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

CHALLENGING THE HEGEMONY II
demonized in it (Shi 2007). 6 Zhu also admitted that she had known
Mao and Jiang well since the Yan’an days and that it was not Jiang
Qing who seduced Mao, as has been popularly portrayed, to advance
her career. It was Mao who pursued Jiang. Mao liked Jiang not only
because she was pretty and young but also because she was talented
and very knowledgeable about Marxist revolutionary ideas. Unlike
other senior revolutionary leaders at that time Jiang Qing had actually
read some Marxist-Leninist classics. She published writings that
showed her understanding of Marxism in the 1930s in Shanghai before
she arrived in Yan’an.
It has been an accepted wisdom in the biographical and memoir
literature that Jiang lured Mao by hook and by crook, and therefore
pushed He Zhizhen (Mao’s third wife before Jiang Qing) away from
him. Jiang Qing was therefore considered immoral and an evil person,
a decadent, third-rate Shanghai actress who conspired to victimize a
veteran woman revolutionary. But according to Zhu, He Zhizhen did
not have much in common with Mao apart from their revolutionary
experience in Jiangxi, whereas Jiang’s ideas on literature and arts
inspired Mao even in his late years. Zhu gives one incident to show the
limitations of He Zhizhen. Once when He saw Mao having a hug with
a foreign journalist she went over and smacked the journalist on the
face, not knowing that hugging in foreign countries might mean no
more than a handshake. Zhu says that it was He’s own fault that Mao
divorced her. Zhu, a qualified doctor who was responsible for looking
after the high-ranking party officials in Yan’an, actually suggests that
He was then already clinically crazy. She wanted to leave Yan’an to go
to the Soviet Union for treatment, although Mao strongly objected to
that. He Zhizhen had several miscarriages and, despite Zhu’s efforts to
cover up, Mao eventually realized that some of his wife’s pregnancies
had nothing to do with him (Shi 2007).
In defence of Jiang Qing: a feminist perspective
In an interview circulated in the e-media, Chen Yonggui also speaks
very highly of Jiang Qing and considers her a good example of being
incorruptible (Tian 2006). Many people gradually come to realize that
much of the slander piled on the character of Jiang Qing may have
something to do with deep-seated gender discrimination among Mao’s
revolutionary comrades. It was Mao who had a liberal attitude toward
the gender issue. When some CCP cadres around Mao raised objection
to his marriage with Jiang on the ground that she was a divorced
woman who had a dubious life in Shanghai, Mao is reported to have
said that he himself was a divorced man. Lan Yezi (2006) argues that so
many accusations against Jiang actually stemmed from Chinese male
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