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Studies in Environment and History
Mao's War against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China
In clear and compelling prose, Judith Shapiro relates the great, untold story of the devastating impact of Chinese politics on China's environment during the Mao years. Maoist China provides an example of extreme human interference in the natural world in an era in which human relationships were also unusually distorted. Under Mao, the traditional Chinese ideal of "harmony between heaven and humans" was abrogated in favor of Mao's insistence that "Man Must Conquer Nature." Mao and the Chinese Communist Party's "war" to bend the physical world to human will often had disastrous consequences both for human beings and the natural environment. Mao's War Against Nature argues that the abuse of people and the abuse of nature are often linked. Shapiro's account, told in part through the voices of average Chinese citizens and officials who lived through and participated in some of the destructive campaigns, is both eye-opening and heartbreaking. Judith Shapiro teaches environmental politics at American University in Washington, DC. She is co-author, with Liang Heng, of several well known books on China, including Son of the Revolution (Random House, 1984) and After the Nightmare (Knopf, 1986). She was one of the first Americans to work in China after the normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979.
332 pages, Hardcover
First published March 5, 2001
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May 5, 2010Isabel Hilton, editor of the website China Dialogue has chosen to discuss
Mao’s War Against Nature
by Judith Shapiro on FiveBooks as one of the top five on her subject -China’s Environmental Crisis, saying that:
“…Mao’s catastrophic belief that with the correct political and scientific approach, there are no limits to natural resources…. Mao believed the theories of Lysenko: that man is in charge of nature; that nature is there to be exploited and that anything at all can be achieved with the right political attitude and a scientific approach. Well, they called it a ‘scientific’ approach, but actually it was very bad science indeed. Lysenko’s theories produced probably the worst famine in human history. In China, between the late 50s and early 60s, between 30 and 80 million people starved to death.
Now, the abusive element of that is that nobody could argue against what Mao believed, what Mao dictated; everyone was too terrified to complain, to protest, to argue against it. And if they did, you know, they didn’t last very long. So the craziest ideas were put into practice. An awful lot of the damage that has been done to China was done during that Maoist period of millenarian socialism. For instance, they lost about 35 per cent of the grassland in Qinghai because Mao ordered that they should plough the grasslands and plant wheat – and when people said, you can’t plant wheat there, they were labelled counter-revolutionary. People were ordered to plough the grasslands, the top soil then blew away, so the wheat did not grow and the harvest failed. So they created desert. In fact, they’d been creating desert for a very long time, but it was a particularly accelerated period of creating desert which was this absolutely poisonous combination of political dictatorship and crazy science.
The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/isabe...
“…Mao’s catastrophic belief that with the correct political and scientific approach, there are no limits to natural resources…. Mao believed the theories of Lysenko: that man is in charge of nature; that nature is there to be exploited and that anything at all can be achieved with the right political attitude and a scientific approach. Well, they called it a ‘scientific’ approach, but actually it was very bad science indeed. Lysenko’s theories produced probably the worst famine in human history. In China, between the late 50s and early 60s, between 30 and 80 million people starved to death.
Now, the abusive element of that is that nobody could argue against what Mao believed, what Mao dictated; everyone was too terrified to complain, to protest, to argue against it. And if they did, you know, they didn’t last very long. So the craziest ideas were put into practice. An awful lot of the damage that has been done to China was done during that Maoist period of millenarian socialism. For instance, they lost about 35 per cent of the grassland in Qinghai because Mao ordered that they should plough the grasslands and plant wheat – and when people said, you can’t plant wheat there, they were labelled counter-revolutionary. People were ordered to plough the grasslands, the top soil then blew away, so the wheat did not grow and the harvest failed. So they created desert. In fact, they’d been creating desert for a very long time, but it was a particularly accelerated period of creating desert which was this absolutely poisonous combination of political dictatorship and crazy science.
The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/isabe...
February 7, 2015
This was a very difficult book to read; not in writing style, but because of it's maddening content. Chapter four, which followed the educated youth's forced relocation to "open up wastelands" was especially terrifying. After their participation in the Red Guard, many were sent to The Great Northern wilderness where they devastated the Sanjiang Plain wetlands and Xishuangbanna rainforest. As everything around them died, they did as well: rape, malnutrition, suicide, and illness caused by poor sanitation rocked their lives.
Shapiro has done strong research, but a few stereotypes of Chinese religion ran rampant and unchecked throughout the work:even if quoted by an informant, it's the job of a historian to depict how the original constructs of Daoism may be different than "peace with nature" (at least in a footnote).
Also frightening is that I found Mao's speeches and terminology--a war against nature--to be eerily similar to the propaganda in the United States surrounding "Eco-terrorism." Here there is an unstated common base that I find chilling. Perhaps I'll make a list of quotes for a side-by-side comparison to horrify others as well.
Shapiro has done strong research, but a few stereotypes of Chinese religion ran rampant and unchecked throughout the work:even if quoted by an informant, it's the job of a historian to depict how the original constructs of Daoism may be different than "peace with nature" (at least in a footnote).
Also frightening is that I found Mao's speeches and terminology--a war against nature--to be eerily similar to the propaganda in the United States surrounding "Eco-terrorism." Here there is an unstated common base that I find chilling. Perhaps I'll make a list of quotes for a side-by-side comparison to horrify others as well.
June 30, 2018
Shapiro, Judith. Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001
Topic: Judith Shapiro’s Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China examines the geopolitical, domestic, and socioeconomic contexts of China’s Great Leap Forward and its forced industrialization. It touches on China’s Communist Party’s relationship with its people and nature to deliberate on how its treatment of the environment directly correlated to its treatment of its people. This deliberation allows for a mapping of the human and environmental costs of Mao’s projects of high modernism within the region and his attempts at elevating China’s geopolitical power to rectify its global spheres of influence. Mao attempts to establish China as a contender against the West. This is pursued through legalistic and technocratic efforts to conquer nature with humanity, illustrating how conquest became intertwined with ideological underpinnings of nationalism that equated project failure, or acknowledgment of environmental limitations, as state defeat and weakness.
Scope: Mao’s War Against Nature considers China’s Great Leap Forward in the mid-twentieth century, its relationships with Mao administration and his Communist Party, and how these aspects affected the country’s people, environment, and its development into the future. It observes the agencies of the West, nature, disease, and humanity through the acknowledgement of their limitations and how these limitations framed China’s forced industrialization and hampered collectivization and nationalization of industry. Nationalism and Confucianism are also given place as actors to deliberate on how they framed China’s social philosophies on the individual and state level to promote environmental conquest and obedience to state authority.
Historical Question(s): Shapiro conducts a thorough examination of Mao’s political relationships with China, its people, and its environment to deliberate on how they affected the country’s development. This examination poses the following questions: did Mao’s combination of nationalism with Confucianism and legalism promote the militarization of the state against nature, did Mao’s anti-intellectual industrial pursuits inevitably exhaust China’s abilities to undergo unfettered high modernist projects, how intertwined were the Communist Party’s relationships with the people and the environment, and how did the collectivization of industry and standardization of agrarian policies effect social tensions and collapse? It also considers the states coercive power in China, and its abilities to suppress dissent, to ask how these processes affect the malleability of historical memory in China regarding Maoist philosophy today.
Thesis(es): Mao’s War Against Nature’s main thesis is that the states’ treatment of the environment and its people are interrelated, and that hostilities waged against either of these entities have severe consequences for both in society. It argues that Mao’s actions through technocratic fallacies intentionally discounted Western scientific and engineering prowess to the detriment of China’s pursuits of modernization, exhausting its climate, its resources, and its labor force. It also argues that Mao’s militaristic perspective against nature drove him to utilize his people as cannon fodder in pursuit of its conquest, arguing that this has had lasting effects with regards to the current levels of consumerism and materialism in China and its economic engine.
Sources: Shapiro utilizes numerous primary, secondary, and reference sources to illustrate the socioeconomic contexts of China during Mao’s Communist Party’s reign. Governmental transcripts, engineering reports, and trade data are also utilized to depict the state’s relationship with its environment and its people in its conquests against nature. Firsthand accounts and interviews are utilized to combat the malleability of historical memory and the romanticism, or cognitive dissonance, often engaged in China with regards to Mao’s era of coercive control.
Topic: Judith Shapiro’s Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China examines the geopolitical, domestic, and socioeconomic contexts of China’s Great Leap Forward and its forced industrialization. It touches on China’s Communist Party’s relationship with its people and nature to deliberate on how its treatment of the environment directly correlated to its treatment of its people. This deliberation allows for a mapping of the human and environmental costs of Mao’s projects of high modernism within the region and his attempts at elevating China’s geopolitical power to rectify its global spheres of influence. Mao attempts to establish China as a contender against the West. This is pursued through legalistic and technocratic efforts to conquer nature with humanity, illustrating how conquest became intertwined with ideological underpinnings of nationalism that equated project failure, or acknowledgment of environmental limitations, as state defeat and weakness.
Scope: Mao’s War Against Nature considers China’s Great Leap Forward in the mid-twentieth century, its relationships with Mao administration and his Communist Party, and how these aspects affected the country’s people, environment, and its development into the future. It observes the agencies of the West, nature, disease, and humanity through the acknowledgement of their limitations and how these limitations framed China’s forced industrialization and hampered collectivization and nationalization of industry. Nationalism and Confucianism are also given place as actors to deliberate on how they framed China’s social philosophies on the individual and state level to promote environmental conquest and obedience to state authority.
Historical Question(s): Shapiro conducts a thorough examination of Mao’s political relationships with China, its people, and its environment to deliberate on how they affected the country’s development. This examination poses the following questions: did Mao’s combination of nationalism with Confucianism and legalism promote the militarization of the state against nature, did Mao’s anti-intellectual industrial pursuits inevitably exhaust China’s abilities to undergo unfettered high modernist projects, how intertwined were the Communist Party’s relationships with the people and the environment, and how did the collectivization of industry and standardization of agrarian policies effect social tensions and collapse? It also considers the states coercive power in China, and its abilities to suppress dissent, to ask how these processes affect the malleability of historical memory in China regarding Maoist philosophy today.
Thesis(es): Mao’s War Against Nature’s main thesis is that the states’ treatment of the environment and its people are interrelated, and that hostilities waged against either of these entities have severe consequences for both in society. It argues that Mao’s actions through technocratic fallacies intentionally discounted Western scientific and engineering prowess to the detriment of China’s pursuits of modernization, exhausting its climate, its resources, and its labor force. It also argues that Mao’s militaristic perspective against nature drove him to utilize his people as cannon fodder in pursuit of its conquest, arguing that this has had lasting effects with regards to the current levels of consumerism and materialism in China and its economic engine.
Sources: Shapiro utilizes numerous primary, secondary, and reference sources to illustrate the socioeconomic contexts of China during Mao’s Communist Party’s reign. Governmental transcripts, engineering reports, and trade data are also utilized to depict the state’s relationship with its environment and its people in its conquests against nature. Firsthand accounts and interviews are utilized to combat the malleability of historical memory and the romanticism, or cognitive dissonance, often engaged in China with regards to Mao’s era of coercive control.
March 24, 2015
When I was young, I discovered pictures from China, where the streets were filled with people riding bicycles. I was overwhelmed by this display of human intelligence. Had they learned from our mistakes and taken a higher path, or had their culture taught them to respect life? I was living in Kalamazoo, where the streets were a nightmare, jammed with impatient nutjobs in speeding wheelchairs. The air was thick with methylene chloride, and the river was a PCB cesspool. If only our leaders were Chinese… sigh! Like I said, I was young.
In 1949, Mao Zedong led a revolution that overthrew the Chinese government. The victors created the People’s Republic of China, a communist state. China had suffered from a long era of exploitation by foreign powers. Mao was eager to create a prosperous industrial utopia as rapidly as possible, by any means necessary.
In 1972, Richard Nixon visited Mao and reestablished relations between the U.S. and China. Judith Shapiro was among the first Americans allowed to work there. She taught English. The outside world knew little about Red China, but Shapiro soon learned that the Maoist era had been a turbulent freak show. She described this period in her book, Mao’s War Against Nature.
Every environmental history book is a horror story, describing how clever humans survived by using technology and aggression to devour nonrenewable resources, deplete renewable resources, ravage ecosystems, and leave the bills for their children. Shapiro’s book stands out, because it examines an era of unbelievable ecocide. Maoist China repeated the classic mistakes of other civilizations, but in fast forward mode.
Mao’s high-speed modernization project was called the Great Leap Forward (1958-60). He wanted to produce more steel than Great Britain within 15 years. Peasants rapidly constructed several million primitive backyard furnaces. A hundred million people worked day and night melting tools, pots, and scrap into blobs of useless metal. Most of the furnaces were wood-fired, and deforestation was widespread. In those days, the peasants still believed the dream — that their heroic efforts would bring a new era with powerful tractors and railroads. They worked enthusiastically.
At the same time, there was a huge drive to increase grain production via bone-headed strategies. They were told that if they planted ten times as many seeds in a field, the yield would be ten times higher. Sadly, the densely grown plants rotted. But local leaders were deeply engaged in a competition to report astonishing gains in grain production, and their claims were far in excess of reality.
Because it would have been impossible to store all the grain reported, folks were ordered to make steel. The 1958 crop largely rotted in the fields, while the steel-making peasants consumed their grain reserves. In 1959, drought arrived, and the Great Famine began. Between 35 and 50 million died by 1961 — the biggest manmade famine in history.
The war on nature had another front, the Four Pests — rats, sparrows, flies, and mosquitoes. Sparrows were an enemy of the people because they ate too much grain. Schoolchildren ran around the countryside, destroying their nests and smashing their eggs. They banged pots whenever a sparrow landed. Before long, there were far fewer sparrows, and far more of the insects they used to eat. Farmers soon realized that sparrows were great allies. The birds were removed from the pest list, and replaced by bedbugs.
A core component of the Mao era was disregard for expertise. Mao hated intellectuals, scientists, and anyone else who questioned his fantasies. “Mao and his followers all too often fell into the trap of believing that because they declared something possible or true, it would be so.” Time-proven ideas were annoying superstitions that obstructed the fast lane to utopia. Knowledgeable people who voiced doubts about stupid ideas were promoted to exciting new careers in breaking rocks, exterminating forests, or worse.
When the president of Beijing University warned about the danger of rapid population growth, he was denounced and relieved of his responsibilities. Overpopulation could only be a problem in evil capitalist societies — never in a socialist paradise. China was already overpopulated in 1949, and it grew with spooky speed. Mao refused to believe the census numbers. In 1958, family planning programs were ended, and not resumed until 1971. Mao died in 1976, and in 1979, the one-child policy was implemented.
When a respected engineering professor at Qinghua University warned that the planned Sanmenxia dam on the Yellow River was stupid, and would promptly fill with silt, he was denounced and relieved of his responsibilities. The dam was built, and the reservoir filled with silt two years later, flooding a nearby town. Mao rushed to build thousands of dams, of which 2,976 had collapsed by 1980. Many were built with soil alone, by untrained peasants. Floods caused by two dam failures in 1975 killed an estimated 230,000 people.
Rubber was a strategic resource, and Mao did not want to rely on imports from capitalists. During the Cultural Revolution, hundreds of thousands of educated urban youths from bad families (i.e., intellectuals, rightists, capitalists) were shipped to the virgin rainforests north of Laos. This region was too far north for rubber, but the experts understood it was dangerous to protest. So, ancient forest was cleared, and planted with rubber. Much of it died during the winter of 1974-75. They replanted, and the trees died again. They replanted a third time, with the same result.
Looking at this era from the outside, it’s easy to see the foolishness. The only news the peasants got came from government sources — propaganda. The culture had a long tradition of obedience to superiors. Free speech and dissent were not cool. “Political campaigns so distorted human relationships that family members were driven to denounce and beat each other, neighbors spied on neighbors, schoolchildren drove teachers to suicide, and the world was turned upside down for countless millions.”
As I read, I couldn’t help but contemplate how foolish our own culture would appear to intelligent outsiders. How much of our news stream is truthful? What stories are missing? Why do we disregard the warnings of climate scientists? How can a “well-educated” population remain so ecologically illiterate? It’s 2015, the polar bears are dying, and the streets of Kalamazoo are still jammed with speeding wheelchairs. Why?
The Chinese were manipulated to pursue an ideology, and the program resulted in enormous environmental harm. It seems like consumer societies are manipulated via advertising and peer pressure to cause enormous harm via lifelong competition for status. We must continually acquire more impressive homes, cars, televisions, and on and on. A couple years ago, it was awesomely trendy to wear clothing printed with skull motifs. The following year, the skulls vanished, and the trend robots rushed to fill their wardrobes with the latest new fashions.
Anyway, Shapiro’s book is stunning. Mao is dead, and so is his ideology. The new game is the high speed pursuit of personal wealth. She mentions a few signs of hope, but it seems clear that the post-Mao era is causing far more environmental harm. The population is still growing. The pollution is horrendous. In every nation, the war on nature is winning. What would intelligent people do?
In 1949, Mao Zedong led a revolution that overthrew the Chinese government. The victors created the People’s Republic of China, a communist state. China had suffered from a long era of exploitation by foreign powers. Mao was eager to create a prosperous industrial utopia as rapidly as possible, by any means necessary.
In 1972, Richard Nixon visited Mao and reestablished relations between the U.S. and China. Judith Shapiro was among the first Americans allowed to work there. She taught English. The outside world knew little about Red China, but Shapiro soon learned that the Maoist era had been a turbulent freak show. She described this period in her book, Mao’s War Against Nature.
Every environmental history book is a horror story, describing how clever humans survived by using technology and aggression to devour nonrenewable resources, deplete renewable resources, ravage ecosystems, and leave the bills for their children. Shapiro’s book stands out, because it examines an era of unbelievable ecocide. Maoist China repeated the classic mistakes of other civilizations, but in fast forward mode.
Mao’s high-speed modernization project was called the Great Leap Forward (1958-60). He wanted to produce more steel than Great Britain within 15 years. Peasants rapidly constructed several million primitive backyard furnaces. A hundred million people worked day and night melting tools, pots, and scrap into blobs of useless metal. Most of the furnaces were wood-fired, and deforestation was widespread. In those days, the peasants still believed the dream — that their heroic efforts would bring a new era with powerful tractors and railroads. They worked enthusiastically.
At the same time, there was a huge drive to increase grain production via bone-headed strategies. They were told that if they planted ten times as many seeds in a field, the yield would be ten times higher. Sadly, the densely grown plants rotted. But local leaders were deeply engaged in a competition to report astonishing gains in grain production, and their claims were far in excess of reality.
Because it would have been impossible to store all the grain reported, folks were ordered to make steel. The 1958 crop largely rotted in the fields, while the steel-making peasants consumed their grain reserves. In 1959, drought arrived, and the Great Famine began. Between 35 and 50 million died by 1961 — the biggest manmade famine in history.
The war on nature had another front, the Four Pests — rats, sparrows, flies, and mosquitoes. Sparrows were an enemy of the people because they ate too much grain. Schoolchildren ran around the countryside, destroying their nests and smashing their eggs. They banged pots whenever a sparrow landed. Before long, there were far fewer sparrows, and far more of the insects they used to eat. Farmers soon realized that sparrows were great allies. The birds were removed from the pest list, and replaced by bedbugs.
A core component of the Mao era was disregard for expertise. Mao hated intellectuals, scientists, and anyone else who questioned his fantasies. “Mao and his followers all too often fell into the trap of believing that because they declared something possible or true, it would be so.” Time-proven ideas were annoying superstitions that obstructed the fast lane to utopia. Knowledgeable people who voiced doubts about stupid ideas were promoted to exciting new careers in breaking rocks, exterminating forests, or worse.
When the president of Beijing University warned about the danger of rapid population growth, he was denounced and relieved of his responsibilities. Overpopulation could only be a problem in evil capitalist societies — never in a socialist paradise. China was already overpopulated in 1949, and it grew with spooky speed. Mao refused to believe the census numbers. In 1958, family planning programs were ended, and not resumed until 1971. Mao died in 1976, and in 1979, the one-child policy was implemented.
When a respected engineering professor at Qinghua University warned that the planned Sanmenxia dam on the Yellow River was stupid, and would promptly fill with silt, he was denounced and relieved of his responsibilities. The dam was built, and the reservoir filled with silt two years later, flooding a nearby town. Mao rushed to build thousands of dams, of which 2,976 had collapsed by 1980. Many were built with soil alone, by untrained peasants. Floods caused by two dam failures in 1975 killed an estimated 230,000 people.
Rubber was a strategic resource, and Mao did not want to rely on imports from capitalists. During the Cultural Revolution, hundreds of thousands of educated urban youths from bad families (i.e., intellectuals, rightists, capitalists) were shipped to the virgin rainforests north of Laos. This region was too far north for rubber, but the experts understood it was dangerous to protest. So, ancient forest was cleared, and planted with rubber. Much of it died during the winter of 1974-75. They replanted, and the trees died again. They replanted a third time, with the same result.
Looking at this era from the outside, it’s easy to see the foolishness. The only news the peasants got came from government sources — propaganda. The culture had a long tradition of obedience to superiors. Free speech and dissent were not cool. “Political campaigns so distorted human relationships that family members were driven to denounce and beat each other, neighbors spied on neighbors, schoolchildren drove teachers to suicide, and the world was turned upside down for countless millions.”
As I read, I couldn’t help but contemplate how foolish our own culture would appear to intelligent outsiders. How much of our news stream is truthful? What stories are missing? Why do we disregard the warnings of climate scientists? How can a “well-educated” population remain so ecologically illiterate? It’s 2015, the polar bears are dying, and the streets of Kalamazoo are still jammed with speeding wheelchairs. Why?
The Chinese were manipulated to pursue an ideology, and the program resulted in enormous environmental harm. It seems like consumer societies are manipulated via advertising and peer pressure to cause enormous harm via lifelong competition for status. We must continually acquire more impressive homes, cars, televisions, and on and on. A couple years ago, it was awesomely trendy to wear clothing printed with skull motifs. The following year, the skulls vanished, and the trend robots rushed to fill their wardrobes with the latest new fashions.
Anyway, Shapiro’s book is stunning. Mao is dead, and so is his ideology. The new game is the high speed pursuit of personal wealth. She mentions a few signs of hope, but it seems clear that the post-Mao era is causing far more environmental harm. The population is still growing. The pollution is horrendous. In every nation, the war on nature is winning. What would intelligent people do?
February 6, 2026
This is a hard book to rate. Shapiro makes it very clear that she is incredibly smart and well educated on 20th century Chinese environmental policies, campaigns, and movements, but it is written in such an academic way which makes it fairly boring to read. I was never super excited to return to this book and keep reading, it almost felt like I was reading this books purely for the sake of educating myself more about Maoist China's environmental issues. This is a very good and compelling book in terms of academia, and a must read for anyone studying Chinese or environmental history, but unfortunately, it is not very engaging.
September 13, 2018
A clear summary of events in a time of rapid change and chaos.
A good introduction to the environmental history of a chaotic period in China’s recent past, 1949 to 1978, which has relevance to understanding China today. Despite occasional minor inaccuracies, this is a valuable resource for anyone hoping to understand the relationship of modern Chinese citizens to their environment, and the roots of government policies.
A good introduction to the environmental history of a chaotic period in China’s recent past, 1949 to 1978, which has relevance to understanding China today. Despite occasional minor inaccuracies, this is a valuable resource for anyone hoping to understand the relationship of modern Chinese citizens to their environment, and the roots of government policies.
Read
May 12, 2025Convincingly argues that Mao's military-esque developmental ideology lead to ecological disaster. However, it places too much importance on ideology's role and not enough on "growth" as a throughline between Mao-era and post-scoialism.
January 25, 2023
Decent account of environmental problems greatly hampered by a lazy (and kinda racist) cultural explanation. Difficult to salvage for serious scholarship
March 20, 2023
"Beyond China's importance to global environmental issues, there is an additional, even more compelling reason to investigate and explain the environmental dynamics of the Mao years: few cases of environmental degradation so clearly reveal the human and environmental costs incurred when human beings, particularly those who determine policy, view themselves as living in an oppositional relationship to nature - as well as to each other - and behave accordingly."
Cannot emphasize enough how fascinating this read was - the modern environmentalist movement has so much to gain from studying the relationship between humans and the environment under Mao (and from China in general).
Cannot emphasize enough how fascinating this read was - the modern environmentalist movement has so much to gain from studying the relationship between humans and the environment under Mao (and from China in general).
January 9, 2008
Mao truly did declare war on nature, and this book captures it all in way that I found enjoyable to read.
February 21, 2010
Compelling look at the relationship between Mao's political and environmental policies. Probably not the easiest read for undergraduates, but interesting nonetheless.
Read
July 28, 2011Probably a boring subject for most but you have to check this out to see mow fucked he was. Sadly, many of the mistakes that Mao made are still being repeated today in North America.
February 5, 2015
The villanization of Mao's character clouded the deep analysis and research that went into this book. So sad.
December 8, 2010
Just finished this. It was very insightful and I really enjoyed reading the personal stories!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews