From The Independent: A mass murderer, womaniser, liar and drug baron: a book by the bestselling author Jung Chang paints an horrific portrait of the erstwhile hero of the Chinese revolution
On the cover of Mao: the Unknown Story is a tiny photograph of the Chairman. It is wrinkled and tattered. Until Mao Tse-tung‘s death in 1976 anyone found with such a damaged photograph of the Great Helmsman, Teacher, and Red Red Sun in Our Hearts faced possible death and certain detention. In 1981, I met a woman in Nanjing who had found a bag full of Mao badges in the gutter – five years after his death – and had taken them to the nearest police station so she could not be blamed for possessing cast-off memorabilia of the Great Helmsman.
Indeed, the huge portrait of Mao with his immense mole still hangs, gazing into the distance, over the gate from Beijing’s Forbidden City into Tiananmen Square.
Can this be, still? Mao Tse-tung, who was responsible for the peacetime deaths of perhaps 70 million of his fellow Chinese?
