Talk:Jung Chang/Archive 1

message: Mao was married three times.  She counts four, including Mao's father's attempt at an arranged marriage.  If there is no sex and no agreement, it could not possibly count as a marriage.
She denies the role of the Red Army in chewing up the Japanese lines of communication during their invasion of China.  It's hard to find another history of China that thinks that.  The USA noted their effectiveness compaired to Nationalist inefficiency.
She claims that Mao won the Chinese Civil War because of Soviet help.  Historians dispute even if the Soviets wanted Mao to win.
She blaims Mao for accepting Outer Mongolia as independence, though it had established a modern state on purely Mongolian territory.  She also blaims Mao for asserting that Tibet was part of China, which is unambiguously the case under International Law, and which the Dalai Lama accepted.  'Blaim Mao' is her only coherent rule.
Her claims of tens of millions of dead in the famine years is based on compairing the death rate in the worst years of Mao's rule to the best.  If you compaire the average death-rate under Mao with the average death rate under the Nationalists, this suggests more than 100 million less deaths than if the old system had contiued.
Regarding the Sino-Indian War, she talks as if Mao willfully ignored an agreed colonial boundry.  You can find in this Wikipedia that the McMahon Line had been rejected by all Chinese governments.  The immediate cause of the war was Indian anger at the Chinese building a road across the Aski Chin, land they claimed as part of Kashmir.  It was anyway next to Pakistani Kashmir, and Pakistan readily agreed to the Chinese definition of the border.
She's the grandchild of a warlord and the great-grandchild of a police chief serving a corrupt government.  And it seems she's gone back to her roots.
Gwydion M. Williams
:Yeah we know she's full of it.  Admittedly, though, a marriage is a marriage is a marriage even without any agreement or sex.  Mao's first wife was just lucky her parents didn't marry her to a dead man.  No sex there either but at the time it was a legally binding marriage.  Besides who cares?  Four marriages is not much these days - certainly not for the West.  If I count right she is not far off it herself.  I think we all agree the Anti-Jap War claims are rubbish.  But the Soviets clearly gave the CCP help and while it has been denied by pro-CCP historians in the West in the past it is clearly true.  I think your figures for the GMD's death rate is silly - you are comparing periods of Civil War and invasion to years of Maoist peace.  Compare Taiwan with the Mainland over the same period.  And there is no denying the deaths of the Great Leap Forward. Lao Wai 19:32, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It probably was the world norm at one time or other.  The Abrahamic religions have a strong interest in sex and so usually demand consumation.  Without it you can get a divorce or an annulment without too much trouble.  But the Chinese were not so concerned about sex.  Nor were they that concerned about consent.  You could indeed marry without sex.  Eunuchs married in Late Imperial times.  There was no legal grounds for divorce if your husband was impotent or even homosexual.  And when I say a dead man I literally mean it.  In Late Imperial times girls were expected to go through marriages once they were engaged even if their finance had died.  They might be married to a wooden dummy as a stand-in.  Marriage was of course not about the couple only nor about sex, so why not?  I don't take her seriously.  You might have noticed that if you read a little bit more of this page.  In fact I think she has done the virtually impossible and written worse book than Wild Swans. Lao Wai 20:55, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ludicrously unlikely stories 

message: Juan Chang claims 70 million avoidable deaths under Mao.  I've read the entire book and failed to find where she gets this figure from.  It seems to appear out of thin air.
She claims 38 million 'died of starvation', based on increased death rates in 1958 to 1961.
a) These figures were published under Deng, and thus may be biased against Mao
b) Raised death rates are very different from deaths from starvation.  Death rates went up in Russia under Yeltsin, though no one starved
c) The worst year was 1960, followed by 1961.  This was after the Great Leap had ended and after Mao had had his powers diminished.
d) She asserts that there were no natural disasters at all.  She does not mention the widespread view that the weather was very bad indeed and might have produced even more deaths under the pre-Communist system.  (See Three Years of Natural Disasters in this encyclopedia).  She has room in her gigantic book for detailed weather statistics, if these would support her case.
e) The death-rate figures she uses also show a very big drop in the average death rate during Mao's years.  This too is ignored.
Gwydion M. Williams172.188.114.239 14:39, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Mao has always been celebrated by the CCP. Thus I doubt that the figures released in Deng's era are biased - it's more about increased transparency. John Smith's 18:34, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's more about Jung Chang's psychological stability and her attempt to pass off ficiton as fact. --Sumple (Talk) 06:56, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  70 million and all that 

message: Jung Chang was on BBC World Have Your Say (aka Talking Point) where they were talking about China . I don't know whether this detail should be mentioned. But I'd have to say, I only caught brief glimpses of it but from what I saw, it should be of interest to those who are interested to know more about her and how she thinks Nil Einne 15:09, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well that was an interesting show. If you could find something that she said as being useful for this or a related page, you could include it. Otherwise I would get a direct link for the show and put it in as a reference, external link, etc. John Smith's 22:02, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mostly OT... 

message: There's one thing I don't get. Why is she called Jung Chang? I know she's bitter at the regime at all, but I mean, it sounds weird to have the surname last. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 04:18, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Lots of ethnic Chinese who live in Western countries put their surnames last... Myself included. Otherwise people would start calling you by your surname! --Sumple (Talk) 04:24, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Oh? I did too, but that's because I used a Western first name. But whenever I used my Chinese name  I put my surname first. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 07:09, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a personal choice at fitting in better in her "new" home. It has nothing to do with her feelings towards the CCP. When I introduce myself Japanese people I always say my surname first - it isn't because I hate the British government. John Smith's 09:52, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, Mib, in modern, forward-thinking countries like the UK, surprisingly enough it is deemed acceptable for women to keep their own names when they marry........ John Smith's 09:11, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: John, I guess what Miborovsky is asking is why Jung Chang did not follow local custom and changed her surname. In contrast to Japan, keeping your maiden name is the norm in China.--Niohe 22:58, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Err, what's Japan got to do with anything? John Smith's 08:58, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, you mentioned Japanese naming conventions a bit earlier, so I felt that was a natural contrast to make.--Niohe 12:21, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, I don't know, maybe America is Hicksville compared to UK, but the vast majority of women here DO change their names after marriage. -- Миборовский 19:12, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the point is that it's a choice, rather than something you simply "have" to do. John Smith's 00:20, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And putting your family name after your personal name is also a choice... why this choice and not that choice? -- Миборовский 03:29, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well I don't have access to that information (nor the interest to look for it), so you'll have to find your own answers. John Smith's 14:37, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinese name