Battle for China's Past : Mao and the Cultural Revolution

THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
finished all and everything on the dinner table. Both the cook and Jiang
Qing were sobbing and Mao was so moved by the whole matter that
he stood up and walked first into his bedroom and then back out to the
courtyard, totally lost, not knowing what to do.
Chang and Halliday, like many in the West, would argue that we
should not trust accounts like this since this was officially published in
China. One should not forget that though the Chinese authorities do
not allow any personal attack against past CCP leaders – a very decent
attitude one would think – most of the information we know about
China, including information condemning Mao, is found in Chinese
official publications. In any case what motive would Li Yinqiao have to
tell lies about such details of daily life? We know that Liu Shaoqi is officially
rehabilitated as a victim of Mao’s wrongdoing. It is therefore
officially politically correct and rewarding to say good things about
Liu. However any observant researcher of the literature in Chinese
cannot fail to notice that hardly any personal memoirs by Liu’s former
bodyguards or those who had served him or worked with him have
much to say about Liu that is personally warm.
The logic of denial of the known story
The Taiwanese publisher Yuanliu had contracted to publish the
Chinese version of The Unknown Story, but abandoned the project after
it became clear that the authors could not factually back up at least
some of their claims. Especially controversial for the Taiwanese
publisher is the claim that one of the KMT’s most prominent generals,
Hu Zongnan, was a CCP agent. Descendants of Hu demanded that the
publisher delete such a claim or they would face a lawsuit. For Chang
and Halliday, it is important for such claims to be kept in the book. The
book sets to prove that two known stories are not true. One known
story is that the CCP triumphed over the KMT because, among other
factors, the CCP leader Mao was an excellent military strategist. But
the book wants to prove that Mao was a monstrous murderer as well
as a useless military leader. The second known story is that the KMT
was defeated because it was led by a corrupted dynasty of the four
powerful families (Seagrave 1986) and because it had no socioeconomic
programmes that could win over the majority of the Chinese in
rural China. But Chang and Halliday do not want anything to do with
social and societal forces in the story. How can you explain the success
of the CCP led by Mao when a largely peasant army fought at huge
odds against the modern KMT army, supported by the most advanced
and powerful force in the world, the United States? To overturn the
two known stories, Chang and Halliday have to say that China was
delivered to Mao by agents such as Hu Zongnan.
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