Mao: The Unknown Story
Encyclopedia
Mao: The Unknown Story is a 2005 biography of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong
(1893–1976) written by the husband and wife team of writer Jung Chang
and historian Jon Halliday
, and depicts Mao as being responsible for more deaths in peacetime than Adolf Hitler
or Joseph Stalin
.
In conducting their research for the book over the course of a decade, the authors interviewed hundreds of people who were close to Mao Zedong at some point in his life, used recently published memoirs from Chinese political figures, and explored newly opened archives in China and Russia. Chang herself lived through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution
, which she described in her earlier book, Wild Swans
.
The book quickly became a best-seller in Europe and North America and received overwhelming praise from reviews in national newspapers. Academic reviews from China specialists were, on the whole, far more critical.
's Red Star Over China
claimed and thereby entered the mythology of the revolution. Chiang Kai-shek deliberately did not pursue and capture the Red Army
.
Areas under Communist control during the Second United Front and Chinese Civil War
, such as the Jiangxi and Yan'an soviets
, were ruled through terror and financed by opium. Mao, they say, sacrificed thousands of troops simply in order to get rid of party rivals, such as Chang Kuo-tao, nor did he take the initiative in fighting the Japanese invaders. Despite being born into a peasant family, when Mao came to power in 1949 he had little concern for the welfare of the Chinese peasantry. Mao's determination to use agricultual surplus to subsidize industry and intimidation of dissent led to murderous famines resulting from the Great Leap Forward
, exacerbated by allowing the export of grain to continue even when it became clear that China did not have sufficient grain to feed its population.
was not the heroic endeavour portrayed by the Chinese Communist Party and that Mao's role in leading it was exaggerated. Officially portrayed as an inspiring commander, the authors write that he was nearly left behind by the March and only commanded a fairly small force. He was apparently disliked by almost all of the people on the March and his tactics and strategy were flawed. They also write that Chiang Kai-shek allowed the Communists to proceed without significant hindrance as his son was being held hostage in Moscow
and that he feared he would be killed if the Communists were crushed.
Mao is also portrayed, along with the Communist elite, as a privileged person who was usually carried around in litters and protected from the suffering of his subordinates, rather than sharing their hardship. Despite the high level of casualties amongst ordinary soldiers, supposedly no high-ranking leaders died on the journey, regardless of how ill or badly wounded they were.
The book says that, contrary to revolutionary mythology, there was no battle at Luding Bridge
and that tales of a "heroic" crossing against the odds was merely propaganda. Chang found a witness, Li Xiu-zhen, who told her that she saw no fighting and that the bridge was not on fire. In addition, she said that despite claims by the Communists that the fighting was fierce, all of the vanguard survived the battle. Chang also cited Nationalist (Kuomintang
) battleplans and communiques that indicated the force guarding the bridge had been withdrawn before the Communists arrived.
A number of historical works, even outside of China, do depict such a battle, though not of such heroic proportions. Harrison E. Salisbury's The Long March: The Untold Story and Charlotte Salisbury's Long March Diary mention a battle at Luding Bridge, but they relied on second-hand information. However, there is disagreement in other sources over the incident. Chinese journalist Sun Shuyun agreed that the official accounts were exaggerated. She interviewed a local blacksmith who had witnessed the event and said that "when [the troops opposing the Red Army] saw the soldiers coming, they panicked and fled — their officers had long abandoned them. There wasn't really much of a battle." Archives in Chengdu
further supported this claim.
In October 2005, The Age
newspaper reported that it had been unable to find Chang's local witness. In addition, The Sydney Morning Herald
found an 85-year old eyewitness, Li Guixiu, aged 15 at the time of the crossing, whose account disputed Chang's claims. According to Li, there was a battle: "The fighting started in the evening. There were many killed on the Red Army side. The KMT set fire to the bridge-house on the other side, to try to melt the chains, and one of the chains was cut. After it was taken, the Red Army took seven days and seven nights to cross."
In a speech given at Stanford University
, former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
mentioned a conversation that he once had with Deng Xiaoping
. He recalled that Deng smiled and said, “Well, that’s the way it’s presented in our propaganda. We needed that to express the fighting spirit of our forces. In fact, it was a very easy military operation."
in regions that the Communists controlled during the Chinese Civil War but also participated in the trade of it, in order to provide funding for his soldiers. According to Russian sources that the authors state they found, at the time the trade generated around $60 million a year for the Communists. This was stopped only due to overproduction driving down the price and Communist officials other than Mao deciding that the practice was immoral.
, a rival in the Politburo, was sent with his army in 1936 on a hopeless mission into the Gobi desert
. When it inevitably failed Mao ordered that the survivors be executed.
Chang and Haliday suggest that Mao used other underhanded means in eliminating opponents. Apart from general purges like the Hundred Flowers Campaign
and other operations like the Cultural Revolution
, he had Wang Ming
(another Politburo rival) poisoned twice, who had to seek treatment in Russia.
, in truth they rarely fought the Japanese. Mao was more interested in saving his forces for fighting against the Chinese Nationalists. On the few occasions that the Communists did fight the Japanese, Mao was very angry.
were claimed to have been secretly working for the Chinese Communists. One such "sleeper
" was Hu Zongnan
, a senior National Revolutionary Army
general. Hu's son objected to this description and his threat of legal action led Jung Chang's publishers in Taiwan
to abandon the release of the book there.
, having promised Chinese troops to Kim Il Sung (then leader of North Korea
) before the conflict started. Halliday had previously conducted research into this conflict, publishing his book Korea: The Unknown War.
China scholars agree that the famine during the Great Leap Forward
caused tens of millions of deaths. Chang and Halliday argue that this period accounts for roughly half of the 70 million total. An official estimate by Hu Yaobang
in 1980 put the death toll at 20 million, whereas Philip Short
in his 2000 book Mao: A Life found 20 to 30 million to be the most credible number. Chang and Halliday's figure is 37.67 million, which historian Stuart Schram indicated that he believes "may well be the most accurate." Yang Jisheng
, a Communist party member and former reporter for Xinhua, puts the number of famine deaths at 36 million. In his 2010 book Mao's Great Famine, Hong Kong based historian Frank Dikötter, who has had access to newly opened local archives, places the death toll for the Great Leap Forward at 45 million, and describes it as "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history."
Professor R. J. Rummel
published updated figures on worldwide democide
in 2005, stating that he believed Chang and Halliday's estimates to be mostly correct and that he had revised his figures for China under Mao accordingly.
report the book received an average score of 64 out of 100, based on 24 reviews from major English language media press.
lauded the book in The Times
, calling Chang and Halliday's work "a triumph" which "exposes its subject as probably the most disgusting of the bloody troika of 20th-century tyrant-messiahs, in terms of character, deeds — and number of victims... This is the first intimate, political biography of the greatest monster of them all — the Red Emperor of China."
In The New York Times
, Nicholas Kristof referred to the book as a "magisterial work". Kristof said that it did a better job demonstrating that Mao was a "catastrophic ruler" than anything else written to date. In his words Mao's "ruthlessness" was "brilliantly captured in this extraordinary book".
Gwynne Dyer
praised the book for documenting "Mao's crimes and failures in unrelenting, unprecedented detail" and stated he believed it would eventually have a similar impact in China as Alexander Solzhenitsyn's
Gulag Archipelago did in the Soviet Union.
Historian Max Hastings
say the book is a "savage indictment, drawing on a host of sources including important Soviet ones, to blow away the miasma of deceit and ignorance which still shrouds Mao's life from many Western eyes." But that its weakness is "it attributes Mao's rise and long rule entirely to repression, and does not explain why so many of his own people remained for so long committed to his insane vision. "
Michael Yahuda, Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics
, also expressed his support in The Guardian
. He referred to it a "magnificent book" and "a stupendous work" which cast "new and revealing light on nearly every episode in Mao's tumultuous life."
Professor Richard Baum of the University of California, Los Angeles
said that "it has to be taken very seriously as the most thoroughly researched and richly documented piece of synthetic scholarship yet to appear on the rise of Mao and the CCP." Though it was "not a sufficiently rich or nuanced interpretive scaffolding to support the full weight of the Chinese experience under Mao," Baum still believed that "this book will most likely change forever the way modern Chinese history is understood and taught."
Stuart Schram, while criticizing certain aspects of Mao: The Unknown Story, argued in a review in The China Quarterly that Chang and Halliday's book was "a valuable contribution to our understanding of Mao and his place in history."
Perry Link
, then a Princeton University
Professor of Chinese literature, praised the book in The Times Literary Supplement
and emphasized the effect the book could have in the West.
Professor Andrew Nathan of Columbia University
published an extensive evaluation of the book in the London Review of Books
. While he was complimentary of the book in some respects — noting for example that it "shows special insight into the suffering of Mao’s wives and children" — and acknowledged that it might make real contributions to the field, Nathan's review was largely negative. He noted that "many of their discoveries come from sources that cannot be checked, others are openly speculative or are based on circumstantial evidence, and some are untrue." Nathan suggested that Chang and Halliday's own anger with the Chinese leader caused them to portray "a possible but not a plausible Mao" or a "caricature Mao" and to eschew a more complex explanation of modern Chinese history in favor of "a simple personalisation of blame." Similarly, Professor Jonathan Spence
of Yale University
argued in the New York Review of Books that the authors' single focus on Mao's vileness had undermined "much of the power their story might have had."
David S. G. Goodman, Professor of Contemporary China Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney
, wrote a sharply critical review of Chang and Halliday's book in The Pacific Review. He suggested that there is an implied argument in Mao: The Unknown Story that there has been "a conspiracy of academics and scholars who have chosen not to reveal the truth" - an argument which he likened to the conspiracy theorizing of the The Da Vinci Code
. Goodman argued that "the 'facts' in The Da Vinci Code are about as reliable as those to be found in...Mao: The Unknown Story." Goodman argued that the style of writing was "extremely polemic" and that the book could even be thought of as a "form of fiction" where "a strong narrative" is "a substitute for evidence and argument." Goodman was highly critical of Chang and Halliday's methodology and use of sources as well as several of their specific conclusions, claiming that their focus on vilifying Mao led them to write "demonography" rather than objective history and biography.
Professor Thomas Bernstein of Columbia University
referred to the book as "... a major disaster for the contemporary China field..." because the "scholarship is put at the service of thoroughly destroying Mao's reputation. The result is an equally stupendous number of quotations out of context, distortion of facts and omission of much of what makes Mao a complex, contradictory, and multi-sided leader."
A detailed examination of Mao: The Unknown Story was published in the January 2006 issue of the The China Journal. Professors Gregor Benton (Cardiff University
) and Steve Tsang (University of Oxford
) argued that the book was "bad history and worse biography" which made "numerous flawed assertions." Chang and Halliday "misread sources, use them selectively, use them out of context, or otherwise trim or bend them to cast Mao in an unrelentingly bad light." They discussed a number of specific errors and problematic sourcing practices before concluding that the book "does not represent a reliable contribution to our understanding of Mao or twentieth-century China." Timothy Cheek (University of British Columbia
) argued in his review that "Chang and Halliday's book is not a history in the accepted sense of a reasoned historical analysis," rather it "reads like an entertaining Chinese version of a TV soap opera." Cheek found it "disturbing...that major commercial Western media can conclude that this book is not only history, but terrific history."
In 2009, Gregor Benton and Lin Chun edited Was Mao Really a Monster: The Academic Response to Chang and Halliday’s "Mao: The Unknown Story", which compiles fourteen previously-published academic responses, most of which are highly critical. Benton and Lin wrote that "unlike the worldwide commercial media... most professional commentary has been disapproving." Mobo Gao, Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Adelaide
, wrote that The Unknown Story was "intellectually scandalous", and characterised it by saying that it "it misinterprets evidence, ignores the existing literature, and makes sensationalist claims without proper evidence."
newspaper on the book contained a brief statement from Chang and Halliday in regards to the general criticism. The authors said that "the academics' views on Mao and Chinese history cited represent received wisdom of which we were well aware while writing our biography of Mao. We came to our own conclusions and interpretations of events through a decade's research." The authors also responded to Andrew Nathan's review in a letter to The London Review of Books.
Mao: The Unknown Story was on the Sunday Times
bestseller list at number 2, in July 2005.
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
(1893–1976) written by the husband and wife team of writer Jung Chang
Jung Chang
Jung Chang is a Chinese-born British writer now living in London, best known for her family autobiography Wild Swans, selling over 10 million copies worldwide but banned in the People's Republic of China....
and historian Jon Halliday
Jon Halliday
Jon Halliday is a historian of Russia and was a former Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London.Halliday authored a biography of filmmaker Douglas Sirk and has written and edited seven other books. He and his wife, Jung Chang, live in Notting Hill, West London...
, and depicts Mao as being responsible for more deaths in peacetime than Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
or Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
.
In conducting their research for the book over the course of a decade, the authors interviewed hundreds of people who were close to Mao Zedong at some point in his life, used recently published memoirs from Chinese political figures, and explored newly opened archives in China and Russia. Chang herself lived through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
, which she described in her earlier book, Wild Swans
Wild Swans
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China is a family history that spans a century, recounting the lives of three female generations in China, by Chinese writer Jung Chang. First published in 1991, Wild Swans contains the biographies of her grandmother and her mother, then finally her own autobiography...
.
The book quickly became a best-seller in Europe and North America and received overwhelming praise from reviews in national newspapers. Academic reviews from China specialists were, on the whole, far more critical.
Synopsis
Chang and Halliday do not accept the idealistic explanations for Mao's rise to power or common claims for his rule. They argue that from his earliest years he was motivated by a lust for power and that Mao had many political opponents arrested and murdered, including some of his personal friends. During the 1920s and 1930s, they argue, Mao could not have gained control of the party without Stalin's patronage, nor were Mao's decisions during the Long March as heroic and ingenious as Edgar SnowEdgar Snow
Edgar P. Snow was an American journalist known for his books and articles on Communism in China and the Chinese Communist revolution...
's Red Star Over China
Red Star Over China
Red Star Over China, a book by Edgar Snow, is an account of the Communist Party of China written when they were a guerrilla army still obscure to Westerners. Along with Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, it was the most influential book on Western understanding and sympathy for China in the 1930s...
claimed and thereby entered the mythology of the revolution. Chiang Kai-shek deliberately did not pursue and capture the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
.
Areas under Communist control during the Second United Front and Chinese Civil War
Chinese Civil War
The Chinese Civil War was a civil war fought between the Kuomintang , the governing party of the Republic of China, and the Communist Party of China , for the control of China which eventually led to China's division into two Chinas, Republic of China and People's Republic of...
, such as the Jiangxi and Yan'an soviets
Yan'an
Yan'an , is a prefecture-level city in the Shanbei region of Shaanxi province in China, administering several counties, including Zhidan County , which served as the Chinese communist capital before the city of Yan'an proper took that role....
, were ruled through terror and financed by opium. Mao, they say, sacrificed thousands of troops simply in order to get rid of party rivals, such as Chang Kuo-tao, nor did he take the initiative in fighting the Japanese invaders. Despite being born into a peasant family, when Mao came to power in 1949 he had little concern for the welfare of the Chinese peasantry. Mao's determination to use agricultual surplus to subsidize industry and intimidation of dissent led to murderous famines resulting from the Great Leap Forward
Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China , reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern...
, exacerbated by allowing the export of grain to continue even when it became clear that China did not have sufficient grain to feed its population.
The Long March
Chang and Halliday argue that the Long MarchLong March
The Long March was a massive military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China, the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang army. There was not one Long March, but a series of marches, as various Communist armies in the south...
was not the heroic endeavour portrayed by the Chinese Communist Party and that Mao's role in leading it was exaggerated. Officially portrayed as an inspiring commander, the authors write that he was nearly left behind by the March and only commanded a fairly small force. He was apparently disliked by almost all of the people on the March and his tactics and strategy were flawed. They also write that Chiang Kai-shek allowed the Communists to proceed without significant hindrance as his son was being held hostage in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
and that he feared he would be killed if the Communists were crushed.
Mao is also portrayed, along with the Communist elite, as a privileged person who was usually carried around in litters and protected from the suffering of his subordinates, rather than sharing their hardship. Despite the high level of casualties amongst ordinary soldiers, supposedly no high-ranking leaders died on the journey, regardless of how ill or badly wounded they were.
The book says that, contrary to revolutionary mythology, there was no battle at Luding Bridge
Luding Bridge
Luding Bridge is a bridge over the Dadu River in Luding County, Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China, located about 80 kilometers west of the city of Ya'an. The bridge dates from the Qing Dynasty and is considered a historical landmark...
and that tales of a "heroic" crossing against the odds was merely propaganda. Chang found a witness, Li Xiu-zhen, who told her that she saw no fighting and that the bridge was not on fire. In addition, she said that despite claims by the Communists that the fighting was fierce, all of the vanguard survived the battle. Chang also cited Nationalist (Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
) battleplans and communiques that indicated the force guarding the bridge had been withdrawn before the Communists arrived.
A number of historical works, even outside of China, do depict such a battle, though not of such heroic proportions. Harrison E. Salisbury's The Long March: The Untold Story and Charlotte Salisbury's Long March Diary mention a battle at Luding Bridge, but they relied on second-hand information. However, there is disagreement in other sources over the incident. Chinese journalist Sun Shuyun agreed that the official accounts were exaggerated. She interviewed a local blacksmith who had witnessed the event and said that "when [the troops opposing the Red Army] saw the soldiers coming, they panicked and fled — their officers had long abandoned them. There wasn't really much of a battle." Archives in Chengdu
Chengdu
Chengdu , formerly transliterated Chengtu, is the capital of Sichuan province in Southwest China. It holds sub-provincial administrative status...
further supported this claim.
In October 2005, The Age
The Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
newspaper reported that it had been unable to find Chang's local witness. In addition, The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald is a daily broadsheet newspaper published by Fairfax Media in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1831 as the Sydney Herald, the SMH is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia. The newspaper is published six days a week. The newspaper's Sunday counterpart, The...
found an 85-year old eyewitness, Li Guixiu, aged 15 at the time of the crossing, whose account disputed Chang's claims. According to Li, there was a battle: "The fighting started in the evening. There were many killed on the Red Army side. The KMT set fire to the bridge-house on the other side, to try to melt the chains, and one of the chains was cut. After it was taken, the Red Army took seven days and seven nights to cross."
In a speech given at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981....
mentioned a conversation that he once had with Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy...
. He recalled that Deng smiled and said, “Well, that’s the way it’s presented in our propaganda. We needed that to express the fighting spirit of our forces. In fact, it was a very easy military operation."
Opium production
One of the allegations in the book against Mao was that he not just tolerated the production of opiumOpium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
in regions that the Communists controlled during the Chinese Civil War but also participated in the trade of it, in order to provide funding for his soldiers. According to Russian sources that the authors state they found, at the time the trade generated around $60 million a year for the Communists. This was stopped only due to overproduction driving down the price and Communist officials other than Mao deciding that the practice was immoral.
Campaigns against Mao's opponents
Mao is alleged to have exposed men under his command to unnecessary suffering just to eliminate his opponents. Zhang GuotaoZhang Guotao
Zhang Guotao was a founding member and important leader of the Chinese Communist Party and bitter rival to Mao Zedong. During the 1920s he studied in the Soviet Union and became a key contact with the Comintern and organized the CCP labor movement in the United Front with the Guomindang...
, a rival in the Politburo, was sent with his army in 1936 on a hopeless mission into the Gobi desert
Gobi Desert
The Gobi is a large desert region in Asia. It covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the...
. When it inevitably failed Mao ordered that the survivors be executed.
Chang and Haliday suggest that Mao used other underhanded means in eliminating opponents. Apart from general purges like the Hundred Flowers Campaign
Hundred Flowers Campaign
The Hundred Flowers Campaign, also termed the Hundred Flowers Movement, refers mainly to a brief six weeks in the People's Republic of China in the early summer of 1957 during which the Communist Party of China encouraged a variety of views and solutions to national policy issues, launched...
and other operations like the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
, he had Wang Ming
Wang Ming
Wang Ming was a senior leader of the early Chinese Communist Party and the mastermind of the famous 28 Bolsheviks group. Wang was also a major political rival of Mao Zedong during the 1930s, opposing Mao's nationalist deviation from the Comintern and orthodox Marxism and Leninism lines...
(another Politburo rival) poisoned twice, who had to seek treatment in Russia.
Sino-Japanese War
Chang and Halliday write that in comparison to official history provided by the Chinese authorities that Communist forces waged a tough guerrilla war against the Imperial Japanese ArmyImperial Japanese Army
-Foundation:During the Meiji Restoration, the military forces loyal to the Emperor were samurai drawn primarily from the loyalist feudal domains of Satsuma and Chōshū...
, in truth they rarely fought the Japanese. Mao was more interested in saving his forces for fighting against the Chinese Nationalists. On the few occasions that the Communists did fight the Japanese, Mao was very angry.
Communist "sleepers"
Notable members of the KMTKuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
were claimed to have been secretly working for the Chinese Communists. One such "sleeper
Sleeper agent
A sleeper agent is a spy who is placed in a target country or organization, not to undertake an immediate mission, but rather to act as a potential asset if activated...
" was Hu Zongnan
Hu Zongnan
Hu Zongnan , courtesy name Shoushan , native of Zhenhai, Ningbo, born May 16, 1896. A general in the National Revolutionary Army and then the Republic of China Army. Together with Chen Cheng and Tang Enbo, he formed the triumvirate of Chiang Kai-shek's most trusted generals during the Second...
, a senior National Revolutionary Army
National Revolutionary Army
The National Revolutionary Army , pre-1928 sometimes shortened to 革命軍 or Revolutionary Army and between 1928-1947 as 國軍 or National Army was the Military Arm of the Kuomintang from 1925 until 1947, as well as the national army of the Republic of China during the KMT's period of party rule...
general. Hu's son objected to this description and his threat of legal action led Jung Chang's publishers in Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
to abandon the release of the book there.
Korean War
Rather than reluctantly entering the conflict as the Chinese government suggests, Mao is alleged to have deliberately entered the Korean WarKorean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
, having promised Chinese troops to Kim Il Sung (then leader of North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
) before the conflict started. Halliday had previously conducted research into this conflict, publishing his book Korea: The Unknown War.
Number of deaths under Mao
The book opens with the sentence "Mao Tse-tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world's population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth century leader." Chang and Halliday claim that he was willing for half of China to die to achieve military-nuclear superpowerdom. Estimates of the numbers of deaths during this period vary, though Chang and Halliday's estimate is one of the highest. Sinologist Stuart Schram, in a review of the book, noted that "the exact figure... has been estimated by well-informed writers at between 40 and 70 million".China scholars agree that the famine during the Great Leap Forward
Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China , reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern...
caused tens of millions of deaths. Chang and Halliday argue that this period accounts for roughly half of the 70 million total. An official estimate by Hu Yaobang
Hu Yaobang
Hu Yaobang was a leader of the People's Republic of China who served as both Chairman and Party General Secretary. Hu joined the Chinese Communist Party in the 1930s, and rose to prominence as a comrade of Deng Xiaoping...
in 1980 put the death toll at 20 million, whereas Philip Short
Philip Short
Philip Short is a journalist and author.He was born in Bristol on 17 April 1945. He studied at Queens' College, Cambridge. After graduation, he spent from 1967 to 1973 as a freelance journalist, first in Malawi, then in Uganda. He then joined the BBC as a foreign correspondent. He worked there for...
in his 2000 book Mao: A Life found 20 to 30 million to be the most credible number. Chang and Halliday's figure is 37.67 million, which historian Stuart Schram indicated that he believes "may well be the most accurate." Yang Jisheng
Yang Jisheng
Yang Jisheng is a Chinese journalist and author of Tombstone , a comprehensive account of the Great Chinese Famine during the Great Leap Forward. Yang joined the Communist Party in 1964 and graduated from Tsinghua University in 1966. He promptly joined Xinhua News Agency, where he worked until...
, a Communist party member and former reporter for Xinhua, puts the number of famine deaths at 36 million. In his 2010 book Mao's Great Famine, Hong Kong based historian Frank Dikötter, who has had access to newly opened local archives, places the death toll for the Great Leap Forward at 45 million, and describes it as "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history."
Professor R. J. Rummel
R. J. Rummel
Rudolph Joseph Rummel is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii. He has spent his career assembling data on collective violence and war with a view toward helping their resolution or elimination...
published updated figures on worldwide democide
Democide
Democide is a term revived and redefined by the political scientist R. J. Rummel as "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder." Rummel created the term as an extended concept to include forms of government murder that are not covered by the...
in 2005, stating that he believed Chang and Halliday's estimates to be mostly correct and that he had revised his figures for China under Mao accordingly.
Response to the book
Mao: The Unknown Story became a bestseller, with UK sales alone reaching 60,000 in six months. Academics and commentators wrote reviews ranging from great praise to serious criticism. The review aggregator MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
report the book received an average score of 64 out of 100, based on 24 reviews from major English language media press.
Praise
The book has received praise from a number of commentators and academic experts. Simon Sebag MontefioreSimon Sebag Montefiore
Simon Jonathan Sebag Montefiore is a British historian and writer.-Family history:Simon's father, a doctor, is descended from a famous line of wealthy Sephardic Jews who became diplomats and bankers all over Europe...
lauded the book in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, calling Chang and Halliday's work "a triumph" which "exposes its subject as probably the most disgusting of the bloody troika of 20th-century tyrant-messiahs, in terms of character, deeds — and number of victims... This is the first intimate, political biography of the greatest monster of them all — the Red Emperor of China."
In The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Nicholas Kristof referred to the book as a "magisterial work". Kristof said that it did a better job demonstrating that Mao was a "catastrophic ruler" than anything else written to date. In his words Mao's "ruthlessness" was "brilliantly captured in this extraordinary book".
Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer, OC is a London-based independent Canadian journalist, syndicated columnist and military historian.Dyer was born in St. John's, Newfoundland and joined the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve at the age of sixteen...
praised the book for documenting "Mao's crimes and failures in unrelenting, unprecedented detail" and stated he believed it would eventually have a similar impact in China as Alexander Solzhenitsyn's
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
Gulag Archipelago did in the Soviet Union.
Historian Max Hastings
Max Hastings
Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings, FRSL is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. He is the son of Macdonald Hastings, the noted British journalist and war correspondent and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar.-Life and career:Hastings was educated at Charterhouse...
say the book is a "savage indictment, drawing on a host of sources including important Soviet ones, to blow away the miasma of deceit and ignorance which still shrouds Mao's life from many Western eyes." But that its weakness is "it attributes Mao's rise and long rule entirely to repression, and does not explain why so many of his own people remained for so long committed to his insane vision. "
Michael Yahuda, Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
, also expressed his support in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
. He referred to it a "magnificent book" and "a stupendous work" which cast "new and revealing light on nearly every episode in Mao's tumultuous life."
Professor Richard Baum of the University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
said that "it has to be taken very seriously as the most thoroughly researched and richly documented piece of synthetic scholarship yet to appear on the rise of Mao and the CCP." Though it was "not a sufficiently rich or nuanced interpretive scaffolding to support the full weight of the Chinese experience under Mao," Baum still believed that "this book will most likely change forever the way modern Chinese history is understood and taught."
Stuart Schram, while criticizing certain aspects of Mao: The Unknown Story, argued in a review in The China Quarterly that Chang and Halliday's book was "a valuable contribution to our understanding of Mao and his place in history."
Perry Link
Perry Link
Perry Link is Chancellorial Chair Professor for Innovative TeachingComparative Literature & Foreign Languages in College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at University of California, Riverside and Emeritus Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. He specializes in modern...
, then a Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
Professor of Chinese literature, praised the book in The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
and emphasized the effect the book could have in the West.
"Part of Chang and Halliday's passion for exposing the 'unknown' Mao is clearly aimed at gullible Westerners..... For decades many in the Western intellectual and political elites have assumed that Mao and his heirs symbolize the Chinese people and their culture, and that to show respect to the rulers is the same as showing respect to the subjects. Anyone who reads Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's book should be inoculated against this particular delusion. If the book sells even half as many copies as the 12 million of Wild SwansWild SwansWild Swans: Three Daughters of China is a family history that spans a century, recounting the lives of three female generations in China, by Chinese writer Jung Chang. First published in 1991, Wild Swans contains the biographies of her grandmother and her mother, then finally her own autobiography...
, it could deliver the coup de graceCoup de grâceThe expression coup de grâce means a death blow intended to end the suffering of a wounded creature. The phrase can refer to the killing of civilians or soldiers, friends or enemies, with or without the consent of the sufferer...
to an embarrassing and dangerous pattern of Western thinking."
Criticism
Chang and Halliday's book has been strongly criticized by a number of academic experts. While not denying that Mao was "a monster," as one article on the debate over the book phrased it, a number of scholars specialising in modern Chinese history and politics questioned the factual accuracy of some of Chang and Halliday's conclusions, pointed out their selective use of evidence, and called into question their objectivity, among other criticisms.Professor Andrew Nathan of Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
published an extensive evaluation of the book in the London Review of Books
London Review of Books
The London Review of Books is a fortnightly British magazine of literary and intellectual essays.-History:The LRB was founded in 1979, during the year-long lock-out at The Times, by publisher A...
. While he was complimentary of the book in some respects — noting for example that it "shows special insight into the suffering of Mao’s wives and children" — and acknowledged that it might make real contributions to the field, Nathan's review was largely negative. He noted that "many of their discoveries come from sources that cannot be checked, others are openly speculative or are based on circumstantial evidence, and some are untrue." Nathan suggested that Chang and Halliday's own anger with the Chinese leader caused them to portray "a possible but not a plausible Mao" or a "caricature Mao" and to eschew a more complex explanation of modern Chinese history in favor of "a simple personalisation of blame." Similarly, Professor Jonathan Spence
Jonathan Spence
Jonathan D. Spence is a British-born historian and public intellectual specializing in Chinese history. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008. His most famous book is The Search for Modern China, which has become one of the standard texts on the last several...
of Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
argued in the New York Review of Books that the authors' single focus on Mao's vileness had undermined "much of the power their story might have had."
David S. G. Goodman, Professor of Contemporary China Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney
University of Technology, Sydney
The University of Technology Sydney is a university in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The university was founded in its current form in 1981, although its origins trace back to the 1870s. UTS is notable for its central location as the only university with its main campuses within the Sydney CBD...
, wrote a sharply critical review of Chang and Halliday's book in The Pacific Review. He suggested that there is an implied argument in Mao: The Unknown Story that there has been "a conspiracy of academics and scholars who have chosen not to reveal the truth" - an argument which he likened to the conspiracy theorizing of the The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective novel written by Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discover a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus having been married to...
. Goodman argued that "the 'facts' in The Da Vinci Code are about as reliable as those to be found in...Mao: The Unknown Story." Goodman argued that the style of writing was "extremely polemic" and that the book could even be thought of as a "form of fiction" where "a strong narrative" is "a substitute for evidence and argument." Goodman was highly critical of Chang and Halliday's methodology and use of sources as well as several of their specific conclusions, claiming that their focus on vilifying Mao led them to write "demonography" rather than objective history and biography.
Professor Thomas Bernstein of Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
referred to the book as "... a major disaster for the contemporary China field..." because the "scholarship is put at the service of thoroughly destroying Mao's reputation. The result is an equally stupendous number of quotations out of context, distortion of facts and omission of much of what makes Mao a complex, contradictory, and multi-sided leader."
A detailed examination of Mao: The Unknown Story was published in the January 2006 issue of the The China Journal. Professors Gregor Benton (Cardiff University
Cardiff University
Cardiff University is a leading research university located in the Cathays Park area of Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. It received its Royal charter in 1883 and is a member of the Russell Group of Universities. The university is consistently recognised as providing high quality research-based...
) and Steve Tsang (University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
) argued that the book was "bad history and worse biography" which made "numerous flawed assertions." Chang and Halliday "misread sources, use them selectively, use them out of context, or otherwise trim or bend them to cast Mao in an unrelentingly bad light." They discussed a number of specific errors and problematic sourcing practices before concluding that the book "does not represent a reliable contribution to our understanding of Mao or twentieth-century China." Timothy Cheek (University of British Columbia
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...
) argued in his review that "Chang and Halliday's book is not a history in the accepted sense of a reasoned historical analysis," rather it "reads like an entertaining Chinese version of a TV soap opera." Cheek found it "disturbing...that major commercial Western media can conclude that this book is not only history, but terrific history."
In 2009, Gregor Benton and Lin Chun edited Was Mao Really a Monster: The Academic Response to Chang and Halliday’s "Mao: The Unknown Story", which compiles fourteen previously-published academic responses, most of which are highly critical. Benton and Lin wrote that "unlike the worldwide commercial media... most professional commentary has been disapproving." Mobo Gao, Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Adelaide
University of Adelaide
The University of Adelaide is a public university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third oldest university in Australia...
, wrote that The Unknown Story was "intellectually scandalous", and characterised it by saying that it "it misinterprets evidence, ignores the existing literature, and makes sensationalist claims without proper evidence."
Authors' response to criticism
In December 2005, an article by The ObserverThe Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
newspaper on the book contained a brief statement from Chang and Halliday in regards to the general criticism. The authors said that "the academics' views on Mao and Chinese history cited represent received wisdom of which we were well aware while writing our biography of Mao. We came to our own conclusions and interpretations of events through a decade's research." The authors also responded to Andrew Nathan's review in a letter to The London Review of Books.
English language publication
- Publisher: Random House
- Publication date: June 2, 2005
- ISBN 0-224-07126-2
- Publisher: Knopf
- Publication date: October 18, 2005
- ISBN 0-679-42271-4
Mao: The Unknown Story was on the Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
bestseller list at number 2, in July 2005.
Chinese language publication
- Publisher: Open Magazine Publishing (Hong Kong)
- Publication date: September 6, 2006
- ISBN 962-7934-19-4
External links
- "Mao: The Unknown Story" Extract of the book from the publishers
- "New Bio Offers Sinister View of Chairman Mao" NPRNPRNPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
(Contains audio interview with Chang and Halliday) - "Homo sanguinarius" The Economist, 26 May 2005
- "To be Attacked by the Enemy is a Good Thing" by Robert Weil, China Study Group 31 December 2005
- "This book will shake the world" by Lisa Allardice, The Guardian, 26 May 2005
- "Too much hate, too little understanding", by Frank McLynn, The Independent on Sunday, 5 June 2005
- "The long march to evil", by Roy Hattersley, The Observer, 5 June 2005
- "The inhuman touch - MAO: The Unknown Story" by Richard McGregorRichard McGregorRichard McGregor is a journalist, writer and author. He was the chief political correspondent, Japan correspondent and China correspondent for The Australian. He also worked for the International Herald Tribune, the BBC and the Far Eastern Economic Review. He has worked as a journalist in Taiwan,...
, The Financial Times, 17 June 2005 - China experts attack biography's 'misleading' sources by Jonathan Fenby, The Observer, 4 December 2005
- "Mao: A Super Monster?" Alfred Chan, Pacific Affairs, (2006, vol. 79, No. 2)
- "China's Monster, Second to None" Michiko Kakutani, The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, October 21, 2005 - "The Mao That Roared" by Adi Ignatius, TIMETimeTime is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
, October 23, 2005