Get our Best Book Club Books of 2025 eBook!

Reviews by Jin Xiaoding

If you'd like to be able to easily share your reviews with others, please join BookBrowse.
Order Reviews by:
Mao: The Unknown Story
by Jung Chang, Jon Halliday
Comments on J. Chang and J. Halliday Book (12/13/2005)
The book of J. Chang and J. Haliday, Mao, the unknown story, is very

dishonest, distorting the truth and misleading the Western public into

profound misunderstanding of Mao, China modern history and China itself.





The book central theme is to condemn Mao as an evil monster, bad as or

worse than Hitler. Although the book is supposedly the outcome of 10 years

of intensive research, based on secret archives and hundreds of interviews

in many countries, a careful reader can see clearly that there are huge

gaps between its sensational claims and vast references. Moreover,

the evidence in the book often contradicts, rather than supports, the claims.

An impartial reader should be able to see the contradictions and

inconsistencies between these claims and the reality, without any exceptional

knowledge about China history, because plenty of evidence against these claims

is provided in the book itself.





In the review of Chang and Haliday book, I examine 17 key claims in the book,

which tarnish Mao character most strongly and are praised by Western media as

the most convincingly proven. All of them can be shown clearly as false and

unfounded. When was asked about these 17 questions during an interview with the

Chinese media Duowei, Jung Chang was unable to give any meaningful answer.

Her brother Pu Chang (a translator of the Chinese version of the book) declared

that he would soon give his reply in the web site of Duowei. But no further

response can be found anywhere since then (more than one month ago).





For the details of my 17 questions and arguments to prove the total fallacy of

Chang and Haliday, please visit: http://www.geocities.com/jinxiaoding.
  • Page
  • 1

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    Lessons in Chemistry
    by Bonnie Garmus
    Praised by Parade and The New York Times Book Review, this debut features a 1960s scientist turned TV cooking star.
  • Book Jacket
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Based on the author’s family story, comes an extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters’ escape from Taiwan.
  • Book Jacket
    The Lilac People
    by Milo Todd
    For fans of All the Light We Cannot See, a poignant tale of a trans man’s survival in Nazi Germany and postwar Berlin.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Awake in the Floating City
    by Susanna Kwan

    A debut novel about an artist and a 130-year-old woman bound by love and memory in a future, flooded San Francisco.

  • Book Jacket

    Ginseng Roots
    by Craig Thompson

    A new graphic memoir from the author of Blankets and Habibi about class, childhood labor, and Wisconsin’s ginseng industry.

  • Book Jacket

    Serial Killer Games
    by Kate Posey

    A morbidly funny and emotionally resonant novel about the ways life—and love—can sneak up on us (no matter how much pepper spray we carry).

  • Book Jacket

    The Original Daughter
    by Jemimah Wei

    A dazzling debut by Jemimah Wei about ambition, sisterhood, and family bonds in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.

Who Said...

Wherever they burn books, in the end will also burn human beings.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

B W M in H M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.