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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 includes interviewing literally hundreds of people who were close to Mao Zedong at some point in his life and revealing the contents of newly released secret Chinese archives. Additional knowlegde comes from their 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.

Some 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".

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. 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.

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

• "This book will shake the world" by Lisa Allardice, The Guardian, May 26, 2005

"So what made Jung Chang then devote 10 years of her life to researching a hefty political biography of Chairman Mao? Chang aims to expose the true character of the man responsible for so much misery - Chairman Mao. He was as evil as Hitler or Stalin, and did as much damage to mankind as they did, Chang says. And yet the world knows astonishingly little about him."

• "Mao: 10 parts bad, no parts good" by Gwynne Dyer, Trinidad & Tobago Express June 21, 2005

"The book is Mao: The Unknown Story, a massively researched biography of the Great Helmsman that strips all the flattering myths away and reveals the founder of China's Communist regime as a monster with no redeeming qualities whatever. The authors, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, spent ten years traveling through previously untapped archives and interviewing literally hundreds of people who were close to Mao Tse-tung at some point in his life, and the picture they draw of the man is as definitive as it is repellent."

• "The long march to evil", by Roy Hattersley, The Observer, June 5, 2005

"A compelling study of China's red emperor from Jung Chang and Jon Halliday exposes the true scale of Mao's oppression and genocidal manias"

• "Too much hate, too little understanding", by Frank McLynn, The Independent on Sunday, June 5, 2005

"I imagine most people would accept it as axiomatic that a good biography (never mind a great one) of a towering political figure cannot be written from a stance of pure hatred. As we know from Jung Chang's Wild Swans, she suffered grievously during the madness of the Cultural Revolution. But that in itself does not establish one's credentials to be a Mao biographer. The problem with this book is that it is an 800-page polemic, along the lines of Christopher Hitchens' The Trial of Henry Kissinger, but unconscionably prolix, and a sustained polemic does not a biography make."

• "History: Mao by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday" by Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Times, May 29, 2005

"Mao: The Untold Story 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 study, by Jung Chang, the author of Wild Swans, and her husband, the historian Jon Halliday, is a triumph. It is a mesmerising portrait of tyranny, degeneracy, mass murder and promiscuity, a barrage of revisionist bombshells, and a superb piece of research."

• "Bad element" by Michael Yahuda, The Guardian, Saturday June 4, 2005

"The author of Wild Swans and her historian husband, Jon Halliday, have torn away the many masks and falsehoods with which Mao and the Communist party of China to this day have hidden the true picture of Mao the man and Mao the ruler. Mao now stands revealed as one of the greatest monsters of the 20th century alongside Hitler and Stalin. Indeed, in terms of sheer numbers of deaths for which he responsible, Mao, with some 70 million, exceeded both."

• The Independent "Ironically, given the years of enforced "self-criticism" sessions that Chang remembers with a shiver, the book gave many a chance finally to speak the bitter truth about life under Mao. Witnesses give heart-wrenching accounts of daily horrors: a loyal Communist couple sell their children to raise party funds; a woman goes into labour on the Long March and is forced to walk with her baby's head hanging between her legs; starving peasants resort to cannibalism."

Criticism

While receiving worldwide praise, the book is not without controversy. There are disputed points, such as:

• Mao's marriage; Jung Chang claims that Mao's married four times, including an unfulfilled, arranged marriage as a baby, which is invalid under Chinese laws.
• The role of the Red Army in the Sino-Japanese War; she claimed that the Nationalists (Kuomintang) did the main fighting, while the Red Army did nothing and stayed behind. However American generals such as Joseph Stilwell noted the efficiency of the Red Army compared to the KMT.
• Chinese forces in the Korean War; she claimed that China defeated American forces by 'swamping' them via hordes of 'human waves', sourced by the actor Michael Caine. However, declassified American sources showed that it was partly wartime propaganda, and Chinese forces never had that many numbers in strength.
• The Sino-Indian War and the McMahon Line; She claimed that Mao deliberately violated an agreed treaty. In fact it was rejected by all Chinese governments, including Nationalists.

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 Randon 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

• "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
• The Independent

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