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

THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
Chang and Halliday’s claim that is not supported by evidence? First of
all, the first note entry ‘Mao order, 3 Dec. 1930’ is not exactly the
wording in the text. We therefore cannot be sure what Mao ordered.
Second, the text aims to show Mao ordered the mass slaughter of his
opponents, but which reference is it that is cited for this claim? Is it the
citation of Dai & Luo and Vladmirov? According to the order of
appearance these two references are cited only to refer to the text
before ‘AB meeting’, but the ‘slaughter’ sentence appears only after
‘AB meeting’ in the text. Are we to understand then that it is the citation
of ‘Mao to Shanghai, 20 Dec. 1930, *ZDJC vol. 14, p. 636 (E: MRTP
vol. 3, pp. 704–5); *Liou Di, letter to Shanghai, 11 Jan. 1931, RGASPI,
cit.; *Provincial Action Committee, Emergency Announcement no. 9, 15
Dec. 1930 RGASPI, 514/1/1008’ that supports the ‘slaughter’ statement?
Or are these references actually citations for the ‘AB meeting’?
Third, the sentence ‘Put them all down’, he ordered, and then
‘slaughter en masse in all counties and all districts’ does not make
sense. Does it mean that Mao ordered his opponents to be put down
and then slaughtered? One would think that the sentence in quotation
marks is a translation from Chinese or Russian by the co-authors. One
would understand the first part of the sentence ‘put them all down’
means ‘to get rid of them by killing them’ which is the same as the
second part of the sentence ‘slaughter en masse’ What is the word
‘then’ in the sentence for? What is possible, or what the co-authors
possibly mean to say, is that Mao gave the order by saying ‘put them
all down’ then someone else carried out the order and ‘slaughtered’
them. If that is the case why don’t the co-authors do that?
Appearance and instant satisfaction
What is clear is that the authors cannot support their claims as well as
might first appear. There are many examples in the text. A common
move employed by the authors is to cite a reference or even references
to a trivial statement or a piece of insignificant information, which is
then followed immediately by a substantial or serious claim without
reference. There is a source cited for the statement that ‘On 29 May he
had to return to Red Jiangxi’ (p. 118). But immediately after this Chang
and Halliday claim that Mao led ‘the tens of thousands of troops’ into
‘an isolated cul-de-sac’ and ‘a large number fell ill and died’ (p. 118), a
claim made without any supporting source. However, because there is
a reference to the first sentence the appearance is that the substantial
claim is also backed by a reference.
The reader who is not a professional in the field would not take the
trouble to check whether the claims made in the book have really been
made on solid evidence. This is clever showmanship: it is difficult to
[ 70 ]