Original subtitles

the great Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong

once declared the death of 300 million

of his own people would be a price worth

paying

he was basically saying I can lose half

of my people to get what I want I'm

ready to take that risk that's a brutal

callous way of thinking ultimately his

heartless political regime oversees the

slaughter of millions how he was

convinced and politics had to be blind

this is the story of a sadistic autocrat

addicted to brutality from his communist

wounds through his reign of cruelty and

revenge Mao was in the lead of a Hitler

and Stalin

even after his death the fear Mao

instilled keeps him revered to this day

[Music]

in 1911 China's age-old imperial order

is collapsing after 2,000 years of

dynastic rule the people overthrow their

Emperor what follows is a decade of

violent lawless anarchy China was in

deep depression by the late 19th century

early 20th century yet an imperial

system that didn't permit debate or

discussion or criticism so if you are

unhappy with the situation which you

were born you had to repair you have to

kick against you had become revolution

out of the ruins of the empire two

political groups with opposing

ideologies begin to emerge the

Nationalists dedicated to transforming

China into a westward looking capitalist

Republic and the Communists a small

group inspired by Lenin's Bolshevik

Revolution in Russia

both claimed to act for the six hundred

million peasants living in near medieval

conditions but this clash of ideologies

shows the seeds for a bloody civil war

that will ravage China for over two

decades

a young farmer's son mao zedong

experiences firsthand both the hardships

of imperial rule and the ruthlessness

with which the army executes rebelling

peasants if you look at the experiences

that he had particularly as a teenager

you can see many things that are going

to influence the way that he behaved

later on against this bloody backdrop

Mao grows into an angry rebel looking

for a cause keen to be considered an

intellectual he reads translations of

European philosophy but when in 1917 at

the age of 24 he finds Marxist

literature it strikes a chord where he

read a manifesto the comenta manifesto

and he read in it the perfect

description of why China was humiliated

in the way that it was Mao picks up on

that and from then on his committed

communism

[Music]

[Music]

radicalized by his mentors at Beijing

University by 1921 Mao is a fully

fledged left-wing activist

[Music]

he is convinced communism is the only

route to a successful revolution because

the party has powerful friends it wasn't

his sympathy for Chinese peasants that

made him a communist mouse spotted were

most important thing that his China's

most powerful neighbor Russia was

determined to put Chinese Communist

Party in power so in 1922 just one year

after its official inception Mao joins

the fledgling Chinese Communist Party

he believes only they have the

ruthlessness necessary to seize power

and he is intent on being on the winning

side

[Music]

but in 1924 mouth' nationalist rivals

snatch power and are established as

China's official government Mao realizes

he holds the key to how China's

communists can fight back and he has

what becomes the first of many clashes

with his Russian comrades the Russians

were intimately involved in the Chinese

revolution in the Chinese Communist

Party and certainly he was one of their

anointed when they were fighting the

Nationalists but there was always this

sense that the Russians were trying to

tell him how to run his revolution they

were trying to tell the Chinese

Communists how to behave and now would

repeatedly say on the ground this is not

how it works

Mao is convinced the Chinese revolution

must be ignited in a completely

different way to the revolution in

Russia the Russians believed that

revolution came from within the urban

poor and now would say no revolution in

China comes from the peasantry it comes

from the people in the countryside it's

a completely different system and you

can't tell me what to do

mouths stubborn realization that the

spark of revolution has to arise from

China's peasants becomes the cornerstone

of his political philosophy for for

decades to come

over the next few years as the

Communists focus on building their

numbers mouths attention is on climbing

the ladder

in 1927 party superiors give the now 34

year old Mao a grand title

commander-in-chief of the Red Army in

reality it's a small ragtag militia

mouths task to lead them out to the

villages to stir up revolution for Mao

Zedong it's a life-changing experience

[Music]

[Applause]

his method for revolution is simple turn

the peasants against their landowners

recalling from his student philosophy

books that the end justifies the means

Mao doesn't care who gets hurt in every

single village the villagers are

assembled

and forced to denounce a number of very

carefully selected victims seen as

tyrants or vandals or traitors

there are stories of people taking evil

oppressors as the masses and stringing

them up and criticizing them and

executing them the violence of nineteen

twenty seven marks the official

beginning of the bloody Chinese Civil

War and it teaches Mao a lesson one that

serves him well in his inexorable rise

to power violence works he said from

that time on he was convinced that

politics had to be violent because

people don't give up power willingly as

they dragged from them famously he said

all power grows out of the barrel of a

gun

[Music]

this brutality has a personal effect on

Mao that is positively perverse when he

toured the villages and the witnessed

the violence and atrocities firsthand as

he said himself he changed he felt a

kind of ecstasy that was his word as he

had never experienced before

Mao becomes a sadist intoxicated by

violence itself and this is only the

beginning

within the Chinese Communist Party

mouths talents are recognised his career

takes off but far away from the wars

frontline the leaving of the army was

left in the hands of others and now

found himself with this political role

Winfred with the role of a political

commissar a commissar is a political

fixer responsible for enforcing right

thinking in the party's rank-and-file

[Music]

this role teaches him another crucial

lesson controlling what people think can

make you supremely powerful he was

already developing a personality cult

people were already talking about Mao

Zedong thought about him as a some kind

of philosophical leader of the Communist

Party appointing himself supreme

authority on communist thought is a

critical position that Mao leverages on

his masterly rise to supremacy

[Music]

his move to the top is accelerated

further when Outsiders take advantage of

the political chaos in China

[Music]

in 1931 China's age-old enemy Japan

invades it seizes the entire northern

province of Manchuria

the nationalist government puts up a

fight but it's not enough a full-scale

Japanese invasion is on the cards

the Communists try to take advantage of

the mayhem to topple the Nationalists

but fail mouths name is made during a

year-long retreat to evade the

nationalist army the so called long

march of 1935 as the death toll mounts

Mao finds himself practically the last

man standing

now simply stayed alive every time more

loyal communists follow the advice of

their superiors and got killed

Mao made it another rung at the ladder

and so at the age of 42 through the

strategic use of violence and thought

control and a degree of luck

Mao Zedong achieves his aim he is

appointed leader of the Chinese

Communist Party a position from which he

can initiate his master plan to become

ruler of all China

[Music]

by early 1937 Mao Zedong's communists

are under attack from both the Chinese

nationalists led by the pro-western

general Chiang kai-shek and the Japanese

invaders looking to crush an unstable

nation

[Music]

as the newly anointed leader of the

Communist Party of China Mao Zedong

bases himself at you know it's a

bombed-out mountain town wrecked by the

Civil War but its Fame spreads far and

wide it's popularly believed to be a

communist utopia a place for radicals

intellectuals and the idealistic youths

to think freely there were teenagers and

of course they thought the communism was

for equality for a decade they've been

flocking they're all in the cause of

liberating China they didn't think

Chiang kai-shek was doing a good enough

job fighting Japan so these young people

including my own father then went to the

north where Mao was thinking that they

would join the fight against the

Japanese

[Music]

but Mao has other plans for them his

intention is to turn the yen on

Communist faithful into a force that is

utterly obedient to him and that will

take him to power

he actually saw Japanese invasion and

the war as an opportunity to destroy

Chiang kai-shek state to enable him to

seize power after the war was over to do

this he takes the lessons in violence

and manipulation he learns as a younger

man and enhances them into a signature

toolkit of terror

first he eradicate the principle of an

egalitarian utopia and sets up a

hierarchy with him at the top in yen and

there was absolutely no equality housing

was graded food was graded the clothes

was graded amuel Mao was able to wear

the sort of fine cotton

imported from nationalist areas Mao then

uses his power to set a trap luring

potential opponents into the open

now starts to suggest that people could

criticize him openly let's have a debate

about this let's contradict each other

let's struggle together to work out what

is best for us one group takes their

complaints to a man they nominate as

their representative Wang Shiwei

a writer wash where was their hero

he spoke their disillusionment with

communism Wang publicizes his followers

grievances posting their criticisms for

all to see Wow

when to see one should waste posters and

saw how crowds of people regarded why

should we ask their hero with Wang

exposed mouse whoop sin to action and

puts into practice his conviction that

through violence comes power

[Music]

Mao subjects Wang's away to a uniquely

excruciating method of knee breaking the

so called

Tiger bench of all the instruments of

torture available its mouths personal

favorite

using torture Mao can get Wang Shiwei

to say anything he makes a false

confession that he is a nationalist spy

what's more he is forced to implicate

innocent comrades though nothing he says

will prevent his execution because Mao

is determined to send a message if you

don't think the way Mao wants you to

think you will die

[Music]

once we was killed by mouse KGB

[Music]

that had a really devastating effect on

these young people

[Music]

it's not long before Mao extends his

campaign of torture to spread terror

through the ranks he develops his

powerful dramatic instinct and if you're

going to do something let me tell mom's

biggest scale as you can so others learn

and profit from it or learn and a fight

but he's careful never to get his hands

dirty now is always a shadowy figure at

the back I don't think you'll find any

evidence of now pulling any triggers or

actively hanging anybody violence was

something that he got other people to do

for him and this would escalate

throughout his life

just like Stalin in the Soviet Union Mao

justifies his terror campaign by

claiming to see spies everywhere

Mao had no doubt they weren't spies his

real objective was to scare these young

people and mold them into a army before

his future use

from this moment killing and torture are

firmly established as the core of his

personal political philosophy violence

is not an accidental aspect of maoism it

is a necessary part he said don't

execute them before you've got

everything out of you can

the result is that Mao becomes leader of

a brainwashed army of half a million

loyal through fear

by 1945 China has been under siege by

the Japanese for eight years with

millions homeless China is on its knees

and ripe for revolution

the time is right for Mao to make his

move

now comes down from the hills of Yin on

his army swells to three million

brandishing military hardware provided

by Communist ally Starling

by 1949 the Nationalists lack both

public support and the will to fight on

their leader general Chiang kai-shek

resigns

[Applause]

just days later mao zedong announces he

is the supreme leader of 600 million

people the birth of this new nation is

the culmination of 27 years of terror

torture and manipulation but he is

greeted as a hero by the people Mao was

genuinely popular among ordinary Chinese

by 14th why because he led a peasant

revolution he'd thrown off centuries of

oppression he'd overcome an annual it's

a wall of the Japanese the nationís he

said we now have stood up as a people

and we can create our own world

[Music]

what the Chinese people don't realize is

that their darkest days under Mao are

yet to come

by 1950 under Chairman Mao Zedong's new

communist regime China is still

desperately poor recovering from three

decades of bloody war and revolution as

supreme leader Mao proclaims

industrialization on a massive scale is

the key to transforming his nation into

an economic superpower and he's going to

achieve this virtually overnight

no matter the human cost Mao calls his

scheme the Great Leap Forward

the idea of the Great Leap Forward was

supposedly to take China into the future

to create this communist utopia and to

do it in just 15 years

the plan is to buy ready-made factories

from his Russian allies and pay for them

with grain grown by the peasants of

China Mao had this dream

even before he conquered China and to

fulfill this dream Mao needed to buy a

vast quantities of nuclear technology

and equipment missile technology and

equipment the whole range of military

industrial complexes the Chairman has no

doubt that his vision will seed China's

meteoric rise to vast wealth and global

domination with him at the helm

but it all depends on everyone doing

exactly what they are told

[Music]

mouse starts by outlawing private

enterprise in the countryside every

scrap of grain will now be owned by the

state the grain goes straight from the

fields into state granaries no private

market no private trading then he strips

his peasants of all their possessions

ordering them to live and work on vast

collective farms collectivization really

is nothing but stripping people from

their every little bit of private

property

the houses are confiscated tools pots

pans utensils become collective life

stock is collectivized Mao sets

impossibly high production targets for

these collective farms and the peasants

are told they won't receive food rations

if they don't hit their quotas

quite literally people who are unable to

work or starve to death this includes

children pregnant women the elderly all

of them are cut off from the food supply

[Music]

it's not long before the situation's

spirals out of control the starving

people grow weaker and progressively

unable to work so instead of leading to

a Great Leap Forward it results in an

absolute disaster across the country

millions starve to death as food

production collapses

[Music]

Mao believes the problem lies not with

his brutal policy but with the nation's

birds eating the people's grain so he

issues a dictate the Chinese people are

to eradicate every last sparrow

one of if maddest ideas was war on the

sparrows he decided that if the Chinese

could kill all the sparrows in the

country then the ten grains that each of

those Pharaoh's ate would be food for

humans all seems very logical so he has

the Chinese running around beating pots

throwing rocks at sparrows keeping them

away until they fall dead from the sky

they would hunt down the bird for days

weeks they would threaten him that made

a noise so the birds couldn't settle to

rest in sleep the bird would drop from

the sky they gather them in their

thousand whole parade them around shown

his great contribution the village of

made to food production well done

Chairman Mao except now there's nothing

to eat the insects and so the following

year there's a blight on all the crops

because the caterpillars and the locusts

are eating all of the grain anyway and

there's a huge famine far from

alleviating his people's suffering mouse

intervention has made matters even

[Music]

in Beijing the story being told is very

different the Communist Party propaganda

machine portrays the Chairman's great

leap forward as a dazzling success even

senior party members have little idea of

the reality of the famine but one man

for certain knows the truth

[Applause]

there is report after report with

extremely detailed information about the

famine that lands on the desks of the

top leadership the reports prove Mao is

well aware of the deaths of millions of

his people to him it is simply a price

worth paying

clearly he was prepared to take risks

with other people's lives to the extent

of 50 percent of his country he had the

people to spare and he was prepared to

do that if it meant creating a China

that he wanted

[Music]

by the spring of 1959 the truth starts

to leak out

[Music]

14 million dead people can't be hidden

yet rather than stem the tide of famine

Mao plans to extend his Great Leap

Forward even further

within the senior ranks of the Communist

Party there are mutterings about his

leadership

but no one is sure what they can do the

problem that China had and has is there

is no proposition everyone is agreed

that we are already living in the utopia

so no one can say that there's something

wrong with is utopia behind the scenes

mouths trusted second-in-command is

having serious doubts you shout he is

the number two he's the head of state

he stands very much behind a chairman

but lose but he's truly taken aback by

the scale of starvation Liu Xiao Qi

decides to do the unthinkable and

challenge his supreme leader it's a

decision of extraordinary personal

bravery

in July 1959 Mao holds a Communist Party

conference to rubber-stamp the expansion

of his Great Leap Forward what happens

next

takes everyone by surprise you made the

most courageous act in his life

basically he said there was a great

famine and it was a human mistake and we

must stop it

to say that as the man-made disaster is

actually direct attack against the whole

vision proposed by now with the gravy

forward and that really is breaking into

boo

to Mao it's the ultimate betrayal

Mao was a furious because he hated to be

outsmarted from that moment onwards the

Chairman becomes extremely suspicious

and thinks that he has found the very

man who will destroy his legacy destroy

his reputation

that mal can turn on you immediately

within the party lou is well-known and

well-liked Mao has to move slowly now

that was wise enough still to know that

you still be useful as an administrator

say keeps him on but here's a marked man

from then on this will be a revenge

served exceptionally cold mouths plan to

destroy his second-in-command will be a

nationwide decade-long masterpiece in

cruelty

[Music]

by 1965 the 71 year old Chairman Mao has

been supreme leader of China for 16

years but because of a disastrous famine

caused by his policies for the first

time there are murmurs within the party

that perhaps the great helmsman should

be replaced rather than wait for his

enemies to come at him Mao decides to

seize the initiative he was determined

to remind people that in his words a

revolution is not a dinner party we are

gonna have to break some heads we are

going to have to be very tough on

ourselves in not succumbing to the

temptations of what he called the

capitalist Road

mouths plan is for a revolution every

bit as devastating as the first but even

more sinister in its execution

a Cultural Revolution

Mao proposes to purge the country of

bourgeois thoughts he claims linger in

the older generation

just as a tea anon he wants all 600

million Chinese to practice true

communist right thinking and again he

will be the only person to dictate what

this right thinking is

[Music]

now now needs a wingman to help him

execute his policy with the Great Leap

Forward Mao makes the mistake of

trusting his party deputies he does not

intend to repeat that mistake this time

he turns to the one person he can trust

absolutely

his wife Chang Jing Madame Mao

chanting is an actress from Shanghai who

becomes mouths lover during the yen and

decade of terror in the 1940s as mal

rose through the party Jiang Qing

adopted a role as a kind of cultural

secretary she began to initiate cultural

policies she began to say what plays

were worth performing and what films

were worth performing and she started to

enact an increasingly invasive role as

she got older she became increasingly

neurotic but no one dared argue with her

she described herself as mouths dog when

he said by it I bit but the others

called her the white-owned demon

together Mao and Madame Mao make a

formidable and untouchable

[Music]

typically Mao begins his new cultural

revolution with a statement of policy so

vague it can be molded at his whim to

any purpose but Mao said was let's

attack what he called the four old old

ideas old ways or customs old old

pursuits

now that covered everything it's one

they blanket for old so anything he

disapproved of came under attack as a

guide to his thinking Mao issues his

little red book his version of Marx's

Communist Manifesto or Hitler's Mein

Kampf as a collection of over 400 of

Mao's Sainz it's a window into the mind

of a dictator intent on fueling violence

war is a continuation of politics war is

the highest form of Scirocco it is up to

us to organize the people where the

broom does not reach that us will not

vanish of itself let us hold the banner

high and march ahead along the path

crimson with our blood

at over a billion copies the little red

book is one of the most printed books in

history Mao's aim is mind capture of

those he can mold most easily the young

this becomes much more important later

on when you have an entire generation

who is raised on the thoughts of Mao

Zedong these children grow up to become

a compliant army just like a DNR to

enforce mouths will his notorious Red

Guards

now his delight in violence and chaos

takes a sick twist

he incites this teen army to rise up and

slaughter their elders he does a very

clever thing psychologically he calls on

the young you are China you are the

future young people's rise up purify our

society for all those corrupting

elements

this was mouse standard procedure when

he wanted to do something he always

created terror mouths first target is

carefully chosen the red guard youths

turn on their teachers

now did not particularly hate the

teachers he regarded himself as a

teacher but in order to generate the

terror he needed victims so it was a

completely cynical calculation

[Music]

thousands of teachers are assaulted in

Beijing alone hundreds are murdered

in my school there was tremendous

violence my headmaster who couldn't

stand it and it was trying to commit

suicide by slashing his neck a gardener

in the school he had been a nationalist

officer so he was singled out and beaten

to death

the Red Guards ranks swelled to millions

they run riot on a rampage of vandalism

and slaughter soon nothing is off-limits

[Music]

China becomes a cultural desert art

books music anything with even faintly

Western cultural influences are banned

or destroyed but Mars real target is

only just coming into view

[Applause]

in the fall of 1967 Mao orders his Red

Guards to extend their reign of terror

to his rivals in the Communist Party

it's mouse way of settling scores the

mettle of surgery was used you've got to

cut out the cancer in order for the body

body politic to recover so violence is

not simply a means to an end it's an

absolute requirement in any

revolutionary situation violence is a

definition of revolution

hundreds of thousands of party officials

are sent to labor camps driven to

suicide imprisoned or simply murdered

they're people who have expressed

concerns about Mao's Great Leap Forward

[Music]

only now can he move in on his primary

target his second-in-command

Leo Schulte the man who dared wants to

stand up to him will now pay the price

in the most unimaginably cruel way in

1968 communist Chairman Mao Zedong's

Cultural Revolution intended to crush

all those who dare oppose him in China

he's reaching its end game he is more

determined than ever to hang on to power

[Applause]

but he believes one man stands in his

way

Mao has long taken sadistic pleasure in

inflicting pain and humiliation and now

he plots the fate of his loyal deputy

Leo Shao Qi but because Leo is popular

in the Communist Party first Mao has to

undermine his credibility

[Music]

nobody would have any sympathy for him

if he spelled out the real reason why he

hated Liu Shaoqi

so he had to create all sorts of

accusations like Lu who had been a

traitor

you know I betrayed the party and so on

the state propaganda machine obediently

whirs into action practically overnight

lose reputation is destroyed

next comes the humiliation like hundreds

of his comrades before him leo is

publicly accused and assaulted

typically they would be stood on the

stage facing a hysterical crowd and they

were kicked and beaten and tortured and

made to kneel on broken glass being

paraded in the streets eventually

sending to the cats you endears over a

year of torture

only then in a prison cell comes death

but it's no act of mercy this final

chapter of Lou's life is planned

personally by Mao to be a slow that is

painful as possible he was a diabetic by

that time and now denies him the right

to treatment

it said he died lying on a prison cell

nine Lee's own filth

as if to leave the scale of his

depravity in no doubt maou demands use

painful death is filmed for his personal

pleasure it's a grim stikers he's a

manic from the long march on and b

bowels threatens associate anything

there are those who argue but had he

been examined you would have found in

our aspects of personality disorder that

might classify MERS being clinically

disturbed to the point of insanity

[Music]

[Applause]

Mao's Cultural Revolution instigated to

wreak vengeance on his rivals real and

imagined lasts a decade in all two

million of China's best educated people

are murdered millions more sent to labor

camps far from creating a utopian

society Mao has made one based on terror

Mao didn't try to build the nation and

the mall destroyed the nation he didn't

unify China he was not a builder he was

a destroyer Mao's legacy of needless

deaths is so great in number the total

may never be known exact figures we can

never have about I've seen 40 million

voted and justified

I mean customarily we say that in the

league tables of horror he comes top

[Applause]

[Music]

in the early 1970s as he approaches his

80th birthday Mouse health begins to

deteriorate we met and people are Nixon

in 72 and others later and they said

that he was still very consciously and

very alert didn't speak easily but could

understand and could respond through

interpreters but that decreases that

capacity decreases in 1974 Mao is

silenced by a degenerative condition

that makes him unintelligible to all but

his personal nurse yet the fear he has

instilled into his party means even when

he is incapable of leading he remains

untouchable he lost the power of speech

that asked two years a burbled

but as long as he was alive moving cut

nobody could move against him

[Music]

mouths declining health means China's

progress as a nation is paralyzed and

beneath the surface Mao is ravaged by an

ever increasing sense of paranoia he was

in power for 27 years and he lived as

though he was in a war zone ready to

flee all the time on the eve of taking

power in 1949 Mao would shake like a

leaf as I say if he said eyes on a

stranger this guy was about to take

power in China and he was of intense

fear perhaps it's a psychological

punishment for his total lack of empathy

for other people's lives most of all in

his final years Mao is aware his party

believes he has failed

he hadn't fulfilled his dream of

building China into this military

superpower so he could dominate the

world he didn't feel satisfied he was

full of self-pity

none of his feelings were for the

tragedy he brought for the Chinese

population and for the death of well

over 70 million Chinese in peacetime as

a result of him pursuing his dream

[Music]

on September the 9th 1976 after 27 years

in power mao zedong supreme leader of

china dies

[Music]

the Communist Party marks his passing

with hysterical scenes of national

mourning yet after his death

mouths ideology is almost entirely

spurned many of those he imprisoned

become the country's future leaders

though a sadist and a despot the equal

of Stalin and Hitler today his portrait

remains everywhere in part it is because

to admit what he really did would

undermine the rule of the Communist

Party an in part it is because for good

and ill Mao Zedong is the father of

modern China

you

[Music]