a critique of j. chang and j. halliday’s book mao, the ....pdfVIP

A Critique of J. Chang and J. Halliday’s Book Mao, the Unknown Story Jin Xiaoding Introduction China’s economic development is one of the most significant events in recent times. It is at least partially the consequence of her social and political evolution/revolution in the past century. If the west wants to understand modern China, it is essential not to misunderstand her founder, Mao. However, the book of J. Chang (JC) and J. Haliday, Mao, the unknown story, is misleading the Western public into profound misunderstanding of Mao, China’s modern history and China itself. The central theme of the book is to condemn Mao as an evil monster, “as bad as or worse than Hitler”. This claim was immediately accepted by the western media. When the book was first published in UK in June 2005, it was hailed by all major media with great enthusiasm, involving many well known China experts from polity (e.g., the last British governor of Hong Kong, C. Pattern), journalism (e.g., the Time’s East Asia editor, J. Mirsky) and academia (e.g., the chairman of the Department of International Relation, London School of Economics, M. Yahuda). According to these experts, everyone with a reasonable mind should be totally convinced by the book beyond any doubt. On this issue there is a rare harmony in which the voice of the Guardian is indistinguishable from that of the Daily Mail. Within one week, the book jumped to the top position of the non- fiction best selling list. Jung Chang has become the authority on the Chinese history. A person, who asked challenging questions during one of her seminars, was deemed by