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Q: are jung chang books allowed in China now?
she's a Chinese writer, previously banned in China, with a new book coming out soon.
Wild Swans and Mao are banned. The Cixi book will never make it to mainland bookshops, as it doesn’t present the official Chinese people’s opinion of Empress Cixi.*
I’ve never had my books checked in Customs, and you can buy all of the above in Hong Kong. Better get on that, CCP!
Regarding Jung Chang:
Despite all she has done to dispel the national myths and historical distortions perpetrated by the Communist Party, I find her an irritating writer.
Particularly in the Mao book, her constant use of subjective, leading, rhetorical language** undermines her academic credibility. A great shame, as her writing is more extensively researched than any other literature on the topic.
If she set out the facts in unemotional, unambiguous language, her writing would be devastating. As it stands, her account of history comes off as a largely unsubstantiated smear campaign (which it isn’t).
What Mao actually did (without overstatement, subjectivity or manipulative language added) would make for gripping reading, but Jung Chang makes the scholarly component of her writing appear dubious because she can’t resist personal, emotional attacks.
*: Alternate (i.e. researched) points of view in China can disrupt harmony at a molecular level and cause nuclear power plant explosions. Chinese people wouldn’t understand the Cixi book anyway (or want to read it in the first place) because the opinion isn’t the right one.
**: These are the same things we object to about everything written by the CCP. Academic rigour isn’t so important in Wild Swans, but the Mao book is supposed to be a hard counter to historical propaganda, not the very thing it seeks to dispel.
rasklnik:
Exactly this...it seems like in Mao, it was like ok we have 9 really objective evil acts, now we need 10, so lets make Mao out to be a sexual perv. Or instead of focusing on the political chaos that happened after Mao's death, lets gloat in his terrible final years of illness.
-That said, Mao if read by a Chinese student must really blow their mind.
