Introduction: the origin of the debate

The debate centered on the evaluation of Mao Zedong, taking place in recent issues of the Chinese Language weekly journal, the Dowei times, finds its origin in the heated exchanges between Professor Chen Junfu of Temple U and Mr. Gao Wenqian, author of the book,”Zhou Enlai in his late years” on the special talk show radio program of the Voice of America (VOA) to mark Mao’s 110th birthday on Dec. 26, 2004. Initially I was approached for this program by its producer, because of my active involvement in organizing the public event on Dec. 14, 2003 in Chinatown to mark Mao’s 110th birthday, with speeches and the screening of the movie documenting China’s nuclear, missile and satellite programs. I declined the honor of appearing on VOA, but referred the host to talk to my friend professor Chen, who was a speaker at the Dec 24 public event in Chinatown.

Transcripts of Chen and Gao’s radio debate were published by the Dowei Times, (1/18 – 1/24 issue), along with a piece by Zhu Xueyuan, Adulation of Mao is politically counter-productive, expressing support for Mr. Gao’s strident denunciation of Mao and criticizing Chen for unceremoniously dismissing Gao’s negative assessments as “sheer non-sense”. Dr. Chen responded by an article in the same journal (2/22 – 2/28), The Wisdom and Vision of Mao; and then Gao Wenqian followed in the next issue (3/7 – 3/13) with a piece, Chen Junfu’s Real Agenda: Praise for Mao or Attack on Deng, which wallows, from beginning to end, in personal attack and character assassination with undisguised malice. Gao’s scurrilous piece has obviously stepped out of bounds of normal public discourse, but, to the extent that I got Dr. Chen into these exchanges, I feel obligated to make a few remarks on issues relevant to this debate.

First a comment addressed to the publisher and editors of Duowei Times.

Gao’s foul-mouthing, scurrilous piece is so replete with insults, venom, innuendo, name-calling, and attempts at character assassination that a self-respecting newspaper should not find it fit to print. What triggered Gao’s outburst of verbal abuses directed at Mr. Chen? According to Gao, it is because “Chen challenged [him] by name”, so he “has to return in kind” The only reference to Gao by Mr. Chen in his article in reply to the piece by Zhu Xueyuan is in this attempt to explain why he chided Gao in the VOA radio program for “mouthing sheer nonsense”: “Gao said that Mao was a mass murderer who had starved to death more people than Hitler ever killed. This is sheer nonsense. It struck me as either out of extreme malice or utter ignorance to compare Mao to Hitler”. Gao may have reason to feel offended by the rebuke represented in this remark, but it implies no personal insults whatsoever. Compare Gao’s piece with those by Chan and Zhu, his intent to engage in personal insults and scurrilous attack is all too obvious

The discursive power of Cultural Imperialism

I will now return to the main subject under discussion: evaluation of Mao.

Two of the most frequently heard charges from the leading Mao bashers today are the following: (1) Mao was a womanizing, sex-crazed, heartless tyrant, first gaining wide audience by way of a Random House’s book, Memoirs of Dr. Li Zhisui, the Private Physician of Mao Zedong; (2) Mao was a mass murderer whose Great Leap Forward led to the deaths of tens of millions of people in the worst famines in history.

Dr. Cheng Junfu dismissed the second charge as sheer nonsense resulting from either malice or ignorance. I will however dwell on another aspect left unmentioned in his exchanges with Gao Wenqian.. The two allegations above have one thing in common; they were both initially advanced by Chinese Mao bashers, and were not treated very seriously; but after they received a seal of approval from Western China experts, their veracity would suddenly seem to have been bolstered 100 times.

Let’s look at Dr. Li Zhisui’s book first; his initial manuscript was first peddled, respectively, to China Times Publish Co. in Taipei, and Professor Yu Ying-Shi of Princeton University. It was considered by neither of much value. China Times would offer him no more than a few thousand dollars; Dr. Yu refuse to lend his support because he saw in it “little value” as an account of history. But the situation changed drastically, when Mr. Jason Epstein, then the powerful chief editor at Random House, saw great potential in a book based on Li’s manuscript. Two U.S. China scholars, Andrew Nathan and Ann Thurston, were hired to lead the process of manufacturing a book of “value” out of whatever materials Li could be made to contribute. They spent two years “editing” the English translation of Li’s original Chinese manuscript, putting in numerous footnotes for academic trappings, and finally came up with a product that was significantly different from the original, not only in style but also in substance. Some of the well-known scholars and journalists from mainstream media organizations were then quickly lined up to hype this masterpiece. But the accounts purportedly given by Dr. Li were so full of holes that few knowledgeable of the events referred to therein would find them credible. A number of us in the U.S. penned a critique of this book, and published it as an open letter in several Chinese-language newspapers overseas. We concluded by analyzing the holes and discrepancies found in the Chinese and the English language versions that the main allegations of the book were concocted either to bolster its commercial value or for ideological purposes. Our open letter-critique prompted the response, also in the form of an open letter, endorsed by dozens of people inside China, including such persons mentioned in Li’s book as among Mao Zedong’s inner circle as Wang Dongxin and well-known persons such as the playwright Cao Yu. Their open letter was followed by the book Let the Historical Truth Be Told, co-authored by Lin Ke, Mao Zedong’s secretary, Wu Xujun, Mao’s head nurse, and Xu Tao, a leading physician in Zhongnanhai, the resident compound of the Party central leadership.

Both of these documents forcefully demolished the purported account by Li Zhisui as a collage of distortions, slanders and outright lies.

Subsequently, Mr. Wang Li and Mr. Qi Benyu, both of Cultural Revolution fame, after they came out of prison, also openly opined that the book by Li Zhisui was a crude work of fraud. Professor Yu Ying-Shi’s change of heart in the meantime was particularly noteworthy. When so many people who knew and worked for Mao Zedong had stepped out to testify to the falsehood of Li’s stories, Professor Yu, instead, chose to passionately embrace this book, which was based on the manuscript he erstwhile had dismissed as worthless, by publishing a long review, touting its historical value, in the Chinese Language newspaper, China Times Daily. Once some US China scholars in the West had ‘certified’ the value of Li’s purported memoirs, many anti-Mao Chinese commentators would follow up by shouting cheers for this book with abandon. This illustrates nicely the working of what I would choose to call the discursive power of cultural imperialism.