u/HanshinWeirdo

To preface, my primary area of study is Mao-era China. The Khmer Rouge comes into this, but mainly as one of the questionable foreign policy decisions made in China in the '70s. It also biases me, I am naturally going to apply what I already know to the subject.

My perception is that the Khmer Rouge seem to have taken elements of China's experience, from guerrilla warfare to crash industrialization fueled by agricultural exports to rapid collectivization, and just sort of tried to replicate them in a very naive way. In China, there was always an element of experimentation, when the Great Leap Forward model of collectivization didn't work very well (to say the least), the CCP pulled back, and then during the Cultural Revolution other models were tried which did work better. Same with industrialization, backyard steel furnaces didn't work, but rural industries built later did, to an extent. There's kind of a process of negotiation between city and country, where the cities and industry were favored, but over time peasants were able to carve out some de-facto guarantees for their own welfare. In Cambodia, it seems like the leadership of the Khmer Rouge took a look at the most extreme phase of the Great Leap Forward, and just sort of decided to do that x5, with no real flexibility, at least at the top levels.

Ideologically as well, the Khmer Rouge appears to have taken the Chinese revolutions nuanced, sometimes uneasy incorporation of nationalism (which in the case of China involved things like trying to re-define the Chinese nation as a concept away from Han nationalism), and just run with it, basically becoming Khmer chauvinists. Again, while the CCP found itself having no choice but to rely on the peasants, and coming up with ideological and organizational ways to still consider itself a "proletarian" movement, despite its rural base, the Khmer Rouge appears to have embraced an approach which obviated the need for any actual proletarians to even exist.

Am I on to something, or am I just shoving Cambodia into a framework that I already understand, where it doesn't really fit?

I went to see what books are recommended for those who want to learn more about PRC history, and I was distressed to see Li Zhisui's The Private Life of Chairman Mao being endorsed by a sub which aspires to genuine rigor. While I don't always agree with the conclusions of the other books on the list, the ones which I am familiar with are all serious sources which can generally at least be relied upon to get basic facts right. The Private Life of Chairman Mao is not such a book. Especially troubling is that it is the only "entry level" book for the whole PRC era, which suggests that someone might use it as a starting point for the period as a whole.

I'll draw heavily on Gao Mobo's The Battle for China's Past, since that contains the best condensed critique that I've found, but I am aware that Gao himself has a strong bias, and so will avoid heavily relying on his interpretation, and instead refer only to cited facts. In any case, Gao goes into significantly more detail than I can here, and I would recommend consulting his book directly, though of course with a critical eye.

The first issue with Li's book is that many of its most extreme claims are found only in its English edition, and absent entirely from the Chinese version (Gao 102). It might be possible to claim that these inconsistencies are due to not wishing to offend Chinese readers who might be sympathetic to Mao, but this interpretation does not hold up. Beyond its most lurid parts, the Chinese edition also tones down claims of just how much access Li had to Mao. In at least one case, a statement which Li claims as part of a private conversation in the English version actually turns out to be from a public speech, and is described as such in the Chinese edition (Gao 103). A discrepancy like this is not easy to explain away. It demonstrates a willingness to say one thing to one audience and something else to another, undermining Li's trustworthiness as a narrator. If he had corroborating evidence, that would be one thing, but often we are expected to simply take him at his word.

Not only does Li fail to present much evidence outside of his own testimony, in some cases outside evidence contradicts claim that he makes. A very concrete example is his claim to have been made Mao's doctor in 1954, when in fact Mao's medical records show that he only took up the post in 1957 (Gao 104). Furthermore, while Li claims authority on the basis of his proximity to Mao, numerous other people with similar proximity, including other members of Mao's medical staff, have denounced Li's book as largely fictitious (Gao 103). Notably this includes Mao's bodyguard Wang Dongxing, who Li's book depicts rather favorably (107). Li also claims to have been present at various high-level meetings, despite his lack of any notable state or party office. It strains credibility to believe that Mao would bring his general practitioner along when even secretaries, bodyguards, and the like were excluded (Gao 106).

The Battle for China's Past goes on in roughly this way for several pages, presenting claims that Li makes and then demonstrating that they are, at the very least, quite implausible. Gao does certainly make some radical, although better sourced, claims of his own, but those are tangential to the basic reality that The Private Life of Chairman Mao should, at best, be read very critically, carefully checking for corroboration whenever possible, and is not suitable as an introductory text. I therefore do not think that it should be on this sub's book list, especially when presented without caveats.

Citation:

Gao, Mobo. The Battle For China’s Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution. 1st ed., Pluto Press, 2008.