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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, April 18, 2011

When teaching about China’s Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), my Chinese history professor would remind students that history is not necessarily written by the victors but rather is written by those with the ability to transcribe and communicate their experiences, namely the educated.  A comparison of our knowledge of China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), a campaign largely against the Communist China’s remaining vestiges of wealth and educational elitism, with our knowledge about the Great Leap Forward proves his point.  A simple search on Amazon reveals 20 memoirs, just in English, about the Cultural Revolution.  The number of memoirs on the Great Leap Forward in English?  Zero.  We don’t even know how many people died as a result of one of the worst famines in modern human history (the traditional estimate is 30 million but many believe this is too low).

But Frank Dikötter, in his new book Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962, seeks to enlighten us on this horrifying period in Chinese history, or as he puts it in his opening sentence when “China descended into hell.”  With access to recently published provincial archives from the time period, Dikötter shows a China when all semblance of a rule of law vanished and society returned to a Hobbesian state of nature.

Dikötter goes deeper than just explaining the misery; instead he seeks to refute many common-held beliefs regarding the Great Leap Forward and hold the Chinese Communist Party, in particular Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, directly responsible for the tens of millions of peasants who unnecessarily perished.  For Dikötter the Great Leap Forward is not a famine but rather a genocide on par with the Holocaust and Stalin’s gulags.

Parts one and two of the book – which are perhaps the most interesting – convincingly argues that the highest echelons of power knew exactly what was happening on the ground during the Great Leap Forward and largely didn’t care.  For the leadership, proving to the rest of the world that China had already made the successful “great leap” to an industrialized, rich, Utopian communist society became paramount, even at the expense of Chinese lives.  Mao’s Great Leap Forward began with the complete collectivization of farms, village duties, factories, and most of society.  Dikköter shows that although some in the leadership, most notably Peng Dehui, criticized the rapid drive to collectivization as early as 1959, others like Zhou Enlai who was desperate to return to Mao’s good graces vigorously supported the Great Leap Forward, even with its half-baked ideas of digging crops deeper, smelting steel in backyard furnaces, and building useless irrigation projects that took farmers away from farming the land.

For Dikötter, the leadership’s stupidity was augmented by its arrogance.  To prove to the world that China had

French Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson visited China during the start of the Great Leap Forward (1958) for Life Magazine. Here is a backyard furnance.

successfully made the transition to communism, Mao didn’t just pressure local leaders to meet agricultural and industrial targets, but to surpass them.  The excess grain and goods were sold, below market value even, abroad.  But in reality, as Dikötter makes clear, there was no excess grain – local cadres lied about the numbers, causing the central government to take what was viewed as excess, but which was largely the sum total of all that a particular village produced.

Dikötter disproves the notion that the central leadership was unaware of the mass starvation.  Instead, Dikötter portrays a leadership that made a choice: instead of returning the grain that it knew would keep people alive, the leadership, at the behest of Zhou Enlai, needlessly sought to pay off China’s international debts through grain’s export.  What is perhaps one of the more shocking aspects of the book, Dikötter goes on to explain that although most of China’s treaties provided 18 years for China to repay its debt, the leadership was intent on paying off all debt by 1965.  Because China did not have cash or bullion, the only commodity it could use to pay off its debt in only 5 years was grain.  For Mao, the choice was simple – “when there is not enough to eat people starve to death.  It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill”  – the image of China that Mao wanted to portray to the rest of the world trumped any local needs.

Mao’s Great Famine, with access to the provincial archives, focuses on the systems in place that allowed the famine to continue as well as the callousness of China’s leadership.  At times, one is left wondering what vestiges of the Great Leap Forward still remain; what is not unique to the time period but instead applicable to the modern-day CCP?  Today, the Chinese government still maintains targets for local cadres, and local officials are desperate to meet these targets, even at the expense of the law.  Prof. Carl Minzner has analyzed the current “cadre responsibility system” especially in terms of forced abortions to meet local one-child policy targets.  See Carl Minzner, Riots and Cover-Ups: Counterproductive Control of Local Agents in China (November 9, 2009). University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, Vol. 31, 2009; Washington U. School of Law Working Paper No. 09-11-01. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1502943.

Dikötter also describes the increasing politicization of the legal system, or what was left of it after the Ministry of Justice was disbanded in 1959.  “Every one of our party resolutions is a law.  When we have a conference it becomes the law….The great majority of rules and regulations are drafted by the judicial administration.  We should not rely on these….”  Epitomizing this politicalization of the legal system, Dikötter points to the creation of re-education through labor (laojiao), an extra-judicial proceeding where prisoners could be held indefinitely.  Interestingly, China today, even on its alleged quest for a rule of law, has maintained re-education through labor and has largely kept it an extra-judicial, politicized process.

Cartier-Bresson photographs children paving the road after school.

Dikötter’s book is a necessary read to understand the misery that the Chinese people, especially in the rural areas, suffered during the Great Leap Forward.  Its description of the idiocy of the central leadership in caring more about China’s image abroad than the suffering of its own people makes Mao’s Great Famine an important read, especially parts one and two, in any Chinese history class.  But the book itself isn’t a particularly enjoyable read; certainly not a good subway ride book.  The story of the Great Leap Forward is not told in a lineal way; instead, Dikötter breaks up the story by topics, making it difficult to follow the progression of certain events.  Additionally, Dikötter has a large amount of data to share which is impressive indeed.  But at times the constant recitation of numbers is overwhelming and largely causes the reader’s eyes to glaze over.  Dikötter would have done better to add more charts to the book to reflect these numbers.

Finally, Dikötter cites often to two books about Mao Zedong – The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoirs of Mao’s Personal Physician by Li Zhisui and Mao Zedong by Jung Chang and John Halliday.  The veracity of these books, particularly the latter, has been called into question by some academics.  Dikötter’s reliance on these books, particularly when it comes to quoting Mao, is slightly problematic.

But this is a small issue in what is otherwise an important addition to the understanding of the Great Leap Forward and today’s China.  As Dikötter notes throughout the book, the publication of the provincial archives is only the beginning; we will only know the truth when Beijing finally releases the central government’s archives from the time period.  Dikötter implies that this is an inevitably, but given the current political environment, we will likely be waiting a long time.

Rating:

Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962, by Frank Dikötter (Walker & Company 2010), 448 pages.
 

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, August 22, 2010

Mao’s Last Dancer tells the true story of ballet dancer Li Cunxin’s defection to the United States in 1981.  The film is fairly average, not particularly well-acted (aside from Bruce Greenwood who plays the complex character of Houston Ballet choreographer Ben Stevenson and does a superb job) and at times way too dramatic.  Joan Chen makes an appearance as a poor Chinese peasant, raising seven sons in the stark mountainous countryside of Shangdong province, and of course, looks as beautiful as ever.

But the movie is not a complete wash out in that it takes a snapshot of a very important time in U.S.-China relations and tells the story of a tense 21-hour period in this new-found relationship.

The film opens in Li’s impoverished home village outside of Qingdao, Shangdong Province.  It is 1972, the height of China’s Cultural Revolution, socialist rhetoric is running high and Li is 11 years old.  When Party officials visit his mud-walled school, Li is selected for a competition in which the winning students will be sent to Beijing to study.  It’s not until the next day, when Li is asked to do various tumbles, twists, and handstands that his family finally realizes he has being selected to attend the Beijing Dance Academy.  The director, Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy), does a great job of distinguishing the feelings of the two generations – Li’s parents want him to go to Beijing because they know that this will offer their son a better life; Li goes because he feels a sincere sense of obligation to his motherland.  And that is what is great about this movie – in a very nuanced way it shows the sincerity of the young people’s belief in the teachings of the Cultural Revolution.  Li was born on the eve of the Cultural Revolution and his whole life he has been indoctrinated with its teachings and has come to believe them.  No other movie I have seen about the Cultural Revolution has been able to effectively capture this subtle fact.

Fast-forward nine years (note: plot spoiler!) and Li is a star.  At least in China.  He performs twice for Chairman Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, and when Ben Stevenson arrives as part of the various “good will” cultural tours immediately after China and the U.S. normalized relations, Li is the only dancer he considers talented.  As a result, Stevenson invites Li to study in Houston as an exchange student for six weeks in the summer of 1981.

Kyle MacLachlan in Mao's Last Dancer

Ensues are various skits about Li adjusting to American life – the usual “look how different America is from China”, “look at the extravagant Americans” scenes.  But eventually Li becomes a star, performing the lead role in one of the Houston Ballet Company’s premier summer events.  Li also begins dating one of the American ballerinas.  Needless to say, Li doesn’t want to go back when his time has come but because the Chinese government fears that Li is getting too soft, does not allow him to extend his visa.

Li speaks to a lawyer (played very well by former Twin Peaks star Kyle MacLachlan) about his options, and (note: plot spoiler!) rushes into a hasty marriage to his American girlfriend.  When he goes to tell the Chinese consulate, he is kidnapped and held in the consulate for 21 hours. With the help of his attorney and the Department of State, Li is eventually freed but informed that he has been stripped of his Chinese citizenship and will not be permitted to ever return to China.

And this is where the movie gets weak.  We are never told what propels Li to choose America over his family.  How was he able to so easily break with the Communist rhetoric that he had learned his whole life (when he first shows up to America, he is constantly wearing his Mao pin)?  Aside from having sex with his girlfriend, we never see Li getting close with anyone in America.  How did he leave his whole family?  Was it just his youth?  There is so much here that the director could have easily used to better explain Li’s choice.  Instead, it seems to be a mechanical decision and on some level plays on the Western bias of “well of course he would want to live in the West.”  It wasn’t until I got home, researched Li Cunxin and read excerpts from his autobiography that I learned that his rejection of the Communist teachings was actually an important part of his decision.

The real Li Cunxin with his wife and two daughters. All live in Australia.

But even in light of that, being reminded of the relationship between China and the U.S. soon after normalization in 1979, is an important thing, especially for younger China watchers.  China did not really enter my orbit until the early 1990s.  And by then, it was a very different China.  Seeing a China just entering its Reform & Opening period, and watching the U.S. and China (note: plot spoiler!) coordinate efforts to reunite Li with his parents at one of his performance (note, melodrama runs high in this scene) reminds us of a time when symbolic good-will gestures between the U.S. and China helped move a relationship forward.  How times have changed.

For the historical value, for some of the nuanced scenes of political indoctrination, Bruce Greenwood’s performance, and for the scenes filmed in China, it is worth watching.  But wait till it comes out on DVD.

Rating:

This movie is now available on DVD: Mao’s Last Dancer