Mao

I have just finished reading 'Mao-The untold story' by Yung Chang. I was a little bit wary at first, that it would be another 'Wild Swans', Yung Chang's global bestseller about life in China during communism. I enjoyed Wild Swans, but having read quite a few books along the same lines, feel that I don't need to read anymore.
'Mao'as it says on the cover, is "An atom bomb of a book". Yung Chang is quite obviously biased against the great helmsmen, but through meticulous research gives a very thorough description of the events of his life.
As I was reading the book, one of my colleagues asked me if this was the book which talked about Mao being a paedophile. Mao was a lot of things, but I felt sure that was not a paedophile. It is very British to try and find something so salacious about people in history. Franklin had syphilis, Alexander the Great was gay etc. Yung Chang touches on Mao's obvious liking of dancing girls and his misogyny , but although her hatred of Mao is obvious, his sex life is secondary.
I came away with the view that Mao was worse than Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler all put together.
The numbers speak for themselves- 60 million people perished in the famine of 1957-1961.The problem being, is that there was no famine and Mao insisted on sending large amounts of food grown in China to Russia and Eastern Europe, to pay for advanced weapons technology and to curry favour. China produced enough food for it's own people. Mao said at the time that he was willing to sacrifice 300m of his own people, to make China a superpower. He was alone in making these decisions, and any that objected were soon denounced and tortured, as millions of ordinary people were during his reign. Deng Xio Ping came off well in the book, as he only gained power during the final years of the cultural revolution. Although Deng immediately began to reverse the damage that Mao did upon his death, Mao has never been denounced, by name, by the Chinese Leadership.
Some excuse Mao by saying he fought the Japanese and brought the Country together, but he did not take part in, or order, even one battle against the Japanese.
Years later when trying to gain the technology to build a nuclear device, he was to tell the Japanese, that he did not want war reparations as the Japanese had done him the favour of weakening the Nationalists.
Mao was by far the most evil man to have lived in the last century, and the saddest fact is,is that his wickedness was inflicted on his own people.