The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957

The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957 by Frank Dikotter

This book is part one of a chronological trilogy, yet I believe the second book of the trilogy was written prior to this one. The three books in this series cover Mao Zedong’s rapacious destruction and rule over Communist China. The author is very good at telling a narrative, and this book is very well written and easy to understand. I confess, however, that I felt this book was less than stellar.  The author simply has the ratio incorrect concerning the focus when telling this historical account.

There’s very little politics or focus on the country’s leadership in this book. We rarely read about Mao’s interaction with other global leaders, nor within the factions of broken China.  We don’t read much about the “why”, yet this book mainly focuses on the “what”.  “What” in this case is the result of Mao’s brutal insurgency and quest to propel Communist China into greatness. The methods and results weren’t pretty, and this book seems to be about 85% of anecdotes of people and tribes throughout China and how they suffered under Mao’s tyranny. We read about such incidents in horrid, explicit detail.  I felt it was too much.  Like Stalin’s despotic rule over Russia in the 1930’s, Mao seems to want to outdo his fellow communist neighbor.  This is a very tough, nauseating read. No human being should be subjected to the tortures inflicted by Mao and his cronies, let alone several million.

I’m not sure why Frank Dikotter chooses to place so much focus on the multitude of atrocities. Again, it’s fine to talk about “why” Mao felt this was necessary. History shows us the Mao felt he needed to “destroy” before he could “create”, and destroy he does. Yet we don’t really get too much of the reasoning here.  Perhaps the goal of the author is to ensure that his readers never forget the massacres that happened during Mao’s reign.

It’s almost blasphemous to admit, but seventy years after Mao came into power, one might make the argument that many of his initiatives actually produced favorable results. China has rebounded its economy in ways that no one could have ever predicted, and many give Mao a degree of credit since his killings and purging, while unforgivable, did help set China on the right track.  Perhaps that’s the motivation behind this (and the other two) works of the author. Maybe Dikotter’s aim is to make a case that, whereas China may be prospering economics-wise, the price that was paid was simply too great in terms of loss of human lives and perpetual suffering.

The few times when we’re NOT reading about torture after torture of ordinary citizens, this book really excels.  It was rewarding to read, for example, about China’s entrance into the Korean conflict in 1950 from a Chinese perspective. I also learned for the first time about Mao’s Hundred Flowers Campaign, where he initially seemed to be repenting of his actions after his desecration of China. He appeared to briefly allow dissidents to express their concerns of his actions.  As soon as enough had spoken up, however, Mao quickly turned on them all and killed or imprisoned those who thought they were safely expressing their opinions and concerns.

So had the author switched his focus - meaning focus more about more of the events and the reasons behind them as opposed to the massive slaughter and torture of the everyday people, I would have enjoyed this book more.  I learned a lot, but it was simply a tad too much to stomach.