A Critique of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's Book Mao, the Unknown Story

 China's economic evolve is one of the most significant activities in recent period. It is at least partially the consequence of her social and political innovation/chaos in the growth century. If the west wants to believe far and wide ahead China, it is anger not to misunderstand her founder, Mao. However, the autograph album of J. Chang (JC) and J. Haliday, Mao, the unidentified gloss, is misleading the Western public into difficult misunderstanding of Mao, China's believer chronicles and China itself.

The central theme of the book is to condemn Mao as an evil conscious thing, "as bad as or worse than Hitler". The western media suddenly accepted this allegation. When the tape was first published in UK in June 2005, it was hailed by all major media when loud speed, involving many skillfully known China experts from polity (e.g., C. Pattern, the last British proprietor of Hong Kong), journalism (e.g., J. Mirsky, the Time's East Asia editor) and academia (e.g., M. Yahuda, the ex-chairman of the Department of International Relation, London School of Economics). According to these experts, everyone as soon as a reasonable mind should be enormously convinced by the autograph album on peak of any doubt. On this event there is a rare join up in which the voice of the Guardian is indistinguishable from that of the Daily Mail. Within one week, the folder jumped to the summit position of the non-fiction best selling list. Jung Chang has become the authority in version to the Chinese archives. A person, who asked challenging questions during one of her seminars, was deemed by others as "an obvious Maoist" and could not finish his questions. Some western readers condemned a less substitute comment roughly the baby book going regarding the subject of for the Amazon web site as "ugly Chinese propaganda".

The supporters have such unlimited confidence partially because the sticker album is supposedly the result of 10 years of intensive research, based almost unspecified records and hundreds of interviews in many countries. Unfortunately, a cautious reader can see handily that there are colossal gaps in the middle of its sensational claims and deafening references. Moreover, the evidence in the photograph album often contradicts, rather than supports, the claims. This review will narrowing out these contradictions and inconsistencies which may have escaped most readers' eyes and been ignored by the Western media.

To flavor the overall vibes of the autograph album, we recognize on its 17 major claims, which are evenly distributed across Mao's energy. Instead of picking in the works its weaknesses or teenager points, we focus as regards those issues, which tarnish Mao's character most and are praised most deeply in the Western media as solidly proven. These issues are dealt within 17 sections:

1. The Purge in the Ruijin Base,

2. Chiang Let the Reds Go (I)

3. Chiang Let the Reds Go (II)

4. The Fake Battle at the Luding Bridge,

5. Mao Carried through the Long March,

6. Mao Did Not Fight Japanese,

7. The Trap for the New 4th Army,

8. Mao Sacrificed His Brother Tse-min,

9. The Rectification Campaign,

10. Opium Sale,

11. 3 Million Deaths in 1950-51,

12. 27 Million Deaths in Jails/Labor Camps,

13. The Superpower Program,

14. 38 Million Deaths in 1958-61,

15. 3 Million Deaths in 1966-76,

16. Mao's Aim of the Cultural Revolution,

17. Mao Compared back Hitler.

This review has been sent to many Western media outlets back in front August 2005, but usual no recognition. However, it is not the without help negative review around JC's folder. Four months after its first declaration, necessary voices began to emerge from uncovered of Europe. For instance, in an article in the New York Review, J. Spence of Yale University singles out two traitorous stories in the folder. In the New York Times, a former correspondent in Beijing N. Kristof reveals that one of alleged interviewees listed in the folder, Zhang Hanzhi denies that she had ever been interviewed by the authors. An Australian H. McDonald reveals in The Age that a recent visit by reporters to Luding Bridge confirms the brawl 70 years ago, which JC claims to be a insert invention. He quoted from T. Bernstein of Columbia University that "the book is a major mistake for the contemporary China sports ground". Also, "Princeton's Perry Link have felt compelled to criticise" JC's "factual errors and dubious use of sources". Moreover, "many scholars reduction out that much of what Chang and Halliday high flier as a to the fore 'secret marginal note' has in fact been exposed long ago. . . . But no defense is unbending idea to these earlier writers". In London Review of Books, A. Nathan of Columbia University provides profusion of evidence showing that "Chang and Halliday are magpies: every single one radiant piece of evidence goes in, no shape where it comes from or how honorable it is".

This review differs from those of Western academics in two aspects. First, it shows the quantity fallacy of the wedding album, on the other hand of just a few inaccuracies. Secondly, it demonstrates the book's major flaws without substantial references on the order of Chinese chronicles, by single-handedly using the recommend and references mainly coming from the wedding album itself. In for that footnote be alert, the review raises a supplementary ask: why did most media and experts in the UK fail to see these obvious inconsistencies and contradictions in the wedding album? If it cannot be excused by the ignorance of Chinese history?

Although this review met absolute silence in the west, it has drawn some attention from overseas Chinese. One of the web sites, which published this review, Duowei, interviewed Jung Chang in New York in October 2005, and asked her my questions (see the article at: [http://blog.chinesenewsnet.com/?p=3467], or every part of interview video at: [http://www.berm.co.nz/cgi-bin/video/con.cgi?lz1JaUtTdSM]). This is what Jung Chang said just just about this review: "I have gate it, and entre purposefully. Some questions are quite gigantic. I realize objective to have opportunities to access them. I think it is enormously important. However, there are many issues, I realize not know either he did not comprehend English, or did not see at the references provided at the benefit of the record. There are many details, the origins of the figures, every allowance of one of in the gain of the folder. Among 800 pages, there are 150 pages of references, the sources of the references. One has to gate those sources from the references. I think he either did not be of the same mind on English, or did not right of admission references deliberately. I have looked at his questions, and can have the funds for easy answers to every of them".

In the interview, Jung Chang indeed responded to three of my 17 questions, namely, (2), (3) and (4). A reader can sky at the paragraphs marked by * signs under, in each of the three sections to appreciate her "easy answers".

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After the heavens of this review, Jung Chang's brother, Pu Zhang (a translator for the Chinese metaphor of the photo album), claims in October 2005 concerning the Duowei web site that, my Chinese translation seriously tainted JC's words, and he would reveal the lecture to comparison of the original text and my translation upon the web for readers to see the difference. However, despite readers repeatedly asking him to save his promises, his English-Chinese comparison has not be seen anywhere therefore far.

1. The Purge in the Ruijin Base

Jung Chang's first major accusation adjoining Mao is that his purge in the Ruijin base, the first Red State in China, caused more than 350,000 deaths, or 10% of the quantity population. Her figure is grossly precious because she assumes the narrowing of 0.7 million in Ruijin's population was the result of people either mammal killed in battles or dying of persecution knocked out Mao. She ignores civilian deaths and emigration totally.