Mao: A Biography

495 Pages·1980·22.106 MB·English

by  Ross Terrill

MAO
B y the sam e author:
The China Difference (editor) (1979)
The Future of China: After Mao (1978)
Flowers on an Iron Tree (1975)
R. H. Tawney and His Times (1973)
800,000,000: The Real China (1972)
China and Ourselves (editor) (1970)
HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS
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1817
Copyright © 1980 by Ross Terrill. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of
m ao.
America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
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Ltd., and simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Harper & Row Ltd., London.
FIRST EDITION
Designed by Stephanie Winkler
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Terrill, Ross.
Mao: a biography.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Mao, Tse-tung, 1893-1976. 2. Heads of state—
China—Biography. I. Title.
DS778.M3T45 1980 951.05'092'4 (B] 79-1687
ISBN 0-06-014243-X (U.S.A. and Canada)
ISBN 0-06-337012-3 (except U.S.A. and Canada)
80 81 82 83 84 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to the flair for leadership
which is craved in some countries today and J L
m
to the impulse of ordinary people to be free from "
the mystifications of leadership.

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1. Prologue 1
2. Childhood (1893-1910) 4
3. Knowledge for What? (1910-1918) 18
.
4 Wider World in Peking and Shanghai (1918-1921) 37
.
5 Organizing (1921-1927) 59
6. Struggle (1927-1935) 92
7. A Grip on the Future (1935-1936) 122
8. Fighting Japan (1936-1945) 140
.
9 The Sage (1936-1945) 159
.
10 A Ripening Peach (1945-1949) 175
.
11 “We Shall Put Aside the Things We Know Well” (1949-1950)
12. Remolding (1951-1953) 212
.
13 Building (1953-1956) 224
.
14 Doubts (1956-1957) 241
.
15 Tinkering with the System (1958-1959) 260
.
16 Russia and Beyond (1958-1964) 278
.
17 Retreat (1961-1964) 289
.
18 The Furies of Utopia (1965-1969) 303
.
19 A Tall Thing Is Easy to Break (1969-1971) 332
.
20 Nixon (1972) 354
.
21 Fractured Vision (1973-1975) 366
22. An Arrow Near the End of Its Flight (1976) 400
.
23 Epilogue 424
Bibliographic Note 435
Reference Notes 438
Index 471

Acknowledgments
I am profoundly grateful to Robert Manning, editor of The Atlantic
Monthly, for suggesting that I write this book, and for many other reasons.
In the digging and checking, I was helped on particular points by Liang
Tsan-tang, and Huang Chin-hsing.
Drafts were executed (no pun intended) at the typewriter by Madge Sla-
vin, a long-time helper, Barbara Sindrigis, and Catherine Cornish.
Edward Friedman of the University of Wisconsin, Robert Oxnam of the
Asia Society, and Donald Klein of Tufts University, gave me sound advice
on aspects of the whole book.
Some of the work was done while I was a Research Fellow at the Austra­
lian National University, for which stay I am grateful to Vice-Chancellor
Anthony Low, Director Wang Gungwu, and Contemporary China Center
head Stephen Fitzgerald.
I have talked of their impressions of Mao with Eugenio Anguiano, Couve
de Murville, Stephen Fitzgerald, Ganis Harsono, Huang Hua, Henry Kis­
singer, Kukrit Pramoj, Winston Lord, Etienne Manac’h, Arnold Mononutu,
Sunario, Gough Whitlam—and a number of others, many Chinese, some
East Europeans, some Asians, whose names I do not have permission to
acknowledge.
At Harper & Row, I have benefited from the care and vigor of Dolores
Simon, William Monroe, Lisa Morrill, and especially from Amy BonofFs
blend of effervescence and clear-eyed rationality.
On the path of my friendship with Simon Michael Bessie, the publication
of this book is, I think, a special step.