The Man on Mao's Right: From Harvard Yard to Tiananmen Square, My Life Inside China's Foreign Ministry [Hardcover]

Ji Chaozhu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 15, 2008

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

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Born in 1929 China to a privileged family of Communist sympathizers, Chaozhu has witnessed a country transform while catapulting to its newly-emergent centers of power. Chaozhu's memoir begins during the 1937 Japanese occupation, when his father sent him and his brothers to the U.S. to help raise money for the communists and get "a first-class education," after which they would return to "help build the new China." Returning to China in 1950, after dropping out of Harvard, Chaozhu began working as an interpreter in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, before rising to become a deputy director. After Nixon's ground-breaking 1972 visit to China, Chaozhu had several postings to the U.S. and was appointed as an Ambassador to the U.K. His last position was a 1991-94 stint as under-secretary-general of the United Nations. Chaozhu paints a vivid picture of life in China, both the extreme poverty (by 1958, 30 million Chinese had starved to death) and the civil unrest generated by Mao's draconian economic measures and purges of so-called dissidents. Chaozhu describes hard times but also exciting, eye-witness to history stories featuring Kissinger's and Nixon's first meetings with Enlai. This absorbing book should make an invaluable political (and personal) primer for anyone dealing with today's China.
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From Booklist

To Westerners, the actions of the Chinese government since the 1948 Communist triumph are often confusing and seemingly contradictory. So an account by a Chinese insider is to be highly valued, even if it must be viewed with a critical eye and a healthy dose of skepticism. Chaozhu was born in China but fled to the U.S. as a youth when the Japanese invaded. He was educated at Harvard but returned to China, where his knowledge of the West and his mastery of English led him to a variety of high governmental posts in the Foreign Ministry, including acting as Chairman Mao’s interpreter. Chaozhu describes some of the key events in recent Chinese history with a curious detachment, including the violent collectivization movement and the Cultural Revolution. Chaozhu’s greatest admiration and affection is reserved for Premier Zho Enlai, whom Ji describes as sensible, tolerant, and blessed with the warmth and compassion that Mao seemed to lack. Although there are few startling revelations, this is a useful account of some of the inner workings and conflicts within China’s ruling elite. --Jay Freeman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Random House; First Edition edition (July 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400065844
• ISBN-13: 978-1400065844
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #933,904 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Through the Looking Glass, July 20, 2008

By 

Lowell P. Beveridge (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Man on Mao's Right: From Harvard Yard to Tiananmen Square, My Life Inside China's Foreign Ministry (Hardcover)

Read this book if you want to understand the foreign policy of the Peoples Republic of China, or want guidance from an expert on how to keep your sanity and morality in a bureaucracy, or if you just want a very good story.

In the fall of 1950, at the age of 21, Ji Chaozhu returned to his native China after an absence of 12 years. He left a comfortable middle class life as a Harvard undergraduate scholarship student at a time of increasingly virulent anti-communism in this country. China was on the verge of a shooting war with the USA in Korea, and he literally stepped through the looking glass into an upside down world of opposites. In China it was politically dangerous even to be suspected of intellectual or bourgeois tendencies; membership in the Communist Party was a privilege which it took him years to achieve; to fight against the USA backed forces in Korea was a patriotic duty for which he quickly volunteered. On a more personal level, Chaozhu had to relearn his first language, get used to a new and substantially reduced diet, and - perhaps most difficult of all - adapt to the use of a traditional "squat" toilet.

This is the story of his 50 year odyssey through the hierarchy of the Chinese Foreign Ministry from lowly translator at Panmunjom to Ambassador to the Court of St. James and Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations. His original intention when he returned home was to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry and help China to develop an atomic bomb, but his knowledge of English and American culture was a rare commodity in China at that time and proved much more valuable to the Government, so he parlayed that skill along with his good humor and good sense into a career working steadfastly towards the goal of establishing peace and cooperation between China and the USA.

Along the way there were many twists and turns - tragic, exasperating, comical and unhealthy. He spent several long periods living away from his family working on farms in the country standing up to his knees in cold mud leaning over to plant rice seedlings, or carrying human waste to the fields in buckets to fertilize the crops. These stints were supposed to correct his bourgeois tendencies and help him identify with the peasants. He survived cold, heat, fleas, hunger, unsanitary conditions and primitive plumbing, but even more challenging were the internal politics and ideological twists and turns of programs like the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. He gained the confidence and protection of Premier Zhou Enlai, whom he served as translator on many important missions, on occasion being hurriedly summoned from the farm and appearing with manure still under his fingernails.

Ideologues on both the left and the right will find much to quibble about in this book. I may have on occasions been guilty of the former tendency and feel uncomfortable about Chaozhu's admiration for and continuing friendship with Henry Kissinger, but I cannot argue with his results. It appears that this relationship was critical to establishing normal and peaceful relations between the USA and China.

When Chaozhu dropped out of Harvard to return home, he left behind a small group of politically sympathetic classmates of whom I was one. To indulge in a little self-criticism, when I discovered that he had left I was guilty of two self-centered feelings: jealousy that he was going home to work for a real revolution and a dense of betrayal that he had gone off and left us to face the excesses of McCarthyism without him. Over the years I heard bits of news and rumors about his career, thought about him often, and wondered what his life was like. Now I know. When I finally picked up this book 58 years later, I couldn't put it down; I read it in one sitting.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reads like a novel, full of humor, suspense, humanity., July 16, 2008

By 

Walter H. Kuenstler (Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Man on Mao's Right: From Harvard Yard to Tiananmen Square, My Life Inside China's Foreign Ministry (Hardcover)

Who would imagine the autobiography of a leading Chinese government figure would read like a novel, engaging us with humor, suspense, surprise and the triumph of one man's love for his wife? With a great assist from ghostwriter Foster Winans, that is the difficult literary feat that Ji Chaozhu's "The Man On Mao's Right" accomplishes.

This is also the first true "insider's account" I have read of the creation and evolution of modern China. Thanks to his work as a translator for Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, Ji was literally the fly on the wall during such historic occasions as Nixon's historic visit to China, the negotiations seeking an end to the Korean conflict, and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.

Having fled the Japanese invasion of China with his parents, Ji spent much of his childhood in the United States, where he attended Harvard University. Devoted to the cause of Chinese socialism, Ji returned to his native land, where he was uniquely able to translate not just the language of the Chinese, but their culture and belief system, for Western leaders.

I cannot but wonder how history might have been different if not for his participation at so many pivotal moments in the evolution of the delicate relationship between China and the US.

"The Man On Mao's Right" is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand the modern history of China, its motivations, its people and culture. Best of all, this is such an enjoyable read, that it is certain to find an audience far beyond Chinese history buffs.

Ji's life story is the epic odyssey of a Chinese Homer whose quest for his home, and to be with the woman he loves, literally spans the globe and encompasses several generations. "The Man On Mao's Right" is destined to become a classic of its genre.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great personal history but filter the propaganda, August 22, 2008

By 

Roger W. Sullivan (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Man on Mao's Right: From Harvard Yard to Tiananmen Square, My Life Inside China's Foreign Ministry (Kindle Edition)

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.