Renato Rojas’s Reviews > A Critical Introduction to Mao > Status Update

Chapter 10 For Truly Great Men, Look to This Age Alone: Was Mao Zedong a New Emperor is another trash chapter that tries to make parallels to Mao and past Chinese emperor's, despite criticizing this method from Jiang Chung And Jon Halliday. Thoroughly dry and boring read so far. Seems this will be the non-climatic conclusion of this book.

Chapter 9 Mao the Man and Mao the Icon is utter trash. The essay dives into the tired old "cult" crap. It shows how Mao always hated the elevation of himself and even commented how it should be "deleted" and yet somehow the author tries to paint him as a Machiavellian using it for his aims. It also deals with just plain rumor mongering. A worthless chapter.

Chapter 8 deals with Mao & gender. Even prior to Communism young Mao was a champion of women's rights. In the Jiangxi Soviet and the PRC women still had a long way to go but their lives did substantially change. After his death their status and material conditions deteriorated.

Chapter 7 deals with Mao and his dealing with intellectuals. The author here correctly surmises that Mao's relationship is one that is dialectical, in that intellectuals have much to teach the masses but much to learn themselves. However, the author's own bourgeois bias is present in that he thinks the intellectuals still constituted an elite.