Review of Mao the Unknown Story

James Heartfield has heavily attacked and criticized Mao the Unknown Story. Steve Tsang, an anti-Mao Oxford University historian calls the book a “distortion of history”. A Taiwanese publisher was contracted to publish the Chinese version of Mao The Unknown Story, but they decided not to when they realized the authors couldn’t back up their claims.

Chang and Halliday had the funds to interview anyone they wished for their book. Many of this book’s interviewees are irrelevant. For example, what would Lech Walesa or a Hungarian Prime Minister know about Mao Zedong? Most of the time Chang and Halliday don’t cite sources, and when they do it is only to demonize Mao. They often use quotations and sources out of context. They have done this with Gong Chu, a speech made by Mao, and a witness of the Luding Bridge battle. The authors fail to cite references properly and don’t say which source they used to make a claim. The authors commonly give a source for pieces of irrelevant information, and then make a substantial claim but don’t give a source. Jung Chang has a linguistics doctorate, but in this book she doesn’t properly convert the Chinese names into English spelling.

They make claims that are just plain stupid as well. They claimed that Mao drank plenty of milk each day, consumed a kilo of beef stew each day along with a whole chicken. Any idiot can tell that this is not humanly possible. Most human beings, including Mao, can’t eat that much. They also claim that the KMT let the communists escape on the Long March. Any historian can tell you that this isn’t true. When the authors were asked which source supported their idiotic claim, they were unable to answer because they were lying. Jung Chang also refused to give convincing replies to Jin Xiaoding’s 17 questions about this book. The authors claim to have interviewed the last surviving eyewitness of the battle at Luding Bridge. They claim the person said there was no battle there. When an investigation was done, reports confirmed that a battle took place and that Chang and Halliday were lying.

Chang and Halliday claim that 700,000 people died in Ruijin before the reds had complete control of mainland China. To back this claim up, they cite two sources for a population drop. Just because a population drops doesn’t mean people were killed by communists. Their sources fail to specify how many people left the area and how many people were killed by the KMT.

Chang and Halliday claim that Mao didn’t walk during the Long March, but was carried. They use Zhang Guotao’s memoirs as a reference. However, his memoirs were written after he left the communists and joined the Nationalists. So these memoirs are biased and most likely untruthful. Even Zhang himself claims Mao wasn’t carried all of the time.

Chang claims her home province was hit with famine. In her books Wild Swans and Mao: The Unknown Story, Chang fails to provide any eyewitness accounts of starvation in her home province. Halliday originally condemned the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and China, but now he agrees with Jung Chang that it was justified as a result of a Mao-Stalin conspiracy. Halliday is a walking contradiction whose politics have changed due to emotions, not logic.

They also claim to have interviewed Mao’s English teacher. When the teacher was contacted, she said she didn’t give them an interview.

Chang and Halliday say Mao was reckless with agriculture. In reality, Mao always urged caution in grain production and told people not to boast or to lie about false achievements in the production. During the Great Leap Forward, Mao warned the people to be cautious.

When scholars talk about death tolls for the Great Leap Forward, they are not sure how many actually died and how many weren’t even born yet. Their stats are based on inaccurate methods. Most of them don’t take into account the serious natural disasters that took place during that period. All GLF death toll estimates are inaccurate. Chang and Halliday, however, pick the highest estimates they can find.

Sources (books):
The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution by Mobo Gao
Mao the Unknown Story by Chang and Halliday