Jung Chang (Wild Swans author) — Living through history's largest man-made famine

A true honor to speak with Jung Chang. She is the author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Swans-Jung-Chang-audiobook/dp/B006LF2GDM (sold 15+ million copies worldwide) and Mao: The Unknown Story https://www.amazon.com/Mao-Story-Jung-Chang/dp/0679746323. We discuss: - what it was like growing up during the Cultural Revolution as the daughter of a denounced official - why the CCP continues to worship the biggest mass murderer in human history. - how exactly Communist totalitarianism was able to subjugate a billion people - why Chinese leaders like Xi and Deng who suffered from the Cultural Revolution don't condemn Mao - how Mao starved and killed 40 million people during The Great Leap Forward in order to exchange food for Soviet weapons Wild Swans is the most moving book I've ever read. It was a real privilege to speak with its author. Watch on YouTube https://youtu.be/-VeZp2d7mDs. Listen on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jung-chang-living-through-cultural-revolution-and/id1516093381?i=1000636931465, Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/4XJRFIvfRetdzq3pffmMUL?si=FGzMVzV1QfSbZl522jD5_g, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/jung-chang. Follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Growing up during Cultural Revolution (00:15:58) - Could officials have overthrown Mao? (00:34:09) - Great Leap Forward (00:48:12) - Modern support of Mao (01:03:24) - Life as peasant (01:21:30) - Psychology of communist society This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkesh.com https://www.dwarkesh.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  My father spoke up against Mao's policies. He was arrested, tortured, driven insane. And my mother was under tremendous pressure to denounce my father. She refused. And my mother was made to kneel on broken glass. And she was paraded in the streets where children spat at her and threw stones at her. The desire to write never left me. So in the following years, when I was working as a peasant and as a barefoot doctor, as a steelworker and electrician, I was always writing in my head with an imaginary pen.

• 0:42Dwarkesh Patel?

  Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Hong Chang. Her first book, Wild Swans, has sold over 15 million copies worldwide. The US diplomat George Kennan described the Gulag Cargill Pelago. He said, "This is the greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever to be leveled in modern times." And when I read that quote, I realized that this is exactly how I describe your books, Wild Swans, obviously, but also your biography of Mao, titled Mao: The Unknown Story, both of which we'll talk about today. It is a true honor to speak with you.

• 1:17Speaker 00

  Thank you very much for having me.

• 1:19Dwarkesh Patel?

  So we will get it to Mao and his atrocities in a second. But let us begin by, would you mind laying the scene for us? What was it like? You grew up in China, under Mao. Let's begin there. What was it like as you started to grow up during this time?

• 1:35Speaker 00

  I was born in China, in Sichuan, in 1952. So I grew up under Mao. When I was a child, I led quite a privileged life because both my parents were communist officials. And we lived in this compound with, you know, servants, cooks, drivers. It was a very class-ridden society. And I grew up so much taking class and privilege for granted that when I first came to Britain, I thought Britain was wonderfully classless. And of course, my views were slightly modified over the years. And then...

• 2:22Speaker 00

  In 1966, when I was fourteen, Mao launched his Cultural Revolution, which was his great purge. And my father spoke up against Mao's policies. So as a result, he was arrested, tortured, driven insane. He was exiled to a camp and died tragically and prematurely. And my mother was under tremendous pressure to denounce my father. She refused. As a result, she went through over a hundred of these ghastly denunciation meetings,

• 3:03Speaker 00

  which were everyday features in China at the time. And basically, the victims were put on the stage and their arms were ferociously twisted to the back and their heads were pushed down. And they were kicked and beaten. And my mother was once made to new on broken glass. And she was paraded in the streets where children spat at her and threw stones at her. But she survived. And today, she still lives in Chengdu, aged ninety-two. My family was scattered and I was exiled to the edge of the Himalayas

• 3:48Speaker 00

  and worked as a peasant and then as a barefoot doctor, which was a doctor basically without any training. Because Mao had said, "The more books you read, the more stupid you become." So schools were closed, you know, books were burned. I mean, China was literally a cultural desert without books, cinemas, theatres, museums for ten years.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  Um, and then I became an electrician. And again, there was no training. So I had five electric shocks in one month. Um, and then in nineteen seventy three, um, partly, you know, after Nixon's visit to China. Um, I mean, uh, but more, more also because for the internal um political reasons. And universities began to reopen. And I was able to get into Sichuan University to learn English. Uh, but, you know, our teachers had never seen foreigners themselves.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  Because China had been closed to the outside world after the communists took power in nineteen forty nine. So our textbooks were written by these teachers, um, who'd never been abroad. I remember the first lesson was Long live Chairman Mao. And the second lesson was greetings. Um, because the Chinese in those years, when we bumped into each other and we said, "吃饭了吗？上哪儿去?" Which means, "Where are you going? Have you eaten?" So those were the English greetings I learned. So when I first came to London,

• 5:44Speaker 00

  I used to go around and ask people where they were going, whether they had eaten. Um, well, the only foreigners I had um spoken to were some sailors in a port in South China, where we as English language students were sent to practice our English. So, um, and that was, I was twenty three. Um, but, um, I mean, of course, we, we, we were at the port eagerly awaiting for our sailors. And we had no idea what must be on their minds. And how different this must be from their expectation of a port life.

• 6:30Speaker 00

  In nineteen seventy six, Mao died and China began to change. And in nineteen seventy eight, um, I, there was a um national exam to, to select the people to go abroad. For the first time under communist rule, going abroad was based on um on academic basis. And so I did very well at the exam, so I became one of the first fourteen people to come to Britain. And I, as far as I know, I was the first person to get out of Sichuan province.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  A province then of ninety million people to come and study in the West. So when I got my doctorate in linguistics at the University of York in nineteen eighty-two, um I became the first person from Communist China ever to get a doctorate from a British university. So, okay, so I was um in Britain and for ten years, I didn't want to think about the past. Um because it was too painful, and my, my father died, my grandmother who brought us up died.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  And there was too, you know, I just, I just wanted to spend time enjoying the West. Um, I had actually always wanted to be a writer. Um, when I was a child, I loved writing. Um, but when, when I was growing up under Mao, it was impossible um to dream of even become a writer. Because nearly all writers were condemned, you know, sent to the gulag, um driven to suicide, some were even executed. I mean, even writing for oneself was dangerous.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  Um, I wrote my first poem when I was sixteen, uh on the sixteenth birthday in nineteen seventy-eight. Uh, I was lying in bed polishing my poem when I heard the door banging. And some red guards had come to raid our flat. And if they had seen my poem, I would get into trouble and my family would get into trouble. So I had to quickly rush to the bathroom to tear up my poem and flush it down the toilet. And so that ended my first venture in writing. But the desire to write never left me.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  So in the following years, when I was working as a peasant and as a barefoot doctor, as a steelworker and electrician, and when I was spreading manure on the paddy fields and checking electricity supplies on top of the electricity poles, I was always writing in my head with an imaginary pen. But I couldn't write in China. When I came to Britain, I, for ten years, I didn't want to write. And then my mother came to stay with me in nineteen eighty-eight.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  And first time, she told me the stories of her life and stories of my grandmother. And then while I was listening to my mother, I thought I must write all this down. And then I realized how much I wanted to be a writer and how much I had always wanted to be a writer. And so, um, I, after my mother left, I transcribed the tapes she left for me, sixty hours of tape recordings. And then I wrote Wild Swans, which was published in nineteen ninety-one first. And I became a writer.

• 10:37Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yes, and I mean, saying you became a writer is understating it. The global impact of Wild Swans has been tremendous. And in fact, you know, a former guest of mine, Sarah Payne, recommended it to me and I read it. And it's the most moving book I've ever read. It's truly tremendous. Let me begin by asking what it was like growing up there in terms of the psychology of living in a totalitarian system. You mentioned in the book that until very late, you could not even bring yourself to question Mao, despite seeing the consequences of his policies and the cult of personality that was there. Tell me about the psychology of living in a system like that.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  Well, when I was growing up in China,

• 11:25Speaker 00

  you know, we were all subject to intense brainwashing and indoctrination. When we were children, Mao was, we were told, you know, Mao, sorry, Mao was like our god. And if we wanted to say what I say is true, we would say, "I swear to Chairman Mao." So Mao was, Mao had been given this godlike status.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  So, and also at the same time, we could see how dangerous it was to question Mao. You know, this, in China, there were these periodical political campaigns, and many people were victimized. And the biggest crime was to question Mao. And my father, in the Cultural Revolution, suffered tremendously. And it was also because he was questioning Mao. So when I wrote my poem when I was sixteen years old,

• 12:31Speaker 00

  I, I'd already started to doubt and to dread the society I was in. And we were always told, you know, socialist China was paradise on earth. And I, I thought on that day, actually, if this is paradise, what then is hell? Because my parents were away, being detained.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  My grandmother was weeping next door because she's heard, you know, these ghastly things that were being done to my mother. So I questioned the society, but...

• 13:14Speaker 00

  Mao never entered my mind, and he was beyond questioning. You know, this may be difficult for people to, to understand, maybe, I mean, in the West. Um, but in China, in those days, um, there were two most important things that enabled this brainwashing. One is the complete isolation of the society from the outside world, from alternative information and from any other information. Even parents never told the children, um, you know, things that were different from the party line

• 13:59Speaker 00

  because they were worried about the future of their children and they were worried that if children bled, it would be disastrous for the children as well as for the family. Um, so no alternative information. And the other is terror, this intense terror, um, which usually really scared people into suppressing any unorthodox thoughts. Um, so I was living in that kind of society and it took me a long time to question Mao.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  Um, since my birthday, sixteenth birthday thought in nineteen eighty, sixty-eight, um, for many years, I blamed what was happening in China to Madame Mao and to the so-called Gang of Four, which were basically assistants of Mao's. Um, but I never dared to question Mao. Um, and then I remember very well, nineteen seventy-six, I had learned a little English and a friend showed me a copy of Newsweek. And there was an article about Mao and there were two little pictures with the caption, "Madame Mao is Mao's eye."

• 15:24Speaker 00

  Years and Mao's. And suddenly, you know Mao's name was spelled out for me. And I suddenly realized, of course, it was Mao. You know, without Mao, none of this could have happened. And Mao was responsible. And you know, I'm an intelligent person. But it took me eight years. Even from the moment I said to myself, I dislike the society. To the moment that I thought Mao was responsible.

• 15:58Dwarkesh Patel?

  You mentioned that your father was a purged because of this criticism of the government at the time. And in fact, your father's story through the book is, you know, a sort of tragic tale that.

• 16:12Dwarkesh Patel?

  But the, what I found interesting was that the way he criticized the party was to go through the official mechanism. He wrote a letter to Mao, which suggests that he, even then, still believed that sort of the mechanism of the party worked. And then, you know, it would be imagining like somebody has a problem with North Korean government today. And he then writes a letter to Kim Jong-un, you know, which is, obviously, you're gonna get in trouble for that. So tell me about how your father thought about that. And in retrospect, how should a high official, like your father was the governor of Sichuan province, which you said ninety million people.

• 16:46Speaker 00

  Wasn't governor, sorry. My father was the governor of a region initially. And then, by the time of the Cultural Revolution in nineteen sixty-six, he was the head of a department.

• 17:01Dwarkesh Patel?

  Oh, I see.

• 17:02Speaker 00

  Of the, of the Sichuan, what, party, government, whatever they were.

• 17:07Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  The same.

• 17:08Dwarkesh Patel?

  A high official.

• 17:09Speaker 00

  A high official.

• 17:10Dwarkesh Patel?

  What, what should he have done when he realized things were going?

• 17:13Speaker 00

  Well, there was nothing one could do. I mean, if you try to say, spell out your thoughts to other people, you would be instantly denounced and instantly, you know, publicly executed. I mean, nobody was allowed to say anything against Mao. Um, my father and and theoretically in the charter of the Communist Party, a party member had the right to write to the leadership. So my father was using that as as the kind of theoretically permitted way to voice his dissent.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  Um, so that's why he wrote to Mao. And in any case, the all these things, the atrocities, the violence, I mean, only Mao could stop them. Um, so writing to Mao was the was the only way, um, was the only way he could express his opinion. And of course, he also said something, you know, in the context of the denunciation meetings. But there were not, um, there were outbursts at denunciation meetings, rather than his well-thought-out expression of dissent.

• 18:37Dwarkesh Patel?

  So this is, uh, this is something I thought was, um, confusing when reading accounts about the Cultural Revolution is China is a society, you know, they rebelled in the past. They rebelled against the emperors. They rebelled against the Japanese occupation. They, the nationalists were at one point in charge of lots of parts of China. The communists rebelled against them. How was Mao able to instill a regime where that became unthinkable? Uh, despite the fact that it was an incredibly chaotic and destabilizing time, how did the Chinese, which have a great sense of history, how would they allow this to happen?

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Well, that's a very good question. That is the key of a communist society, of a totalitarian society, is the control, the organization. I mean, neither the emperors nor any other rulers under the nationalists, under Chiang Kai-shek, was China so thoroughly organized down to the grassroots, controlled by layers of party organizations. Um, it was, it was totally thorough. That's why the 20th century totalitarianism.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  Was very different from the previous authoritarianism. I mean, the key was the control is this total control of a society. I mean, the power highly concentrated at the very top, the one person.

• 20:14Dwarkesh Patel?

  The thing that's really interesting is Mao is obviously a person who doesn't understand economics. And we'll talk about their great leap forward and the disastrous consequences it had because of his complete ignorance when it came to, you know, economics and industry and things like that. But what he did seem to have an incredible sense for, and Stalin and other totalitarian leaders as well, is the psychology of people and how to organize a society that has 800 million people, how to organize it so that, you know, every society has petty, sadistic, arrogant and cowardly people and how to organize them so that they're elevated and you use them to your advantage so that there is no nook and cranny in the entire society

• 20:58Dwarkesh Patel?

  where a single person can be, have a dissenting voice or even have an independent life. Maybe you can talk about the commune life and the way in which, how can you possibly have a society of 800 million people where each person is under such strict totalitarian control? How is that even possible?

• 21:16Speaker 00

  The thing is that in the Cultural Revolution, for example, Mao used the young people and used the bad things in their nature, they're prone to violence, destructive, you know, sadistic. I mean, any society, there were these people, but they were given license to indulge their bad instincts in the Cultural Revolution. Now, this took place for a couple of years in the Cultural Revolution. Then Mao reined them in.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  By using the army and the Red Guards, the former Red Guards, particularly the most militant, most aggressive, most sadistic and violent ones, were dispersed and they were sent to the villages, sent to the mountains. I mean, the disobeyed, the disobedient ones were condemned themselves. I mean, they became the targets of the second round of purges, so to speak. And all the time Mao made sure that the barrel of the gun was in his hand, the army.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  So he always needed this person to control the army for him, to make sure he could wreak havoc and maintain control. And he always used Lin Biao until nineteen seventy. Uh, Lin Biao was completely cynical. Um, he would come to Mao's rescue when there was a dissent from Mao's other colleagues, like during the famine and when Mao started the Cultural Revolution. And until the day that he fell out with Mao,

• 23:15Speaker 00

  um, which was why Mao was suddenly a bit lost because he lost his, his, the arm with which he controlled the army. And, and that, and so that's why in nineteen seventy-two, after Lin Biao died trying to flee to, uh, out of China, um, things suddenly became better. And then because then Mao had to rely on another person to control the army for him. And this other person was Deng Xiaoping. And then suddenly the uni- universities began to reopen. Things were much better from nineteen seventy-two.

• 23:57Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, um, and, and by the way, this is a great instance of as soon as Mao dies, the Gang of Four is rounded up and arrested and the Cultural Revolution stops. So, which goes to show you that this was Mao's doing. This is also an interesting example where, you know, you have these cases where, whether Stalin in Russia or Mao in China, where when the tyrant dies, you know, the system automatically improves because nobody else is as crazy as that guy. What does this show us about if Kim Jong-un died? Would we, should we expect a similar sort of reversion to a more sane set of things? Again and again, we see tyrants die and things are not as bad as they used to be.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  Well, I haven't studied North Korea, so I don't know the inner workings of the regime. I mean, in that sort of Stalinist society, really so much depends, depends, depends on one person. I mean, the Kim dynasty, they have arranged their kind of succession. The, the first Kim Jong-un died and his son succeeded and the grandson then succeeded. Now it seems that the grandson has begun to look into a succession of him by grooming perhaps, I don't know, his daughter or someone close, close to him.

• 25:24Speaker 00

  I mean Stalin didn't, couldn't do that, couldn't do the family dynasty, dynasty thing. I think partly because his children were not like the Kim children. I mean Mao also, I mean Mao basically, he only cared about how he could enjoy life while he was alive, indulging his, his desires, which was mainly power. And he didn't care about what, what, what comes after him. I mean, he was completely materialistic, you know, in that philosophical way, in that sort of way.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  Sorry, for example, when he was in Russia, in Moscow, he, when he visited Lenin's tomb, he said, "It's all very well, you know, we are visiting Lenin's tomb," but Lenin... Can't feel anything, he's dead. So it doesn't matter, it means nothing to Lenin.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  So, you know Mao, when he died, he didn't live well structured. He didn't even sort of, didn't even care about his own legacy.

• 26:43Dwarkesh Patel?

  Well, I, I thought the entire purpose of the Cultural Revolution was that he was concerned that because of the Great Forward, that his, his legacy would be destroyed in the way that Khrushchev denounced Stalin, and therefore, that that was the entire point of the Cultural Revolution, was to protect his legacy.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  That may be a factor, but the main factor was Mao's policy that had led to the great famine of nearly, you know, around forty million

• 27:11Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  deaths of the people. Was so unpopular, that his number two, Liu Shaoqi, then spoke up against him. Again, there was no way even for Mao's number two to topple him. And because, basically, you know, they, under this tyrant, his colleagues couldn't get organized, to, which was necessary to topple him, they couldn't lay their hands on the army, which was controlled by Lin Biao. So, what Liu Shaoqi did was that in January nineteen sixty-two,

• 27:51Speaker 00

  when Mao had wanted to continue his policy of exporting food in exchange for arms and industries to build, in order for him to build a superpower, so he could dominate the world. And Liu wanted to stop that.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  And he used this occasion of a party congress to speak to the seven thousand party officials in that conference hall.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  And my father was in there. I mean, so they, these party officials were, you know, spread over, all over China. They were, the vast, vast majority of them were against Mao's policies that had led to the famine. And, um, so they suddenly found Liu Xiaochu as their champion. And so together, they managed to stop Mao's policies, which was how the famine was stopped from nineteen sixty-two. And Mao was furious. He, he didn't like being thwarted and being ambushed, which he called that ambush.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  This was why he launched the Cultural Revolution in nineteen sixty-six, to punish Liu Xiaochu and the party officials. Um, I mean, so that's how this great purge took place. For Mao, it was much less of, uh, um, it was calculated because he wanted to have his way. He wanted to purge these people. But there was also the gut feeling of revenge. And he wanted revenge on his number two, who died in the most appalling way in the Cultural Revolution.

• 29:43Dwarkesh Patel?

  So, uh, so I'm sorry if this question sounds naive, but if you have somebody like Liu Xiaochu and Deng Xiaoping and these other party officials who are seeing what is happening. And in the case of Liu Xiaochu, he was denounced before he was, um, before he was officially purged and removed from power, right? So there was a time when he knew he was going to be purged, but he was still in power. Uh, it's confusing from the outside of why at that time you don't, um, if you can't control the army because Lin Bao is in control of it. At, at that point, you don't, I don't know, try to tell the people what is actually happening. Go to the People's Daily and say, here, you got to publish this article about what is that, what Mao was actually like. Go to all the Communist officials, organize a coup. Why didn't that happen?

• 30:26Speaker 00

  Well, it did happen. Well, in the Mao biography, there were, I have a couple of chapters about Liu Xiaochi, exactly what he was suggesting, what he should have done. I mean, but I'm going to expand it in my next book. Basically, Liu Xiaochi knew Mao was going to purge him in 1962, after the congress, because he ambushed Mao. And so he had started to build his own power base.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  First of all, by stopping the famine, making himself popular among the party officials, because only they mattered. The ordinary people were too far away from power.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  And so Liu Xiaochi became very popular. In 1965, a few years later, when Mao was trying to purge Liu Xiaochi, he found he couldn't do it. I mean, Liu Xiaochi had been powerful enough to put up a resistance. I mean, there was a lot of, I mean, Mao did this horse trading with Lin Biang. And so Lin Biang spoke, you know, very forcefully in support of Mao. So there was all that going on. And why, Liu Xiaochi was already, I'm sorry, then Mao used the Red Guards

• 31:59Speaker 00

  to create such violence and terror in China from 1966 to basically nineteen, for a few months before he even mentioned Liu Xiaochi's name, as you said. But Liu Xiaochi was already under house arrest. I mean, it's just he didn't make it public. So Mao first of all created this gigantic upheaval in China in order to, in order to create the kind of terror that people would only obey him, not Liu Xiaochi, not even the party, but only him, and that's how he operated.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  So that's why in the Cultural Revolution, his first victims were schoolteachers. You know, I was in a secondary school in China. I saw how the teachers were being abused, beaten up, denounced, driven to suicide, and so on. Wen Mao actually didn't even dislike teachers. I mean, he said, for example, to Edgar Snow, that he'd like to be known as a great teacher, or whatever. He was a schoolteacher in his youth. And he didn't even care, he didn't care about them. And but he just used them

• 33:27Speaker 00

  because the teachers were the obvious target to excite, to arouse the passion, the violence, the atrocities in the young Red Guards. And so that's how he used them as a victim in order to rouse the victimizers, which were the schoolchildren. That's how he maneuvered. He spent quite a few years before he, Liu Xiaochu, was, before the atmosphere was ripe for him to be able to purge Liu.

• 34:10Dwarkesh Patel?

  So maybe for context, it'll be helpful first to start talking about the Great Leap Forward. The number you gave was around 40 million people. And this becomes a statistic for people. You just think, oh, 40 million people died. Whatever, it's a number. I want to make it concrete for people, what, how much tragedy and suffering is involved in just a single person dying from starvation? Can you talk about the months-long agonizing process of what starvation is? Where you see it happening to you, your family, your children, your spouse, your village? And what peasant life was like during, during the Great Leap Forward?

• 34:49Speaker 00

  During the Great Deep Forward, my family was among the privileged. So I personally didn't starve. But there was a lot of starvation around us. For example, I remember when I went to school, I was eight, nine. And when I went to school, one day I was munching a steamed bread. And a young lad, a child, a boy, darted over and snatched the bread from my mouth.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  And then he stuffed those into his mouth and disappeared. And then afterwards, I told, when I told my father, my father was very sad. And he sort of, he touched my head and said, you know, you were very lucky. You know, other children are starving. And another thing that happened near home was our maid, our domestic help, who'd come from a village. And her family had been classified as a landlord, which was one of the categories of the desirables,

• 36:15Speaker 00

  destined for discrimination and horrible treatment. And I remember very well, one day, she, after a visit to her family, she came back and she was weeping. And I remember we lived in this courtyard. And she had so much floods of tears that the frogs that were actually thriving in the courtyard were leaping up and down. So that was in my memory as a child. And my grandmother, with whom she was very close, was sitting.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  In a mosquito net and also crying and said the communists are good, except all these people are dead. I mean, so I, I was because that this was so much against my indoctrination about the communists, that's one of the few things I heard that made me really scared. Um, and, um, and then, and before she, her whole family died. In fact, before that, her mother came to see her to report the news that her father and the brothers or something had died.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  And her mother, as soon as she came into the house, she threw herself on the, on the ground and called out to my mother and said, you know, thank you, you know, for having said my daughter, otherwise, you know, they, she would have been dead. I mean, after, soon after the mother went back, she died herself. But when she came, she was already like a skeleton, you know, as though any wind could blow her away. It's just unter- terrible. And one thing that made my father speak up during the Cultural Revolution, which is only a few years later, was

• 38:24Speaker 00

  he felt so guilty and he volunteered to go to stay in the village. Um, and, and then he saw these horrible things, which I didn't see. I mean, he, and, and one day a man was sort of walking on the ridges of the paddy fields, um, unsteadily. And suddenly he disappeared and my father rushed over and this man, um, had, had died. Um, it's just like that, just my father, just for his a month of living in, in the, in the village, he was, he came back, um,

• 39:06Speaker 00

  very seriously famished and suffering from this illness called enema or enema, which was because of lack of food. Um, and, um, oh yes, and my, even my family and we all

• 39:23Speaker 00

  And we all drank this this little thing, this little seed that fed on urine. I remember we all had to collect urine. We don't pour, throw away our urine, we collect the urine in order to grow this seed, which was supposed to have a lot of um um vitamin or a lot of some some nutrition that could sustain people. And I remember how revolting the taste was. I mean, we, I didn't suffer much because my family put all our food together and the adults were starving.

• 40:06Speaker 00

  I knew my mother, my father, and my particular, my grandmother, um in order for for us children um not not to starve. And also now, today, if you read, if you see the memoirs of China's super riches, I mean, I think most of them had a memory of the of my generation, of the generation who had lived in the countryside. They all um remembered being hungry.

• 40:37Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  They, as as children, when how hungry they were in the villages. And that that sort of was partly what gave them the impetus to to change.

• 40:49Dwarkesh Patel?

  Hmm. Oh, you, while we're on this, let me just ask you about this before we return to the great leap forward, now that you've mentioned it. So Xi Jinping actually had a very similar experience to you in that his father is also a high communist official. He also gets denounced and purged. Xi Jinping is also has to go through these denunciation meetings and then he has to work as a peasant. And in fact, there's a story where he tries to come back, but his mother, to get a meal from his family, but is is supposed to be in exile, but his mother then chases them away and denounces him. And so it's like gruesome stuff, right? And then when he gives these speeches, he talks about we need to return to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong thought.

• 41:33Dwarkesh Patel?

  How is it possible that somebody who has gone through your experience can still have any sort of sympathy left for Mao or Marxism-Leninism? I actually don't understand. I'm trying to understand.

• 41:43Speaker 00

  Fred, I don't understand either. I mean, don't fully understand. There was, I mean, everybody is different. A lot of people had similar experiences. And they still would Sam Mao's praise and wanted to return to the Mao era. I think only, no, not seriously, return to Mao era. But they were dreamed of the perhaps they tied, you know, the control or something of the Mao's era, but not really. I mean, well, everybody was different. But, I mean, there were more indoctrinated people than others under the same indoctrination system.

• 42:28Speaker 00

  I mean, maybe he was just not, he was just more thoroughly indoctrinated. And there were many reasons among the communist officials whose parents suffered the children of. A lot of them regard, identify Mao with the rule of the Communist Party. And they don't, they don't want the Communist Party to be discredited. So because they are the beneficiaries of communist rule. I mean, you know, this is not necessarily she, he. But, but in a more general sense, because I haven't studied she.

• 43:13Speaker 00

  Again, I don't know the inner workings of the, of the, of the regime. But I think a lot of children of the communist, old communists, in spite of the sufferings of their parents, they still want China to be under this one party dictatorship. And I think one reason now is this made them a lot of money.

• 43:39Speaker 00

  I mean, all the corruptions, all the, you know, whatever, if you're, if you're associated with the regime, you stood to gain, you stand to gain. So I think that that is one very important reason, um, which would not, they would not have all the privileges if the party ended its, its one-party dictatorship.

• 44:05Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, which, and, you know, in no other society is a tyrant like Mao still respected by the current regime. You were Germany, nobody's, nobody's, you know, yearning for the days of Hitler. Uh, there's a few people in Russia, for example, Stalinism is, uh, because of Putin's, um, uh, changing of the curriculum, but it's not a common thing. Whereas in China, the, the regime officially, uh, had derives its legitimacy from Mao. It hangs his picture off Tiananmen Square. And this is, uh, this is doubly insidious, not only because this is a gruesome mass murderer killed fifty million people, more than anybody else in history, but because his victims were the people of China, the people who are

• 44:50Dwarkesh Patel?

  expected to, um, bow down to his figure and respect him are his own victims or the children of his victims. It would be like if a picture of Hitler hung off the Temple Mount in Israel or something, right? So, I mean, yeah, I guess maybe the question then is, how do the Chinese people who, this happened to the Chinese people in living memory, how are they okay with, um, having the figure of Mao up on Tiananmen Square? Why is there still respect for Mao in China?

• 45:19Speaker 00

  Well, first of all, um, China, as you said, is still a communist regime. Um, for many years, I mean, that was underplayed, partly because the memory is fresh, and partly in the nineteen eighties and nineties particularly. The memories were fresh. I think that was probably the main reason. Um, and gradually after that, um, the memories of pain were gradually fading. Um, and particularly a generation, two generations have grown up without suffering. Um, and so...

• 46:01Speaker 00

  Given that there is no religion for people to worship, you know, unlike any time in Chinese history. And before Mao, there was Confucianism. You could have something to hang on to. And then there was Mao, Maoism, I mean, which didn't, um, didn't, didn't obviously openly endorse violence and atrocities. And it could sound quite attractive. Um, which is why Mao's Little Red Book was in vogue for a period in the West.

• 46:40Speaker 00

  And so people hung on to that. And in the post-Mao time, money was the god. But, um, some people, a lot of people made money, but a lot of people lost money, not only lost money, but had, you know, was, um, disadvantaged in this money is god society. I mean, you know, in the society where there was no proper regulations and law and people who were not very savvy with money, lost out. They were coned, they were, you know, they were whatever. So there were some people who probably yearned for a more simple life,

• 47:26Speaker 00

  where, you know, you were given what you were given. You, they wouldn't like to be starved and they wouldn't like to be a political victim. But a lot of people could live a very simple life, more of being just fed. Um, I mean, there may be a certain nostalgia. Um, but the most important thing, of course, is the promotion of the regime. I mean particularly since Xi came to power. I mean, you know, you were you were taught from school all these lies about Mao.

• 48:03Speaker 00

  Um, and so people grew up with this um um regarding Mao as God, like back to my childhood.

• 48:13Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, how what has been the impact of your books? You know, Wild Swan sold fifty million copies, your biography Mao is also a bestseller. I I know they're banned in China, but have they secretly been able to access? How was that revised understanding of their own history?

• 48:29Speaker 00

  Well, when these books were first published in nineteen the nineteen nineties and the year two thousands, there were lots of lots of lots and lots of ways to get them into China. Hong Kong, for example, and Taiwan, um pirated editions, which there are many, many, many. Um, but now, I mean, since particularly Mr. Xi came to power in twenty like twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, I mean, China has a total clampdown or of banned of banned literature.

• 49:07Speaker 00

  And you could go to jail if you um and for an official um to possess these books. I mean banned books, including mine, you you you could face, you know, ghastly punishments, which you you don't want to face and for the general population as well. And when you enter China now, you see on this screen uh warnings of not to bring in bad literature. Um, and and not particularly not to bring in um books that um said not very nice things about the previous revolutionary leaders

• 49:50Speaker 00

  or or revolutionary martyrs or someone. So total total clampdown forbidding of people.

• 50:00Speaker 00

  Doing research on history, trying to understand the history which created another generation of brainwashed people. And there was also one very important thing. The Chinese are very pragmatic and they don't want trouble. They're very different from a lot of other peoples.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  And so, parents who had bad experiences under Mao tend not to tell their children. And so, there are lots of children who were just genuinely not getting any alternative information

• 50:45Speaker 00

  from the official line.

• 50:49Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, I do want to get back to the actual Great Leap and Cultural Revolution in a second. But on this theme, Xi Jinping's own daughters got studied at Harvard. Chinese elites, their kids are studying in America. When they take power in a generation or two, will they still be devoted Marxist-Leninists? I can't imagine them coming back from Harvard and then still believing in...

• 51:15Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, in the West, in American universities, there are a lot of Marxists. I mean, you know, a lot of people, if they're interested in the subject.

• 51:28Dwarkesh Patel?

  Sure.

• 51:29Speaker 00

  I mean, they come to the West to have their views confirmed. And Maoists, you know, for example, when our Mao biography was published, there were some academics who even published a book, a collection of their criticisms against our book. And the title was, "Was Mao Really a Monster?" I mean, you know, the preface was written by someone who was a senior lecturer in the LSE, London School of Economics. I mean, the language was Maoist language. You know Mao was a great revolutionary, great Marxist-Leninist, and so on. I mean, so, I mean...

• 52:14Speaker 00

  I mean, the West would certainly not put off the this um put off a potential Mao successor.

• 52:24Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, I I I'm glad you brought that up, actually, because I read that book, actually, in preparation for this interview. And because I wanted to see if there were criticisms that I I should be aware of. And honestly, uh, the I mean, there were certain quibbles about the the part before Mao got into power about the long march and stuff, which I don't know enough about to comment. But the actual when they start talking about the important things, the greatly forward the Cultural Revolution, they are not at all contesting the facts. They it is the most um uh the the most sort of um excusatory language of it is the same sort of stuff, by the way, that is said about Cuba and Stalinist Russia of, oh, the literacy went up and this and that.

• 53:06Dwarkesh Patel?

  Um, North Korea today has high literacy. Are you going to say that North Korea was okay? Did the actually, can you talk about this? What it what do you think explains the Western uh some parts of the left who want to find excuses for these regimes, whether it's Venezuela or whether Edward Snow Edward Snow writing his um book about Mao. There's a sort of need to excuse these um these communist regimes and socialist regimes. Why are what what explains this?

• 53:35Speaker 00

  From what I know, I think there there were people who had illusions about these regimes. And a lot of the academics um who were a kind of um controlling the faculties um to do with Mao and in the universities probably had got their um their their their sort of illusions because they had access to um Edgar Snow's um book. They were radicals in the nineteen sixties. I mean, they you know, they want to hang on to their own.

• 54:16Speaker 00

  No, sorry, let me just not get into the the subject. Sorry, I I'm I'm faltering on this because. I don't know. I don't know why, but I mean, I don't know why, I don't know why they are like that. I mean, they, they, they don't, they don't know the facts, they, they, they don't care to know the facts. And also, I think probably some people think, oh, China has always been awful, you know, under the emperors and so on. And so somehow the Orientals must feel different today. Um, I, I know when, you know, when Deng Xiaoping visited America in nineteen seventy nine

• 54:58Speaker 00

  and established diplomatic relations with America, um, with Carter. Um, and he, he was seated at the banquet with some, um, with some, some deluded film star or something. And then, then people were saying to him that when they were visit, when they visited China, um, they'd seen professors who'd been subject to forced labor. Um, and but they told, they were told that they enjoyed it because all these hardships and being in the labor camp had turned them into the new men.

• 55:41Speaker 00

  And Deng Xiaoping just said, they were lying. Um, but, I mean, they were lying, I mean, to the Westerners, um, who, who didn't know the truth, just took their words for it.

• 55:56Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:57Speaker 00

  Um, they, they didn't know, people couldn't tell them the real truth.

• 56:02Dwarkesh Patel?

  E- even in, um, in the case of Stalin and Russia, there was a famous New York Times reporter who was doing the Russian coverage for, uh, the New York Times. And the reports would come in about the, uh, the Ukrainian famine or these other atrocities. And he would write his columns, you know, no, this is not happening. I think there was a famous headline that says, Russians are hungry but not starving. Oh, so actually, let's talk about Deng Xiaoping. And I want to ask about, so during the Cultural Revolution, he is exiled and purged. And his, his son, because he is known as a, I don't know, the black, but basically.

• 56:42Speaker 00

  The five, the blacks, you know, that's one of the racist side of the, of the Chinese society. Black is bad.

• 56:51Dwarkesh Patel?

  Right.

• 56:51Speaker 00

  So his son was one of the five blacks.

• 56:53Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:54Speaker 00

  And then, you know, so on.

• 56:55Dwarkesh Patel?

  His son is chased out of a window by Red Guards. The doctors refuse to operate on him because he's Deng Xiaoping's son. So he's paralyzed for life. And he's forced to do manual labor. This guy who was basically kind of running China under Mao, he's doing manual labor out in the countryside. When he comes back into power after the Cultural Revolution, how, I, from the outside, I don't understand how he doesn't immediately denounce Mao, talk about the horrible things he did. How, how did he allow, he, there's a quote from him, he says, "We must be careful not to overemphasize the crimes of Mao," or something. For somebody who was so personally harmed by Mao, how is he not immediately condemning Mao?

• 57:37Speaker 00

  This is something I don't understand. And I also think he made a big mistake. If he had dissociated from Mao, like Khrushchev had with Stalin, I mean, it would not have just been the right thing to do, but it would have been the popular thing to do. Because there is a grand, great ground swell of resentment for denouncing Mao, or at least dissociating from Mao, not just from the population, from the victims, which virtually everybody was in China, but from the leading elite, from his, most of his closest colleagues.

• 58:21Speaker 00

  I mean, for the few orders who were in favor of Mao, he could easily have dealt with them, like Khrushchev had dealt with the Stalinist, the hardlinist. But he chose not to.

• 58:35Speaker 00

  What got into his mind, I haven't studied him very carefully, but I did know something about him. I think, I think he, he was probably thinking that if you reject Mao, it's inevitable that communism will collapse in China. I mean, unlike Khrushchev's time in nineteen fifty six, he could denounce Stalin without endangering communist rule in Russia. But Deng, at his time, could not, or at least probably, he thought, could not have denounced Mao

• 59:18Speaker 00

  without endangering the rule of the party.

• 59:22Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  Because this, we're talking about nineteen eighties, late seventies, eighties now. There was a ground, you know, it's near, it's Gorbachev's, near Gorbachev's time. Um, so I think that's probably his devotion to the party.

• 59:39Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, and, but I think he, he might have been right in a, and then obviously the, the point is that he would have been right to say that, well, this is actually inherent in the communist regime. In Russia, when, in the eighties, when they have Glasnost and Perestroika, and they talk openly about the Gulag system, that is one of the main contributing factors. And people say, well, how can a regime that allowed this to happen be allowed to exist anymore? How can this be a governing regime? And that does lead to the collapse.

• 1:00:08Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly. Which is why, by the way, Mr. Xi's argument. I mean, because he was against the Gorbachev, against the Perestroika and Glasnost. And he's, is exactly that. I mean, the communist regime would collapse. I mean, that is, you know, in today's terms, that is the wealth, the money, you know, that associated with the power.

• 1:00:39Dwarkesh Patel?

  And in the book, you point out that Mao is acting in his self-interest and selfishly doing all these things. But it seems to me that a strong, if not motivation, at least, enabling factor and organizing factor is definitely provided by the ideologies of communism and socialism, which sort of organizes our society. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense to collectivize farms and to close down shops. And it also necessitates the purges because communism is a science. It has to work. And if it doesn't work, there must be internal capitalist saboteurs who must be condemned, brought out, and killed. Do you think that the...

• 1:01:22Dwarkesh Patel?

  Isn't it the communism and socialism at the heart of the issue here?

• 1:01:26Speaker 00

  I think some people undoubtedly think that way.

• 1:01:30Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Speaker 00

  But having researched Mao for 12 years, my conclusion about him was he was highly pragmatic, and the communist ideology suited him. I mean, he joined the Communist Party not because he was a passionate believer, but because it gave him a livelihood. I mean, he was asked to open a left-wing bookshop selling communist and left-wing literature, and his life was changed. And before that, he was poverty-stricken, and then that started his life.

• 1:02:11Speaker 00

  But, I mean, the few things about the ideology that you just mentioned, for example, the collectivization. It's highly conducive to Mao's requirements, to Mao's... what Mao wanted, which was food. He wanted this food from the peasants. If they had been private farmers, they would farm their food first and pay tax, so to speak, pay to them. And then it's far more difficult to control these hundreds of millions of peasants than...

• 1:02:49Speaker 00

  To organize them into units, into communes. Then it's much better to control. And Mao said so himself. They are the, you know, they, what did he say? The great advantage of collectivization, the communes, is easier to control. 便于管理. This was not just an ideology, abstract ideology. But it's for, you know, for what he wanted to get.

• 1:03:24Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, but then at least we can say the, what are the problems with the ideology? Is that it attracts and is highly conducive to opportunists like Mao and Stalin and the Kim family. But, so let's go back to the Great Leap Forward and to these communes. These communes are really like, what it's like to be a peasant is like chattel slavery. Can you talk about the working conditions, how hard they worked while not being given food? The punishments? Tell us more about what the peasant life was like.

• 1:03:55Speaker 00

  Well, I was working in a commune for several years in the Cultural Revolution, in two places. And our lives consisted mainly of work. I mean, there were fixed hours. You were given, you were allocated food and, you know, fuel and other things, depending on how many hours you worked. So, so your life is centered on work. I mean, you know, then everything, the commune controlled everything. If you want to travel, go somewhere, you need the commune to give you

• 1:04:38Speaker 00

  a kind of a note, a kind of a passport to allow you to travel. And if you want to get married, you have to get permission from the commune. And during the famine, this is how Mao ensured that the peasants didn't rise up in arms because of the control from the commune. I mean, there is a thing, they, every now and then the regime would issue these stiff orders.

• 1:05:11Speaker 00

  To stop peasants fleeing their villages. I mean, if the peasants did manage to flee into the cities and beg, for example, for some food, the communes were told to get them back. So the commune is this thing we to control, to control our entire lives. And of course, when I was in the communes, I was again in a privileged position because when we were sent down from the cities, we were guaranteed a certain food. I mean, it's too complicated, the details. But basically, the communes is the organization.

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  It may be in some ideology, but in reality, it's how the party controls China's 500 million peasants. I mean, there were only, I think, some few tens of thousands of communes. I mean, imagine this highly concentrated organization.

• 1:06:13Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:14Speaker 00

  So people were no longer individual farmers.

• 1:06:16Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

  Like what they were before the communist rule.

• 1:06:21Dwarkesh Patel?

  And this is exactly also what happened in Russia. And when the famine happens, again, they're not allowed to leave Ukraine. They're forced, there's roadblocks, so they're forced to starve there. So you have this really remarkable anecdote in the book about talking to these peasants about what life was like during the Great Leap Forward, while you're working there. Because now there's no fuel left, all the trees are taken down. And how, at the time, so many of the list are because they were all distracted, keeping the furnaces. Talk about how the effort to double steel output and what catastrophes that caused.

• 1:07:00Speaker 00

  Well, basically, Mao's ambition after he took power in China was to build a superpower to dominate the world. He needed to buy these machines, military industrial complexes, mainly from Russia and from Eastern Europe. But he didn't have the money to pay. China wasn't rich as today. So he exported the food. So he needed a lot of food. Whereas in China, traditionally.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  We didn't, we never produced enough food to feed the population. The emperors banned food export and brought a lot of food into China. I mean, so traditionally, China was a food importer for a few hundred years, and Mao stopped that. So to start with, there was always a food problem throughout his rule. Um, and now the Great Leap is basically to import vast quantities of uh, technology and equipment mainly from Russia.

• 1:08:13Speaker 00

  That's why it's called the Great Leap. He wanted to build industrialized whatever system. Um, in, in a few years, um, to be fast, fast, fast. You know, that, that's what he, what he said. I mean, that's why his demand for food was vastly elevated. Mao's demand for food. This food had to come from the peasants. I mean, so he basically seized this food to, to export to Russia and Eastern Europe, knowing his people would die of starvation.

• 1:08:54Speaker 00

  And there was a time Mao was, Mao kept saying seemingly philosophically, I mean, death is a good thing. If, if we don't have death, you know, um, we, and the, the earth can't contain us. You know, these seemingly philosophical things were, were taken at face value by some academics. Uh, you know, but what he really, he said these things to his officials in order to harden their heart when they went to seize the food from the peasants, seeing how pitiful their conditions were. And that's the origin of the famine. It's as simple as that. It's food export.

• 1:09:36Speaker 00

  I mean, Liu Shaoqi, his number two, and his main target in the Cultural Revolution.

• 1:09:43Speaker 00

  It was thanks to a visit back to his old village that made up his mind to stop Mao's policies. Cause he went back to his village, his brother-in-law had died of starvation. His sister was on the edge of of dying of starvation. He saw the villages, saw the just heartrending things. And then he, you know, he opened them, opened the lid of of a of a work saucepan. And he saw there was nothing, just water, a few drops of grain. And he was, he, he did a very unusual thing and he bowed to the peasants

• 1:10:26Speaker 00

  and said, you know, I'm very sorry. It was after this, in nineteen sixty-one, he made up his mind to stop Mao's policies, which led to the Cultural Revolution and his, his tragic death.

• 1:10:41Dwarkesh Patel?

  And then you you also talk in the book about how th- these peasants, not only was all this grain being exported, which caused them to starve, but they weren't even allowed to harvest their grain because they had to to talk about the the turning their own walks and their own stuff into iron and you just spending time doing that instead of farming.

• 1:11:00Speaker 00

  So Mao was Mao was partly defeated by his own ignorance about economy. I mean, because if you, when you, when you want to build a modern super industry, you needed steel. And steel was the most important thing. And China's steel producing capacities in the nineteen fifty's was very low. So he had this idea of making the whole population to, to make steel. I mean, it's, it really is quite ridiculous because I was a primary school. I was six years old, I was in the primary school.

• 1:11:42Speaker 00

  And I remember that my main occupation was somehow my contribution to steel, which is every day we walked on the street trying to find. The little nails, the cogs, something is still to and to hand into our teachers. Because there is a backyard furnace in our school. All the teachers had to had to feed things into the furnace. Um, because the furnace also had to be kept going twenty four hours a day. It couldn't be, you know, couldn't go off. I mean, to feed that furnace consumed everything.

• 1:12:21Speaker 00

  I mean, in my village, I mean, they, we, we struggled every day to find a little fuel. When, you know, fast forwarding to nineteen sixties. And because the mountains, which used to be covered with great trees, have been laid bare to for for the fuel to feed the backyard furnaces. Um, and the teachers were, um, exhausted in my school. And so we were organized to babysit for them when I was a child. Um, it was just, it was hugely wasteful, hugely wasteful. I mean, this, I mean, because for all this effort, um, this was nineteen fifty eight.

• 1:13:06Speaker 00

  Um, actually, most of what the backyard furnaces, um, produced were completely useless. So he died, Mao died, thinking of himself as a failure. Because China was still poverty stricken at the time of his death. And he felt himself a failure, but he was partly sabotaged by his own ignorance about the economy. Oh, the other thing about Mao's ignorance was because food was so important. And because sparrows eat food. So he ordered the whole population to 打麻雀, to, to, um, to, to kill sparrows.

• 1:13:50Speaker 00

  So as a child, I sat with other people, you know, courtyard, we beat the saucepans to make a tremendous thing. So the sparrows will will drop on the, on the ground. And so the, all these people will, will go and it will, will, um, will, will go and catch the sparrows.

• 1:14:14Speaker 00

  And it was just catastrophe. Because it not only killed sparrows, but many other birds, other birds as well. And of course, the worms, the pests, insects, pests. They were, they flourished without their, their natural enemy. So it's, it's, it's the, it's an unbelievable situation that has consumed China for, you know, more than two decades.

• 1:14:54Dwarkesh Patel?

  Just, just a complete lack of sense here. It would honestly be, be a joke if, if obviously you didn't know it led to forty million deaths.

• 1:15:02Speaker 00

  But the thing is, you know, in the West, I indirectly know somebody who was a, was a steel magnet.

• 1:15:11Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:12Speaker 00

  It was a great steel producer. And he thought Mao's steel bankyard furnaces were brilliant idea. I mean, talking about people in the West, not just academics, but many

• 1:15:27Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:28Speaker 00

  other people completely irrational. And I think maybe in their, in their eagerness to, to find an alternative to the Western capitalist democracy.

• 1:15:43Dwarkesh Patel?

  Hmm. Say more about that. I, I know we did touch on that earlier when we were discussing, you know, why are people still defending Mao? But what motivated at the time and even still now,

• 1:15:55Dwarkesh Patel?

  what were, people were so disillusioned with Western capitalism that they thought they would rather have Mao?

• 1:16:00Speaker 00

  I, I think there were lots of people like that with the young generation. I mean, they grew up after the collapse of the Soviet empire. I mean, a lot of facts had come out. And so people are no longer probably so starry eyed and so wishful thinking about the communist regimes. But there was a time. In those years, in the um in the when when communism seemed to be going strong in so many countries. Um, a lot of there were a lot of the um wishful thinking westerners.

• 1:16:39Speaker 00

  Um, as I said, they may be pursuing for a for an alternative to a society they have a lot of discontent with. I mean, so they so wanted for such miracle to happen. And they they believed in what in their otherwise might have rejected as as fantasy.

• 1:17:02Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, as speaking of which, tomorrow I'm interviewing Neil Ferguson. Who has written a biography, volume one of his biography Kissinger and volume two, which will cover this period. Will will come out later. He's writing it right now. What what should Kissinger have done differently? Should should they not have tried to open up China? Uh under Mao, what what should have been the policy of the United States at the time?

• 1:17:25Speaker 00

  China was not opened up by Kissinger and Nixon. I I lived in China then. I knew after Nixon and Kissinger's visit. I mean, nineteen seventy one, seventy two, China was not opened up. Um, I mean, all the liberalization seem, you know, relaxation after. Nixon's visit was mainly because of the collapse of Lin Bi. And Mao's lost his um his arm with which he controlled the army. So I think to say Nixon and Kissinger opened up China is wrong.

• 1:18:08Speaker 00

  That's not the case. Kissinger, I think Kissinger is a very, very smart person. I think he probably was too fascinated with power. Mao had the kind of power, he could turn the lives upside down of a quarter of a million of the world's population. I think he was very fascinated with Mao. I mean, he said nice things about Mao. And even after Mao died, you know, with the regime was reviving Mao, there were a few people reviving Mao,

• 1:18:48Speaker 00

  like the current Mr. Xi and his political rival, Mr. Bo, with whom Kissinger seemed to be very close. He attended these rallies to eulogize Mao, big rallies, and lending his whatever status he had to the Chinese regime's effort to stick with Mao's legacy. I think that's unforgivable.

• 1:19:20Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:21Speaker 00

  That's one thing. And the other thing is China's opening up to the West. And that happened only after Mao died in 1976 and Deng Xiaoping came to power. I knew this very well because I was one of the first Chinese to be able to leave China in 1978. I mean, to see, you know, that's the very beginning of the opening up. I think it's a good thing. I mean, China has grown, I mean, you know, teaching Mao's economic lunacy and the ideology that has wrecked China.

• 1:20:02Speaker 00

  And the Chinese people are leading a much better life today. And all this could not have happened if the country had not opened up. And also, through all this contact with the West, any attempt to go back to the Maoist time would be futile. Because people knew what the West was like. The people don't want to be, really don't want to be isolated again and to lead a life of Mao's time, no matter how they may say they worship Mao,

• 1:20:40Speaker 00

  no matter how they make pilgrimages to Mao's birthplace and so on. But deep down... I think nobody wants to go back. So I think that's a very good thing, this opening up. But of course, then it country may grow into a menace to the world. I mean, that's another matter.

• 1:21:05Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:05Speaker 00

  It's a challenge.

• 1:21:06Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:07Speaker 00

  That the world needs to face now. But it's certainly not to make, um, to, um, to, it's not certainly not to, to say China shouldn't, we shouldn't have, the West shouldn't have allowed China to open up.

• 1:21:24Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, you, you can't just dismiss a billion people coming out of poverty. That's, it's the best thing that's ever happened in history.

• 1:21:30Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:21:30Dwarkesh Patel?

  So uh, let's go back to the Cultural Revolution. One thing that I find really interesting about your communism, especially in China, is the need for the victims to then incriminate themselves, to confess. Even Hitler wouldn't have the, the Jews in Auschwitz, uh, you know, talk about renouncing their Semitic ways. And, you know, I've been an enemy to Germany in World War One. So what, what was, uh, e- explain why it was important that the victims of these purges had to then talk about, oh, you know, I'm guilty, I'm complicit. Why couldn't they just be ostracized?

• 1:22:10Speaker 00

  I, I think Mao knows people's psychology, um, very well. Um, and I, I, I think he uses this as a weapon to break people. I mean, to humiliate them and to break them. I mean, so even his opponents then started to grow doubt about their own opposition. So I, I think that's the main thing. I mean, it, I tell you, it's, it's not very nice. I mean, in China, when I lived in China, I wasn't denounced. But we all had to attend criticism and self-criticism meetings. I mean, it really, it stirs up some very basic.

• 1:22:58Speaker 00

  Discomfort and upset unsettling upset feelings. If you have to criticize yourself. I mean, you know, not do it cynically because you have to win nowadays. It's not you, you couldn't do it cynically because nobody has reason to understand the whole thing in order to be cynical. So you are starting with being quite sincere. I mean, so it's it certainly breaks people. And also it makes people denounce, it makes people turn people against each other. Because when people are criticizing each other,

• 1:23:40Speaker 00

  you create a lot of animosities among the people, which is one reason why no opposition can get organized. I mean, people can't, don't dare to to talk to each other in case they were denounced. I mean, in case they were, it's all it's very, it's a psychological warfare against his own population, which is quite effective.

• 1:24:07Dwarkesh Patel?

  So meaning that it wasn't just a campaign against political opposition. It was literally every part of your life.

• 1:24:15Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:24:16Dwarkesh Patel?

  Your, I I think even in the book you talk about embracing your family is anti Maoist because it shows you're closer to your family than you are to Mao.

• 1:24:25Speaker 00

  Exactly. It's this warm feeling is just, I mean, you know, I I was constantly criticized of because my feelings for my family. And Deng Deng Xiaoping, when he wrote to Mao about his son, the son you talked about, who was crippled, he wrote to Mao to ask Mao to allow his son to join him so he could look after his son. He and his wife, who was so heartbroken seeing his son, she wanted to kill herself. Anyway, Deng had to preface his appeal with,

• 1:25:07Speaker 00

  I'm afraid, you know, I'm committing warm feelingism. But could you allow, you know, my son to join me to be looked after?

• 1:25:18Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:19Speaker 00

  It's it's device that really separates a society. And making people against each other and being on guard against each other.

• 1:25:30Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:30Speaker 00

  I mean, earlier you were talking about why can't people get together?

• 1:25:33Dwarkesh Patel?

  Right.

• 1:25:34Speaker 00

  Because, I mean, this other person at the next criticism or self criticism meetings could well say so and so had said this to me and I hadn't reported to the party, therefore I'm guilty.

• 1:25:48Dwarkesh Patel?

  And talk about the way in which it forced the good people to be immoral. You have these quota systems where if you're in charge of a department or something, Mao says five percent are rightists, five percent are capitalist voters. And so if you don't bring, if you don't give five percent of names who are capitalists who are going to get denounced, then then you must be a rightist yourself. Talk about how that aspect of the system.

• 1:26:13Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, you, it's the result is you are in a tremendous dilemma.

• 1:26:21Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:21Speaker 00

  Of either sacrificing you, your family and and other people. I mean, which is another way of breaking these people. I mean, that, these are all his, his weapons, psychological weapons, to force people to do what he ordered them to do.

• 1:26:43Dwarkesh Patel?

  Why was there such a big reservoir of of support for communist ideas? And also the personality cult that formed around Mao in China? What, you know, people give different explanations of the emperor worship beforehand led to this or peasant rice farming. What what explains why China got taken over by this ideology?

• 1:27:11Speaker 00

  It's again not ideology. Right. And Mao himself said in nineteen twenty-three, he didn't believe that the Chinese would go for communism. I mean, he thought communism could only be brought to China by the Russian Red Army, and he was right. I mean, in the earlier years, what the Comintern, you know, the Moscow's representatives to China and to other countries, and said it was China was the last course. The people didn't, were the last people to go for communism. I mean, much easier in India, for example. So Mao was wise because after the war,

• 1:27:57Speaker 00

  the Second World War, the Russian Army, Red Army, invaded China and occupied the north and northeast of China. A large hunk of land that was more than the entire Eastern Europe. So with this, this land, Stalin then supported Mao to, to fight a war against the Chiang Kai-shek. I mean Mao, of course, was the, was also Mao was the main, main man who ensured his success. Because during the war against Japan,

• 1:28:39Speaker 00

  all his colleagues wanted to fight Japan. And Mao was the only person who was against it and tried everything he could to take advantage of the war, which destroyed Chiang Kai-shek's government. Whereas Mao grew, the Red grew during the war. And so Mao was very smart. And this is one reason why Deng Xiaoping and a lot of other communist leaders were so totally devoted to Mao. Because they realized if it were not for Mao, they would never have come to power.

• 1:29:16Dwarkesh Patel?

  Right. Well, by the way, what do you make of the analogies people make when they say what happened in the US and, you know, other countries a couple of years ago with the BLM movement?

• 1:29:27Speaker 00

  Of course, it's not, it's not at all comparable. I mean, the Cultural Revolution, I mean, I think maybe people just saw statues being toppled.

• 1:29:37Dwarkesh Patel?

  Right.

• 1:29:38Speaker 00

  I don't know what else. I mean, you know, a few things, superficial things. The Cultural Revolution was nothing like that. I mean, nobody could, you know, you couldn't even comprehend the horror of the Cultural Revolution in the society, the fear, the destruction. I mean, you know, China is really totally destroyed. I mean, there was no antiquity in the private hands, you know, wiped out, taken by the, by the regime. I just, it's nothing like that, you know, for 10 years. There were no books, no cinemas, no theaters.

• 1:30:18Speaker 00

  I mean, my mother was in, cinemas and theaters were turned into prisons and torture chambers, and my mother was imprisoned in one. And, you know, I knew how to get hold of one book. I mean, it was how difficult and how much, how impossible that was. And we, that was the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution. It's nothing like what happened in the West.

• 1:30:46Dwarkesh Patel?

  Hey, everybody. I hope you enjoyed that episode. As always, the most helpful thing you can do is to share the podcast, send it to people you think might enjoy it, put it in Twitter, your group chats, et cetera. Just blitz the world. Appreciate your listening. I'll see you next time. Cheers.