The Man on Mao's Right: From Harvard Yard to Tiananmen Square, My Life Inside China's Foreign Ministry by Ji Chaozhu

From the Publisher

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

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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Charles W. Hayford - Library Journal

Given the steamy revelations and bitter accusations in many popular memoirs on China (e.g., Li Zhisui's The Private Life of Chairman Mao or, more recently, Gao Wenqian's Zhou Enlai), it is a relief to read an account by an urbane and often witty insider who neither idolizes nor demonizes China's top leaders. Ji's childhood in a politically connected family of patriots and scholars was ruptured by the Japanese invasion in the 1930s. The family made its way to New York, where Ji discovered American generosity, political debate, and ice cream while he studied his way into Harvard. The Korean War of 1950 shocked him into returning to China, where his dedication and knowledge of foreign countries eventually took him to the top of the Foreign Ministry. Although he tells revealing anecdotes about being Mao's interpreter, the best stories concern life backstage as foreign policy was made and China regained global respect. Premier Zhou Enlai emerges as a humane but painfully tested leader of almost superhuman ability. Ji's book should attract a general audience, but even China specialists will be intrigued (if slightly tantalized when the stories break off). Highly recommended for all libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ3/1/08.]

Kirkus Reviews

Longtime translator for Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong recounts his arduous and ultimately vindicating life's journey through some of China's darkest decades. Landowners from Shanxi province and early communist sympathizers, Ji's parents escaped the turmoil of the Japanese invasion and civil war by fleeing to New York in 1939 on the urging of Zhou Enlai, who had been a teenaged friend of Ji's much older brother, Chaoding. While Ji excelled at Horace Mann-Lincoln and earned a scholarship to Harvard, learning perfect English and growing to love his adopted country, Chaoding was working for the Kuomintang's minister of finance and feeding secrets to Zhou and the communists. The political winds shifted by 1949, when the victorious communists established the People's Republic of China and the Cold War ensured that Ji was no longer welcome in America. He began his incredible roller-coaster career in China as a Foreign Ministry official and had his biggest moment on the world stage when he served as interpreter for Zhou and Mao during President Nixon's visit in 1972. Initially an enthusiastic Communist Party member, he first began to have doubts about Mao's increasingly absurd policies during the purges of the Anti-Rightist Campaign of the 1950s. They increased when Ji saw the mass chaos and starvation caused by the Great Leap Forward in 1958-60, followed by the violent zealotry of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, beginning in 1966. Ji's Western education and his wife's Taiwan connections branded him a "capitalist roader," and he was periodically sent to shovel pig manure in the countryside to atone for this sin. He endured the relentless cycle of purges and rehabilitation with equanimityand grace, serving in diplomatic posts in London and at the UN in New York, eventually fashioning this brave, beautifully written testimony with the editorial assistance of ghostwriter Foster Winans, who reworked the Chinese-language text published in 1999. A true "fly-on-the-wall" account of the momentous changes in Chinese society and international relations over the last century.

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