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Alain Roux Le singe et le tigre: Mao, un destin chinois (Monkey and tiger: Mao, a Chinese destiny), Paris, Larousse 2009, 1127 pages.We now have a monumental biography of Mao in French: nearly 900 pages of text and 200 pages of notes! And all this text is not only highly detailed, it is also reliable, generally accurate, and always impartial. Right in the introduction (p. 9), Alain Roux tells the reader that the author of a biography ought to feel some empathy for his subject. Most gratifyingly, this empathy is manifested especially, and most discreetly, at the very end of the book, following a long display of profes- sional rigour, just when the man behind the biographer was required to speak his mind. Throughout the book, Roux does not spare Mao, and rightly so. He tries to understand Mao and explain his motivations, but then ar- rives at objective conclusions: the verdict is measured and well argued. Roux's conclusion: Mao was no crude tyrant, but a utopian who sought to do good to people, without asking for their opinion. As Mao never doubted his illusions and failed to admit his faults, he ended up causing genuine dis- aster. Thanks to the Leninist system that conferred absolute power to the top leader, China had to wait until his death for its people's renaissance... and for the Chinese revolution to rebound, albeit by rejecting its tenets.The detailed table of contents (pp. 1116-1127) facilitates browsing a given passage to check up on an event, a theme or even just a date, not only in Mao's life but also in the history of Chinese communism and of the People's Republic until 1976. There are three major phases: the adolescent and young rebel up until Jinggangshan (late 1927); the revolutionary (1927-1945); and finally the despot (1945-1976). Placing the second major break at the end of the Second World War rather than 1949 does not trouble me, as Mao enjoyed despotic power at Yan'an right from the early 1940s. The last two parts begin (pp. 221-222 and 484) with a clear resume of the stages to follow. Also, at the start of some chapters (such as Chapter 9, p. 384, Chapter 12, p. 534, and Chapter 13, p. 597), one or two illuminating pages of material announce the major themes developed in the 50 or so pages to follow. But sometimes it is the conclusion that cap- tures the essence with vigour (as, for instance, in Chapter 6, p. 275): "In the space of three years (from Jinggangshan to the bloody repression of the Futian mutiny), there came about the transformation of an intellectual en- gaged in politics to liberate the oppressed and deliver his country from the oppression of great powers, into a wily and cruel warlord who held that the end justified the means."I cannot resist noting the rich anthology of Mao's quotations, some well known and others pure finds. In 1919 he wrote in his diary: "There is an ex- tremist party of violence... The head of this party is a certain Marx, born in Germany" (p. 70). The following year, he converted to federalism: the Hunan republic was "the only formula for saving China" (p. 86); but this did not prevent him from declaring three years later: "We are still opposed to a federation of autonomous provinces" (p. 130). It was the first attack of political amnesia, Roux observes sagely. The nationalist-turned-federalist and then disciplined communist militant was hiding his brutal metamor- phosis. Another contradiction within a few years' gap, attributable less to Party diktat than to experience and personal reflection: in 1930, he warned against the declassed (Marx's Lumpenproletariat) - "dangerous men, ready to sell themselves to the ruling classes," even though he had counted on their military prowess and revolutionary capacity in the famous "Analysis of classes in rural society" in 1926 (pp. 264-65). There were more contra- dictions, and more disastrous ones, as at the height of the Great Leap rav- ages (pp. 643-45 and passim), when strokes of lucidity punctuated the il- lusions to which he clung to the detriment of tens of millions of famine victims. …

Alain Roux, Le singe et le tigre : Mao, un destin chinois (Monkey and tiger: Mao, a Chinese destiny)