here is paper that makes this distinction entitled bleeding the red out of mao and the ivory white terror popular and academic responses to mao the unknown story to quote this paper then is an outline and introduction to popular reaction to the unknown story and the critical response by specialiststhe ways in which chang and halliday bled the red out of mao through ghastly details of wholesale slaughter and decoupling mao from the ideology he came to represent it also assesses backlash of sophisticated academic criticism that rained down from ivory white towers in response a flurry of superficial popular reviews resurfaced in mid to late october coinciding with the american release of the book in late october through mid november academics such as jonathan spence arthur waldron andrew nathan and jeffrey wasserstrom presented erudite and nuanced critiques that balanced admission of mao's heinous crimes and desire for a more open political culture in the chinese mainland with serious misgivings about chang and halliday s methodology and motivation