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Mao: The Unknown Story is an 832-page book written by the (married) historians Jung Chang and Jon Halliday after ten years of research. It was published in 2005 and paints Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-Tung in Wade-Giles) the former paramount leader of China and Chairman of the Communist Party of China, as being responsible for mass murder on a scale similar to, or greater than, that committed under the rule of Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin.

The ten years of research for the book included interviewing hundreds of people who were close to Mao Zedong at some point in his life and revealing the contents of newly released secret archives. Additional knowledge came from Chang's personal experience of living through the madness of the Cultural Revolution in China.

According to the book "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" and claimed that he was willing for half of China to die to achieve military-nuclear superpowerdom.

Chang and Halliday argue that despite being born into a peasant family, Mao had little concern for the welfare of the Chinese peasantry. They hold Mao responsible for the famine resulting from the Great Leap Forward and claim that he exacerbated the famine by allowing the export of grain to continue even when it became clear that China did not have sufficient grain to feed its population. They also claim that Mao had many political opponents arrested and murdered, including some of his personal friends, and argue that he was a more tyrannical leader than had previously been thought.

Many historians have criticised their portrait of Mao. British author Philip Short, whose own biography of Mao was published in 1999, has argued that Chang and Halliday have reduced Mao from a complex historical character to a one-dimensional "cardboard cutout of Satan" and that Chang is guilty of "writing history to fit her views". The noted China historian Andrew Nathan published an extensive criticism of the book in the London Review of Books attacking the authors' professionalism, methods, arguments and conclusions. Nathan wrote 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." He also claims that "t is clear that many of Chang and Halliday’s claims are based on distorted, misleading or far-fetched use of evidence."

Chang has responded to the criticism by arguing that nothing positive came out of Mao's rule, and that she and her husband were shocked at what they discovered during the 10 years they spent researching the book. Halliday is an historian specializing in the Soviet Union, and he said that he was greatly helped by accessing Russian archives on China that were inaccessible until recently. As yet his more unexpected claims have been unchecked by professional historians. Despite being highly critical of the Chinese Communist Party, Chang travelled several times to China during the course of her research, interviewing many of those who were close to Mao, as well as alleged eyewitnesses to events such as the crossing of Luding Bridge.

On 29th November 2005, Professor R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii wrote on his web-blog that he agreed with Chang and Halliday's estimates over the number of deaths that can be attributed to Mao's rule of China.

Authors

Main articles at Jung Chang and Jon Halliday

The author Jung Chang, 张戎, (born 1952) is a British (Chinese-born) writer, best known for her autobiography Wild Swans, which became the biggest grossing non-fiction paperback in publishing history, selling over 10 million copies worldwide, except in mainland China, where it is banned.

Jon Halliday is a Russian historian who was a former Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King's College, University of London.

Reviews

• "Jade and Plastic", by Andrew Nathan, London Review of Books, November 17, 2005
• "The inhuman touch - MAO: The Unknown Story" by Richard McGregor, The Financial Times, June 17, 2005
• "Homo sanguinarius" The Economist, May 26th 2005
• "This book will shake the world" by Lisa Allardice, The Guardian, May 26, 2005
• "Mao: 10 parts bad, no parts good" by Gwynne Dyer, Trinidad & Tobago Express June 21, 2005
• "The long march to evil", by Roy Hattersley, The Observer, June 5, 2005
• "Too much hate, too little understanding", by Frank McLynn, The Independent on Sunday, June 5, 2005
• "History: Mao by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday" by Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Times, May 29, 2005
• "Bad element" by Michael Yahuda, The Guardian, Saturday June 4, 2005
• "Jung Chang: Of gods and monsters" by Julie Wheelwright, The Independent, 03 June, 2005

Controversy

While receiving worldwide praise from, in the main, non-academic sources, the book is not without controversy, and most of the book's claims have been disputed.

• An Attempted Coup d'Etat

The authors claim that Peng Zhen and Peng Dehuai met and discussed the possibility of launching a coup d'Etat. They claim that this meeting was secret and yet they also provide four pages of "reconstructed" dialogue between the two Pengs.

• The Crossing of Luding Bridge

Chang argues that there was no battle at Luding Bridge and that the story was simply Communist propaganda. Jung Chang is currently amongst a minority of sources that deny the incident took place. She named a witness to the event, 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 she claims indicated the force guarding the bridge had been withdrawn before the Communists arrived. Other historians have found other eyewitnesses and accuse Chang and Halliday of misreading the Nationalist material. Diaries of several veterans of the Long March, as well as non-Chinese sources such as Harrison E. Salisbury's The Long March: The Untold Story, Dick Wilson's The Long March 1935: The Epic of Chinese Communism's Survival and Charlotte Salisbury's Long March Diary, do mention a battle at Luding Bridge.

In October 2005, The Age newspaper claimed that it had been unable to track down Chang's Luding Bridge witness.

• The role of the Red Army in the Sino-Japanese War

Chang claims that the KMT did the majority of the fighting, whilst the Red Army did not attempt to engage the Japanese. American generals such as Joseph Stilwell did mention the relative combat efficiency and good leadership of the Red Army compared to the KMT army, though Stilwell had a poor relationship with Chiang Kai-shek over many issues concerning the Chinese war effort - Stilwell was eventually replaced in 1944. Also people like Willy Lam and the Cambridge historian Hans van de Ven have argued that the KMT contributed far more to the Chinese war effort than the Communists. Chang and Halliday have relied heavily on van de Ven among others. Lam, as well as Chang and Halliday, argue that Red forces spent at least as much time fighting the KMT as they did the Japanese.

• Tactics of Chinese forces in the Korean War

Chang states that China pushed back American forces by 'swamping' them with hordes of 'human waves', sourced by the actor Michael Caine. However, declassified American sources indicate that this belief was partly wartime propaganda and that Chinese forces were never deployed in numbers as large as was previously believed.

• Number of deaths under Mao

Chang claims that 70 million people died while Mao was in power, many of which occurred during the 'Great Leap Forward'. It has been argued that she failed to take important factors into consideration, such as reports of poor weather that contributed to the famine - it has also been argued that average Chinese death rates dropped during Mao's rule. Estimates of the numbers of deaths during this period vary, people such as Wim F Werthheim suggesting inaccurate data to be the main cause. Analysts and historians, both Chinese and non-Chinese, mostly put the death toll at around 30 million people during the Great Leap Forward, with the majority of the deaths due to starvation. Dr Ping-ti Ho stated his belief that he believed "missing" Chinese from the 1950s census records never existed in the first place.

• The Sino-Indian War and the McMahon Line

Chang and Halliday say that Mao deliberately violated a treaty concerning the Sino-Indian border, even though it had been rejected by all Chinese factions, including the KMT. They have also rejected decades of scholarship on the origins of the 1962 War.

British historian Philip Short stated his belief that Chang was being one-sided in her views that Mao was alone to blame for China's ills:

"I fear this is a case of writing history to fit their own views; doing what the Chinese call cutting the feet to fit the shoes. Mao was ruthless and tyrannical enough in real life that there's no need to reduce him to a cardboard cut-out of Satan... He was a great poet, a visionary and, I would argue, a military strategist of genius... It was not just one man who caused all this pain."

Extract

A few paragraphs from a much longer extract at Random House:

"Mao was the third son, but the first to survive beyond infancy. His Buddhist mother became even more devout to encourage Buddha to protect him. Mao was given the two-part name Tse-tung. Tse, which means 'to shine on', was the name given to all his generation, as preordained when the clan chronicle was first written in the eighteenth century; tung means 'the East'. So his full given name meant 'to shine on the East'. When two more boys were born, in 1896 and 1905, they were given the names Tse-min (min means 'the people') and Tse-tan (tan possibly referred to the local region, Xiangtan).

These names reflected the inveterate aspiration of Chinese peasants for their sons to do well - and the expectation that they could. High positions were open to all through education, which for centuries meant studying Confucian classics. Excellence would enable young men of any background to pass imperial examinations and become mandarins - all the way up to becoming prime minister. Officialdom was the definition of achievement, and the names given to Mao and his brothers expressed the hopes placed on them.

But a grand name was also onerous and potentially tempted fate, so most children were given a pet name that was either lowly or tough, or both. Mao's was 'the Boy of Stone' - Shi san ya-zi. For this second 'baptism' his mother took him to a rock about eight feet high, which was reputed to be enchanted, as there was a spring underneath. After Mao performed obeisance and kowtows, he was considered adopted by the rock. Mao was very fond of this name, and continued to use it as an adult. In 1959, when he returned to Shaoshan and met the villagers for the first - and only - time as supreme leader of China, he began the dinner for them with a quip: 'So everyone is here, except my Stone Mother. Shall we wait for her?'" Random House extract

English language publication

• Publisher: Random House
  • Publication date: June 02, 2005
  • ISBN: 0224071262

• Publisher: Knopf
  • Publication date: October 18, 2005
  • ISBN: 0679422714

"Mao: The Unknown Story is in the Sunday Times Bestseller list this week at number 2" July 2005

Sources

• "The inhuman touch - MAO: The Unknown Story" by Richard McGregor, The Financial Times, 17th June, 2005
• "Homo sanguinarius" The Economist, 26th May, 2005
• "Mao Zedong’s place in history" by Syed Badrul Ahsan, New Age, 10th June, 2005
• "This book will shake the world" by Lisa Allardice, The Guardian, 26th May, 2005
• "Mao: 10 parts bad, no parts good" by Gwynne Dyer, Trinidad & Tobago Express 21st June, 2005
• "The long march to evil", by Roy Hattersley, The Observer, 5th June, 2005
• "China's Own Historical Revisionism" by Willy Lam, Wall Street Journal, 11th August 2005
• "Too much hate, too little understanding", by Frank McLynn, The Independent on Sunday, 5th June, 2005
• "History: Mao by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday" by Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Times, 29th May, 2005
• "Bad element" by Michael Yahuda, The Guardian, 4th June, 2005
• "Jung Chang: Of gods and monsters" by Julie Wheelwright, The Independent, 3rd June, 2005
• Getting My Reestimate Of Mao's Democide Out by R.J. Rummel, 29th November, 2005
• China experts attack biography's 'misleading' sources by Jonathan Fenby, The Observer, 4th December, 2005

• 2005 books
• Banned books
• Controversial books