The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.

Jung Chang might be the best known female author about Communist China during the rule of Mao Zedong (Tse-Tung). She was born into communist China and lived there during the cultural revolution and the height of the Cult of Mao. Disenfranchised, disenchanted, and disillusioned, she immigrated to Britain and became a British citizen.

Her most well-known book is Wild Swans, the true story of her grandmother, her mother, and herself. Her grandmother was born into a low-ranking family when women’s feet were still bound. Feet-binding became illegal between the birth of Jung’s grandmother and grandmother’s younger sister. Her grandmother’s father sent her off to be the concubine of a warlord, which proved to be an isolated and lonely existence for six years. Shortly before the warlord died, she gave birth to a daughter.

With no where else to go, she returned to her parents and fought fiercely against her neglectful father. Eventually, she fell in love with a doctor. Although the doctor’s family wanted her to be his concubine, he loved her so deeply that he insisted she become his official wife. They married and raised the little girl together.

Jung Chang’s mother was raised in a loving family but also under Japanese occupation in the puppet state of Manchukuo. Japanese teachers were abusive toward the Chinese students and hit them at the slightest breach of etiquette. Schools were essentially large shanties. A classmate caught reading a forbidden book was shot to death by Japanese soldiers.

When the Japanese vacated at their defeat in WW2, the area was flooded with Kuomintang soldiers. The Kuomintang was little better than the Japanese, but not by much. Her mother and stepfather wanted her to marry and to find protection away from the Kuomintang, but their main prospect was a wealthy and obnoxious idiot. Fortunately, they left the decision up to her. She became a local spy against the Kuomintang and aided Communist resistance. She risked torture and death for a cause she believed in.

She fell in love with another communist soldier, the father of Jung Chang. Jung’s father received permission from the Communist party to marry because he matched men’s criteria, having been “at least twenty-eight years old, a Party member for at least seven years,” etc. (pg 128). Although Jung’s mother was not an official member and thus did not match the marital criteria, she was permitted to marry anyway. She went to work for the Women’s Federation, which opposed concubinage and closed brothels. However, the other women in the Federation often accused her of being bourgeois for her education and her fancy clothing. Thus, she had a difficult time becoming an official member of the Communist party.

Many things such as hand-embroidered baby clothes were considered bourgeois and anti-Communist. Her boss, Mrs. Mi, was her worst critic and forced her into a depression. Her next boss, Mrs. Ting was much more tolerant and permitted her to read books “without a Marxist cover,” and saved her from taunts about being a “bourgeois intellectual.” (171) Before her twentieth year, Jung’s mother became the head of the Youth League. Shortly after Jung Chang was born, her mother’s stepfather died. Her grandmother was denied permission to hold a Buddhist funeral ceremony for the man she loved.

Throughout most of her mother’s career with the Communists, she was always under suspicion for being bourgeois. Occasionally, the accusations were not petty gossip and were actual government investigations. Sometimes, she was detained for six months and her children had to be kept in state-owned nurseries. More than once, she was interrogated for conspiring with the Kuomintang. Her husband was forbidden from writing or phoning her or else, he would also fall under suspicion. Fortunately, her mother was never convicted. It was all a test to ensure her loyalty. People who suffered for Communism became better Communists (200).

Jung Chang had a nurturing, loving family that prospered for the most part, thanks to their rank and status among the Communists. Due to her privileged status in the hierarchy, she and her family were spared the mass starvation from the Great Leap Forward. She entered school a year earlier than her peers because of her advanced skill with classical poems and calligraphy. Schools also endorsed the Cult of Mao by having a picture of Mao in every classroom and teaching the students about how great and wonderful Mao was. Even though the Communists had complete control of China by this time, Jung and her classmates were incessantly reminded to maintain the class struggle.

The Cultural Revolution began when Jung was fourteen. Mao decried that China has been proliferated with “capitalist-roaders” Newspapers demanded citizens destroy all who opposed Chairman Mao, China’s sole savior from capitalism. Mao himself also issues nationwide calls to action. Anyone who refused to search out capitalist-roaders were also on the path to capitalists. This resulted in students attacking teachers as well as other teachers attacking them. Some were killed, some were compelled to commit suicide. The emergent Red Guards broke into the houses of suspects, beat them, forced them to confess anything against Mao, beat them some more, and stole the household property.

The basic functions of society existed – grocery stores, post offices, and so on – but theaters, tea shops and other placed labeled bougerious were closed. Because this was the Cultural Revolution, everything belonging to the Old Culture had to be demolished. Antiques were shattered. Buddhist shrines were smashed into rubble. Literature was burned.

Although the Cultural Revolution began with the students attacking the teachers, it soon escalated toward people from all positions in society. Provincial authorities became involved and, instead of condemning the violence, helped it to continue. Jung’s parents fell under suspicion. Her father was taken away without explanation for months where officers interrogated him and psychologically tortured him. He returned home a traumatized man. Eventually, Jung Chang and her entire family were blacklisted as capitalist-roaders and were kicked onto the streets.

The final part in the Cultural Revolution came when it ensnared Mao’s political enemies and decried them as capitalists. Every capitalist-roader was sent into organized labor camps. Mao died a few years after he ended the Cultural Revolution. China opened up to teach English and to invite foreigners. After a life of isolation, the adult Jung Chang met foreigners for the first time. Eventually, she decided to flee the nation that traumatized her family and to emigrate to England where she now lives.

The second book by Jung Chang that I read is Mao: The Unknown Story. I have spent a considerable amount of time considering how to summarize this for a small article. As I read it, Ioften referred to it as the “Fat Yellow Book of Mao.” Jung Chang spent a decade searching for all the material to write the book. It is 700 pages of text with 200 pages of bibliography.

Mao Zedong is perhaps the most sadistic dictators to ever have ruled. When compared alongside Hitler, Hitler actually seems noble in comparison. This is not to minimize or dismiss the WW2 atrocities; this is to emphasize how much worse Mao Zedong was.

Mao’s father worked hard to make his family the most prosperous in the village. Chinese peasants actually owned their land instead of living as serfs (pg 4). Mao was the first son to survive infancy; two other sons died early on. Mao thrived on ambition, but unlike his industrious father, he hated work, was rather lazy, and avoided any type of job. During his early adulthood, he briefly joined the Kuomintang but left because it required too many chores and too much effort. During WW1, France hired Chinese men for menial labor. Most of the workers returned with Communist ideals, but Mao stayed in China.

After WW1, the Chinese Communist Party emerged. China at the time was essentially bankrupt. The Chinese Communists decided to receive funding from the Soviet Union, even though this meant they needed to obey the Soviets. Mao joined the CCP for the paycheck. In Hunan province, he discovered that he enjoyed violence and torture – two things he never before experienced. He developed quite a knack for it and became sadistic.

In the late 20s, the Kuomintang attacked the Communists. Although Mao was placed in charge of an army, he essentially hijacked the soldiers for his own purposes, led them into the mountainside and used them for banditry. Even though Mao already had a wife still living and had several children, he abducted Gui-yuan to be his next wife (71). He abandoned his other family so that when his wife died, his sons were forced to sleep on the streets. Because of Mao, Gui-yuan became pregnant several times; each time, the child either had to be abandoned due to the marching or had died before the first year. Gui-yuan eventually had a severe mental breakdown and was institutionalized. Only one daughter survived, and she led a sad, lonely life.

The Japanese invasion put on a hold on the Kuomintang/Communist rivalry, which resumed in the 40s after the Japanese were defeated. Mao never did anything laudable, consistently ignored his superiors, and wasted the lives of numerous soldiers. In sharp contrast to Mao was the heroic and noble Peng De-Huai who was the anti-thesis of Mao in every aspect from social origin to treatment of women. The Kuomintang lost against the Communists due to the sentimentality of Chiang Kai-Shek, keeping commanders who were ill-fit for their positions. The Communists also had sleeper agents in place who simply surrendered without a fight and who led to an easy Communist victory.

Mao’s own propensity for purging and torturing resulted in the alienation of numerous officials. The rivalry between Stalin and Trotsky in the Soviet Union also influenced China with Chinese Stalinists or Trotskyites. According to the Mao and his followers, Stalinists were good while Trotskyites were bad. If anyone criticized him (and many did), Mao had that individual captured in secret and systematically tortured to break that person emotionally, psychologically, and all other ways possible. Mao became paranoid about his own personal safety. With good reason, quite a lot of people wanted to kill him. He rose to be the leader of China’s Communist government.

Next, Mao needed to make himself independent from Stalin. Chapter 34 – beginning page 434 in my book – discusses the political motives between North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union that led to the Korean War. At first, Stalin wanted to avoid aiding Korea because he feared a subsequent war with the United States. Mao wanted a Korean War in order to coerce Soviet aid in the form of military technology (Atomic Bomb). Stalin decided a Korean War would be a good idea to determine America’s fighting strength. Once the Korean War started, Stalin distanced himself politically for the sake of global appearances and gave the reins to Mao. The Soviet dictator hoped the war could wear down and weaken enough American forces to render a third world war possible and easy for Soviet global conquest.

The war did not go as Stalin hoped. The United States had North Korea beat within a year. However, North Korea’s communist leader Kim Il Sung then permitted China’s forces to flood the nation and attack the Americans. This was essentially an abdication of authority. Mao became the leader and dictator of North Korea – and especially its military – for the duration for the war. Prolonging it two extra years started to have an almost genocidal effect on the North Koreans. Jung Chang used the term “below replacement level.” Kim Il Sung begged Mao to surrender. Finally, the United States threatened to use nuclear weapons against China. Mao then asked Stalin to have the technology to have an atomic bomb. Stalin refused to give Mao that knowledge. Stalin decided that the Korean War must end. Then, he promptly had a stroke. A third of Chinese POWs did not want to return.

The Great Leap Forward was Mao’s attempt to industrialize China. China needed to finance itself, and the only commodity it could export to foreign countries was its agricultural products. Mao knew nothing about economics or industrialization, nor did he bother to learn. His whole program was a failure. His massive exporting of agriculture resulted in a senseless famine that killed tens of millions of Chinese peasants. The famine was entirely avoidable. Mao knew about the peasants dying, but he simply did not care. Other Communist leaders were essentially screaming at Mao to let the peasants eat. The Cultural Revolution was Mao’s plot to take revenge against his political opponents from the Great Leap Forward.

Jung Chang has estimated that 70 million of the Chinese people had perished underneath Mao’s dictatorship.

The third book by Jung Chang that I read is easy to summarize because it is a summary in and of itself. This book is Madame Sun Yat-Sen (Soong Ching-ling), written for Penguin’s “Lives of Modern Women” series. Starting this right after the massive 700+ page Fat Yellow Book of Mao, I felt rather disappointed to find a book of only 138 pages. I also feel that this book and the series were written for much younger audiences. A lot of the horrors, tragedies, and realities had been glossed over.

Soong Ching-ling was born in 1893 to devout Christians. Her mother was highly academic, and her father became an ordained minister after eight years traveling the United States from 1878 to 1886. She was very interested in improving China politically through the will of the people. She fell in love with Sun Yat-Sen, the first president of the short-lived Chinese Republic. She believed that women’s rights were complimentary to men’s rights. Her beliefs were deeply rooted in the old Chinese culture from which she and her husband had emerged. A strong example of this complimentary nature involves marriage. The parents always chose who their sons and daughters should marry. Sons had no choice in their arranged marriages.

After her husband died, she was forced to choose politically between supporting Chiang or Mao. She chose to support Mao Zedong. She became the single most-influential individual in all of China due to her own strengths, capabilities, and intelligence. After the Communist takeover, she lived a luxurious lifestyle. Some people criticized her for it, but she believed that luxury was a good thing as long as it did not rely upon exploitation. She was targeted during the Cultural Revolution, but she was spared the worst of it due to her own reputation.

Once I finished reading this last book, I figured that a review over the entire “Lives of Modern Women” series would be more appropriate instead of a review over a single book because the series appears to be designed to spark young children’s interest in the study of historical women. For each author review, I have decided to read a minimum of three books per author. I have already read two by Phyllis Chesler – “Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman” and “Death of Feminism.” I know she wrote plenty of books, but I cannot decide which should be my third. Any reccomendations?