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

fore, the death toll would be 10,000,000 x 10 per cent x 27 = 27,000,000.
How did the figure of 10,000,000 come about? What was the source of
the 10 per cent death rate? In any case, Jin asks, again rightly, on what
ground could one draw a conclusion that every death in prison should
have been the responsibility of Mao?
As for the 38 million deaths attributed to the Great Leap Forward
famine, Chang and Halliday do not get into any of the controversies
and different estimates that exist in the literature (Banister 1987,
Coale 1984, Jin Hui 1993, Jiang Zhenghua and Li Na 1989, Li Chengrui
1987, Kane 1988) but pick the highest death toll. Chang conveniently
omits the fact that her home-town province of Sichuan was
one of the worst-hit provinces during the difficult years. Chang
does not in her Wild Swans or The Unknown Story mention any
eyewitness account of death by starvation in her home province.
Second, the Party Secretaries of other worst-hit provinces like Wu
Zhipu of Henan, Zeng Xisheng of Anhui, Shu Tong of Shandong and
Zhang Zhongliang of Gansu were all sacked after the Great Leap
Forward disaster except Li Jingquan, the Party Secretary of Sichuan,
Chang’s home province. One wonders why. If it was because
Sichuan managed to cover up the disaster so well, then it is reasonable
to assume that Chang’s father must have done a good job since
he was the Deputy Minster of the Propaganda Department of
Sichuan province during the height of his career. What motivates
Chang to rename her father’s Propaganda Department as Public
Affairs Department in her writings, Jin asks.
Mao, China’s Hitler and Stalin
MAO, THE UNKNOWN STORY
Almost all Western commentators tend to agree with Chang and Halliday
that Mao was like Hitler and Stalin. However it was public
knowledge that Mao, unlike Stalin and Hitler, did not execute any of
his political rivals. Before Mao came to dominant positions in the CCP
he was sidelined and demoted by Bo Gu, Zhang Wentian and Zhou
Enlai. Bo Gu and Zhang Wentian suffered in their careers and Zhang
even underwent humiliation later in life, but they were not executed by
Mao. Zhou Enlai served as the Premier of PRC until the last day of his
life. When Zhang Guotao, another of Mao’s rivals, defected to the
Nationalists Mao agreed to let his wife and children join him. During
the Sixth Congress of the CCP Mao worked hard to keep Wang Ming,
another of Mao’s political opponents, as a member of the CCP Central
Committee and Wang later migrated to the Soviet Union and died
there. Peng Dehuai was demoted in 1959 and sidelined and humiliated
and even brutally beaten up by some Red Guards during the Cultural
Revolution. But Peng died of bowel cancer in 1974. Liu Shaoqi was
[ 77 ]