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The Man on Mao's Right: From Harvard Yard to Tiananmen Square, My Life Inside China's Foreign Ministry | 
 enlarge | Author: Ji Chaozhu
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $28.00
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Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 91249
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.6
ISBN: 1400065844
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.510092
EAN: 9781400065844
ASIN: 1400065844
Publication Date: July 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. 100% money back guarantee. All books shipped from Strand Bookstore, New York City, USA.
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Product Description
No other narrative from within the corridors of power has offered as frank and intimate an account of the making of the modern Chinese nation as Ji Chaozhu’s The Man on Mao’s Right. Having served Chairman Mao Zedong and the Communist leadership for two decades, and having become a key figure in China’s foreign policy, Ji now provides an honest, detailed account of the personalities and events that shaped today’s People’s Republic.
The youngest son of a prosperous government official, nine-year-old Ji and his family fled Japanese invaders in the late 1930s, escaping to America. Warmly received by his new country, Ji returned its embrace as he came of age in New York’s East Village and then attended Harvard University. But in 1950, after years of enjoying a life of relative ease while his countrymen suffered through war and civil strife, Ji felt driven by patriotism to volunteer to serve China in its conflict with his adoptive country in the Korean War.
Ji’s mastery of the English language and American culture launched his improbable career, eventually winning him the role of English interpreter for China’s two top leaders: Premier Zhou Enlai and Party Chairman Mao Zedong. With a unique blend of Chinese insight and American candor, Ji paints insightful portraits of the architects of modern China: the urbane, practical, and avuncular Zhou, the conscience of the People’s Republic; and the messianic, charismatic Mao, student of China’s ancient past–his country’s stern father figure.
In Ji’s memoir, he is an eyewitness to modern Chinese history, including the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the Nixon summit, and numerous momentous events in Tiananmen Square. As he becomes caught up in political squabbles among radical factions, Ji’s past and charges against him of “incorrect” thinking subject him to scrutiny and suspicion. He is repeatedly sent to a collective farm to be “reeducated” by the peasants.
After the Mao years, Ji moves on to hold top diplomatic posts in the United States and the United Kingdom and then serves as under secretary-general of the United Nations. Today, he says, “The Chinese know America better than the Americans know China. The risk is that we misperceive each other.” This highly accessible insider’s chronicle of a struggling people within a developing powerhouse nation is also Ji Chaozhu’s dramatic personal story, certain to fascinate and enlighten Western readers.
A riveting biography and unique historical record, The Man on Mao’s Right recounts the heartfelt struggle of a man who loved two powerful nations that were at odds with each other. Ji Chaozhu played an important role in paving the way for what is destined to be known as the Chinese Century.
Praise for The Man on Mao’s Right
"Brave, beautifully written testimony . A true "fly-on-the-wall" account of the momentous changes in Chinese society and international relations over the last century."
--Kirkus Reviews
“It is a relief to read an account by an urbane and often witty insider who neither idolizes nor demonizes China's top leaders . . . . Highly recommended." —Library Journal, starred review
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Adds to the Canon September 22, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The book holds your attention for its smooth and polished read. Ghost writer Foster Winans is credited in the Preface. The language is very measured, void of the kind of emotions expected from someone who gave up a good life in the west to face tremendous deprivation, stress and betrayal in post-revolutionary China.
The author, who had a US childhood and Harvard education, experienced firsthand, the Japanese bombardment, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, re-education in the countryside, Nixon's visit to China and a host of other events of the century. One wonders how anyone survived any one of these, since each pushes the limits of human health and stress tolerance.
To cover the full life, each event had to be shorn of details. Because of this, this book can't really be taken alone.
Other books flesh out the times. The Private Life of Chairman Mao is the most complete that I have read. It gives an inside look at how the Great Leap Forward was initiated and later how the Gang of Four controlled most internal and external operations creating a life threatening environment based on pettiness. This background helps to consider how the gift of the glass snail from Corning Glass and small acts such as talking to high school aquantances subjected Ji to more worry than he lets on.
Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary gives the details of Ji's mentor. This book provides a lot about the "office" politics that Ji only mentions. It gives a more detailed treatment of Zhou's medical (non) treatment and how the "young ladies" monopolized the chairman.
Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World gives perspective on the Nixon visit. China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage, and Diplomacy in Asia gives an American perspective on some of these big events.
His life story offers insight into a billion people's lives August 30, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Ji Chaozhu was involved in some of the great moments, people, and institutions of the twentieth century, growing up partly in the U.S., attending Harvard, and then returning to participate in Mao's government. Through the magic of memoir writing, I learn about the entire span through his eyes.
This is the third book I've read about the Cultural Revolution. First, Nien Cheng's Life and Death in Shanghai. Second, Apologies Forthcoming a book of short stories by Xujun Eberlein, and now this book. Obviously his view of the Tiananmen Square massacre is apologetic. And he doesn't even bother trying to explain the Tibet invasion, one of the great human and cultural tragedies of our time. I had to take a deep breath when he said the actions of the U.S. in Korea and Taiwan were perfidious. Do I really have to look at yet another U.S. policy from the other side's point of view? Oh, what the heck. How do I expect to ever understand the world unless I see it from other points of view?
The book is remarkably simple and straightforward. Good writing stays out of the way and lets the reader enter. When I finished, I realized with some astonishment how much history I had just walked through, in an engaging, and page-turning story. The book flew by and enriched my life.
Now I understand China August 24, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Couldn't put this book down, it was such a riveting, dramatic personal story. By the end I felt I understood China for the first time, and especially important periods like the Cultural Revolution. What makes this story so unique is that the author grew up in New York before returning to China as a college student, and his improbably amazing story intersects with everyone from Eleanor Roosevelt, who served him cookies and milk in her Washington Square townhouse, Mao and Zhou Enlai, plus six US presidents. The story is told not in a stuffy official way, but in a very human and observant voice, and a sly sense of humor. If all the Olympic attention has you wanting to "get" China and the Chinese, this is a great place to start. But it's also just a great tale.
Great personal history but filter the propaganda August 22, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I knew Ji back in the 70's. At that time none of us, I suspect, had any idea the hardships he had endured in China, particularly during the Cultural Revolution. Toward the end of the book, however, when he gets to Tiananmen, I felt he was trying to set up his readers to conclude (incorrectly) that the Tiananmen demonstrations were essentially a reenactment of the Red Guards/Cultural Revolution excesses and as such deserved to be suppressed by whatever means necessary. This of course is the party line in China and it was disappointed to see someone like Ji parroting it. Toward the end I even began to wonder if the whole purpose of the book was to justify the Tiananmen massacre.
I was also disappointed that Ji denigrated Han Xu, his colleague and sometime superior in the Foreign Office. He depicts Han as hard line, but it was Han (now dead) who was disillusioned by the Tiananmen suppression and, according to people I trust, contemplated seeking refuge in the United States or some other democratic society.
A Major Addition August 6, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Ambassador Ji Chaozhu's personal journey in the Chinese Foreign Ministry provides vivid and rich details for our understanding of the inner working of Chinese foreign policy-making establishment. From this book, we learn not only real stories of top leaders such as Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping, but also personal relations between Ambassador Ji and other senior PRC diplomats such as Huang Zhen, Han Xu, Zhang Wenjin, Nancy Tang and Wang Hairong, and etc. This book is a major addition to the growing literature on PRC diplomacy, and will become an essential reading for any one interested in 20th century China, especially its diplomacy.
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