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

HOW A MEDICAL DOCTOR DOCTORS HISTORY
even asked Zhou Enlai about Mao’s extramarital affairs. But Qi
declares that in all those years he had never heard even a rumour of
Mao sleeping with any women outside his marriage and that Li’s accusations
about Mao’s philandering were lies and fabrications. Qi states
that Mao’s bedroom had no locks and was never locked. The duty
office of the guards, secretaries, nurses and attendants was just outside
the door. The office operated on a round-the-clock basis, and was
staffed 24 hours a day; ‘all activities were entered into records’ (Qi
1996: 195). Qi states that Mao was very respectful to ‘female comrades’
and he had never heard of any complaint of sexual harassment against
Mao. He did hear such complaints against other powerful people on
the compound. Qi (2004) continued to hold these views in another
interview that took place in 2004.
History as doctored by the doctor and his US mentors: a critical
analysis
Compared with memoirs and biographies written in China, Li gives a
more sympathetic and more believable portrayal of Jiang Qing, who
was isolated, lonely, depressed and desperately wanted attention.
However, Li’s assertion that Jiang Qing wanted to be a modern Wu
Zetian, a powerful empress, was blatantly parroting the Chinese official
propaganda and Chinese intelligentsia’s accustomed Confucian
approach to history.
The most surprising aspect of Li’s book is his portrayal of Wang
Dongxing as understanding, intelligent, skilful but not at all fearful.
Wang was one of the few most powerful men in the Mao era and
carried out routine duties to implement Mao’s personal instructions. It
is very hard to reconcile Li’s two portraits: on the one hand his description
of a vengeful and power paranoid emperor Mao and on the other
of a benign Wang Dongxing who was Director of the Central Office of
the CCP and head of Mao’s bodyguards. Li claims that Wang
Dongxing is his friend, but Wang nonetheless joined the protest against
Li’s book.
Li’s account of events such as Mao’s meeting with his former wife
He Zizhen, his quarrel with Peng Dehuai at Lushan and the dismissal
of his bodyguard Han Qingyu, are claimed by Lin Ke et al (1995) to
have contained errors of detail that were exactly the same as those told
by Ye Yonglie. The fact that dancing parties were organized for the top
leaders and that Mao had many young women around him in his later
years was no secret before Li’s book was published.
For someone who claims to have had Mao’s confidence even in
political matters, Li fails to offer any insight on many significant
figures and events. For instance he gives no explanation as to why Lin
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