Madame Sun Yat-Sen: Soong Ching-Ling

Jung Chang tells the extraordinary itinerary of Ching-ling Soong, one of the three daughters of a former US Methodist minister becoming a billionaire comprador in China, Charlie Soong. She married her political hero, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Chinese republic. Sun Yat-sen was driven into he hands of the Bolsheviks, when all the aid he asked for his country was turned down by all Western countries. The only solution left was help from the communist regimes. His wife saw in the Communist Party the only real successor of her husband's revolution after his death. Mme Sun Yat-sen's political influence was only marginal, although she changed the face of the world by hiding Ho Chi Minh in Shanghai in the years 1933-34. In China, she boosted women's liberation by attacking feudal traditions, like arranged marriages. Internationally, she supported the `Universal Peace' movement, the `The Hague Tribunal' for settling all political disagreements and the `League for Civil Rights' which came up against torture of political prisoners. Being a staunch supporter of the CP, she was nevertheless briefly attacked during the Cultural Revolution and her movements were closely watched (`Burn this after reading'). Jung Chang's vision on Mao Ze-dong changed drastically since the publication of this book, wherein she characterizes Mao's infamous intervention during the communist Moscow meeting of 1957 as `too philosophical'. But, Mao really meant what he said: 'How many people will die if war should break out? Out of the world's population of 2,700 million, one third- or, putting the figure a bit higher, one half - may be lost ... The other half would remain while imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist.' (sic!) This short biography of an idealistic fellow traveler is a must read for all historians and Chinese scholars.