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

MAO, THE UNKNOWN STORY
authoritative. However, it begs a number of questions. First, one
would like to see whether the interviewees have said anything that is
relevant to the content or arguments of the book about Mao.
Second, we would like to know how Chang and Halliday dealt with
interview information that was contrary to what they set out to prove.
Professor Frederick Teiwes is a well-known scholar on CCP elite politics
and he is listed in the book’s acknowledgements. According to
Teiwes, he had met Jung Chang a couple of times but could not say
anything substantial about the subject on Mao because Chang would
not listen unless what he had to say suited her predetermined ideas.
An indication of what Teiwes thinks of the book is that he declined to
participate in the special issue to review the book organized by The
China Journal.
Yes, we are told that Chang interviewed Mao’s daughter and a
grandson, but do we know what Li Na said about her father and what
Mao Xinyu said about his grandfather? It is a standard practice in
scholarly writing that you list a source only if it is referred to or cited
in the text. If you do not want to tell the reader what an interviewee has
said, you cannot include that interviewee as your source of evidence.
How evidence is selected: the example of Gong Chu
In a sense every piece of writing or book aims to argue for or against
something and therefore has to select its own evidence, but the selection
must be seen as reasonable and justifiable in the context of existing
knowledge or known evidence. Scholarship of any acceptable sense
has to engage with the existing literature and address opposing views
and evidence. Throughout the book Chang and Halliday often write as
if there is no scholarship on the subject. If they do cite something from
some publication it is to serve the purpose of their agenda to demonize
Mao.
Here is one of many examples. Gong Chu, a former senior Red
Army officer, who worked with Mao during the early period of the
CCP revolution but gave up and ran away to live in Hong Kong before
he could see the day of communist victory, published his memoirs in
Hong Kong. Chang and Halliday cite Gong as an insider, but only to
provide out of context evidence that Mao was a cunning powerhungry
manipulator who was cruel but good at nothing. When I read
Gong’s memoirs I found that the image of Mao that emerges in Gong’s
book is entirely different from the one presented in Chang and Halliday.
Gong’s book published in 1978 shows that Mao had ups and
downs during the early period of the CCP revolution and was as
vulnerable and emotional as any other normal person. When he talked
to Gong about how he was oppressed and dismissed by Zhou Enlai,
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