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

Red Army let go by Chiang
THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
Chang and Halliday claim that Chiang Kai-shek let Mao’s Red Army
escape during the Long March. This claim is important for Chang and
Halliday’s thesis that Mao was good for nothing. Why was Chiang, a
staunch anti-communist who considered a communist victory more
dangerous to China than Japanese invasion and occupation, willing to
let Mao escape? Because he did not want to risk the life of his son, who
was in the Soviet Union at that time, so Chang and Halliday say.
However elsewhere in the book the authors also state that when Song
Qinling – Madam Sun Yat-sen of whom Chang and Halliday wrote a
praiseworthy biography back in 1988 but now allege was another
Soviet agent – appealed to Chiang to release two Chinese (a man called
Niu Lan and his wife) who were arrested as Soviet agents in return for
the homecoming of his son, Chiang refused. Jin asks, rightly, was the
imprisonment of two little known Chinese more important than the
defeat of Mao’s Red Army to Chiang?
Mao didn’t walk during the Long March
Another claim in the book is that Mao was carried for long stretches of
the Long March. One piece of evidence cited to support this claim is
the similar claim made by Zhang Guotao in his memoirs. But Zhang’s
memoirs were written after he fell out with Mao and had defected to
the Nationalists. In any case, even Zhang does not claim that Mao was
carried all the time. Another piece of evidence is from Mao’s reported
confession to his bodyguards when Mao said that during the Long
March he was carried and therefore read a lot. Again Mao’s own words
do not lead to the conclusion that he was always carried around. Jin
asks, rightly, if the Zhang and Halliday claim were true it would not
have been ‘unknown’ since the claim was already made by Zhang
Guotao and what Mao said was published in his bodyguard Ye
Zilong’s memoirs in 2000.
Murder of 70 million Chinese people
The first sentence of Chang and Halliday states that Mao was the
murderer of 70 million Chinese. Of the 70 million one set of figures that
Chang and Halliday produce in the text is the 27 million who were
supposed to have died in prisons or labour camps during the Mao era.
How do the authors come up with these figures? Chang and Halliday
claim that there were approximately 10 million prisoners in prisons
and labour camps in China every year during the 27 years of Mao’s
rule, and that the death rate was possibly as high as 10 per cent. There-
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