of 1955 [pp. 766-782]

Review EssayReview: Dragons and Dungeons [pp. 783-793]Review: Thirty Years of Sino-British Relations: A Foreign Office View [pp. 794-799]

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Books Received (April-June 1994) [pp. 853-858]Quarterly Chronicle and Documentation [pp. 859-897]Back Matter [pp. 898-901]

review of mao biography by ross terrill

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