Jung Chang | Mao: The Unknown Story

“Mao: The Unknown Story” is a biography of Mao Zedong co-authored by Jung Chang and her husband Jon Halliday, which took about 10 years to complete. The book has 58 chapters, 700 pages in the Chinese edition, with 82 pages of source materials.

To complete this book, Mr. and Mrs. Chang interviewed hundreds of Mao’s relatives, friends, Chinese and foreign insiders, witnesses, and political figures from various countries, including six presidents, six prime ministers, four foreign ministers, and thirteen former leaders of communist parties from various countries. Among these figures were former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former U.S. President Gerald Ford, former British Prime Minister Edward Heath, the Dalai Lama, translators of Stalin and Khrushchev, Zhang Xueliang, Chiang Ching-kuo, and Chen Lifu.

More than eighteen people who had worked around Mao were interviewed. Almost all of Mao’s main colleagues, relatives, and staff were also interviewed. At the same time, they went deep into twenty-eight archives in Russia, Albania, East Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Vatican, etc., and obtained a lot of unheard-of historical materials.