"Mao Didn't Care"

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Amid the cozy clutter of books and Chinese antiques in her London town house, Jung Chang talked with TIME's Donald Morrison about Wild Swans, Mao Zedong and the future of China. Excerpts:

How did the success of Wild Swans change your life?
It enabled Jon and I to spend more than 10 years writing Mao without having to do another job. It also opened doors for us in China. I'd give interviewees a copy of Wild Swans so they knew what sort of book I'd be writing. In 1994 the regime warned a small group of Mao's inner circle about talking to me. But they were dying to spill the beans.

What surprised you most about Mao?
I had thought the great famine was largely caused by economic mismanagement. But we discovered it was intended. Mao knew he was exporting food to Russia to buy arms. He knew his people depended on this food for survival. But he didn't care.

Do you have a grudge against Mao?
No, I don't feel any need for revenge. We bent over backward to be fair to him. But we could find nothing nice to say. He was completely immoral, and yet also very smart. He could rise from seemingly impossible situations. We were constantly impressed. I wrote a couple of sentences reflecting how appalled I was by him, but we edited them out. We wanted readers to draw their own conclusions.

Why is Mao still so popular in China?
Brainwashing. People are deprived of the truth and inundated with books praising Mao. There's no free press to expose his activities.

What do you think of China today?
I can't tell you how excited I am to see people's lives improving. I'm also frustrated and angry—at the lack of press freedom, the banning of my book, the injustices that could be corrected if there were the rule of law. But things have been improving. If the Chinese people are given more power to participate in politics, they will make sensible choices.

Will they ever get the truth about Mao?
Right now I'm translating this book into Chinese. I hope that it can play a small role in the inevitable reassessment of Mao. And that it leads to the taking down of his portrait from Tiananmen.