Homo sanguinarius
A major new biography-more than a decade in the making-portrays Mao as having been even more ruthless and bloody than was previously believed
IN HIS recent book on Mao Zedong, Philip Short suggested that for all the suffering Mao inflicted on China (“the deaths of more of his own people than any other leader in history”), he was never as personally culpable as Stalin and Hitler. A new study, by Jung Chang and her husband Jon Halliday, reaches a different conclusion: Mao, they insist, was a megalomaniac of unremitting evil. Mr Short says that, apart from one period in the 1930s, Mao was not directly involved in executing opponents. The new book insists that not only did Mao arrange their deaths himself, he delighted in having them die in singularly unpleasant ways.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Homo sanguinarius”
From the May 28th 2005 edition
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