Mao and the Chinese Revolution

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33189, 31 March 1973, Page 10

Mao and the Chinese Revolution

The Morning Deluge. Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Revolution. By Han Suyin. Jonathan Cape. 598 pp. and Index. “The name of Mao Tse-tung has become in the last 20 years a household word, a word known throughout the world.” So writes Han Suyin at the end of this first volume of her history of the Chinese Revolution. It may be true enough that there are few people who have not heard the name, but it is also true that there are few who know more than some meagre facts about this extraordinary man and his astonishing achievements. Since most of the Western World has, at last, stopped pretending that mainland China, its eight hundred million inhabitants and its Communist leaders do not exist, now would seem to be a good time to improve our understanding of that country. The way in which one of the poorest, most divided and oppressed nations in the world became one of the most powerful, was essenttially due to the steadfast, large vision of one man and is probably the major phenomenon of the twentieth century. There are few authors better qualified to attempt an explanation of this phenomenon, to present the true facts, and a consistent interpretation of them, than Han Suyin. She is herself half Chinese, has a deep understanding of the Chinese people, is friends with a number of their present leaders, has the patience for exhaustive research, and the intelligence to present it in a readable form. She has indeed spent 10 years preparing this volume; much of that time in China, using sources unavailable in the West and personally interviewing people involved in the Revolution, some of them survivors of the Long March. This provides a solid foundation on which the author builds with the literary skill so evident in her three volume

autobiography which provided a vivid, authentic account of life in China. One critic wrote of it, “It is more than a personal history but is vastly illuminating for the whole history of China”. The statement holds true also of this biography of Mao Tse-tung. At the beginning of this first volume of Mao’s life, Han Suyin quotes Haile Selassie’s remark “The life of Chairman Mao is in essence the history of new China” and she has interwoven smoothly biography and the wider history of the Chinese Revolution. The book covers the years from Mao’s birth in 1893 to the end of the Korean War in 1953. Han Suyin states that “The Morning Deluge” (and volume II which deals with the last twenty years of development in China) are not simply the biography of a single hero. Her aim was to give through an account of Mao’s life and his development as a thinker the story of the Revolution. That she does this is undeniable but it is undeniable too that her book reveals Mao as the genius who by combining a wide vision and a grasp of practical realities, dominated the course of the Revolution. The cliche that the hour produces the man has never been more clearly vindicated. Particularly in the chapters on the first Red Base at Chingkangshan, on the Long March and on the years in Yenan, Han Suyin shows the “symbiosis between a man's life and the Revolution to which he has given his life”. She also shows a leader capable of inspiring a band of illiterate peasants to heroic endeavour, a scholar working ceaselessly to formulate the ideas he would later put so efficiently into practice and a man of unexpected warmth, humour and compassion. There are many moving passages from interviews Han Suyin had with those who marched, fought, and worked with Mao during the long years of struggle and their genuine love for the man is as evident as their admiration for the leader.

The author does not ignore the other great figures of the Revolution, and pays particular attention to Chou En-lai, but she sees Mao as the embodiment of the needs and hopes of his nation. “The Morning Deluge” is, she freely admits, pro Mao Tse-tung, but apart from a brief panegyric in rhe prologue she refrains from over eulogizing and allows the man and his achievements to speak for themselves. Han Suyin has produced an epic book, enormous in scope, beautifully written and essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand China today.