Together with her husband Jon Halliday, Chang demolishes what she says are myths about Mao. While her earlier book was a personal look at 20th-century China through the eyes of her mother, her grandmother and her, the new book is a careful study that took 10 years to complete.
The programme summarises Jung Chang's major assault on the Mao legends: the exact nature of the Long March; the real truth about the mobilising of peasants; and the possibility that the Great Leap Forward may have cost 38 million lives. Jung says Mao was at ease with all these deaths: 'He was constantly telling his inner circle and top echelons not to be afraid of deaths caused by his policies.' Indeed, Chang and Halliday argue that Mao was responsible for more deaths than either Hitler or Stalin.
The programme includes rare archive footage as well as contributions from China experts John Gittings and Jonathan Mirsky, and from Zhang Lijia, a journalist who grew up in Maoist China.
You must enable JavaScript to view comments.
