Immanuel Chung-yueh Hsü (1923–2005)

Fascinating account of the Opium War and the mid-19th century political turmoil. Another interesting segment concerns the late 19th Century Reform movement. The Wade-Giles encoding of Chinese names is a drawback, and I find all the apostrophes in the names difficult to work with. On the positive side, though, the index is quite complete and valuable (although there are some omissions that I have noticed).

However Hsu's view of Mao (which amounts almost to hagiography) starkly contrasts with the work of Chang and Halliday ("Mao: the Unknown Story"). One needs to find some bridge between these two works. Perhaps it is best to read Hsu first (I did the reverse) and then read C&H for a modifying update. Certainly Hsu tends to drastically underplay the disastrous impacts of certain events on the Chinese people, including the Taiping Rebellion, the Japanese depredations, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. He is more interested in the political machinations, rather than the social and cultural impacts.

But even in the political machinations, there are questions. For example he says that Stalin was always against Mao, where C&H claim that Mao was Stalin's favorite and that Stalin essentially made Mao.

Also, Hsu endorses the idea that humiliation and losing face is the greatest tragedy suffered by the Chinese people. It was worth any sacrifice, including mass extinctions, in order to return the insults on the arrogant parties that would dare to disrespect the Chinese. Here is a typical statement: "Like all patriotic Chinese, Mao had always wanted to rectify the injuries China had suffered in the past" (page 682).

It's interesting that Hsu claims that Krushchev planned to bomb the Chinese nuclear bomb facilities in 1964 just prior to the first successful Chinese detonation of a nuclear weapon. He was removed from the leadership by Brezhnev and Kosygin for this. But Mao's megalomania drove Brezhnev (or at least military figures under his leadership), just five years later, to propose to the US that Russia destroy China's nuclear capability (with the US colluding or, at least, standing aside during this act). But Nixon angrily rejected this plan.

Further to the issue of humiliation and losing face, Hsu misrepresents the visit of Nixon to China in 1972, particularly the political ramifications of it. His main focus is on the extent to which the Americans humbled themselves, thereby providing the Chinese with valuable pride inflation. Along similar lines, Hsu justifies the costly and pointless Chinese invasion of Viet Nam in 1978 as necessary from the point of view of Chinese pride requirements (for having been insulted by the earlier Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia).

Overall, this is an important book and essential reading.… (meer)