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Australian Feminist StudiesPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cafs20

Woman, nation andnarrative: Westernbiographical accounts ofJiang QingElaine Jeffreys aa PhD student in the Department of PoliticalScience , Melbourne UniversityPublished online: 16 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: Elaine Jeffreys (1994) Woman, nation and narrative:Western biographical accounts of Jiang Qing, Australian Feminist Studies, 9:20,35-51, DOI: 10.1080/08164649.1994.9994742

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08164649.1994.9994742

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Woman, Nation and Narrative:Western Biographical Accounts of Jiang Qing

Elaine Jeffreys

On 14 May 1991 Jiang Qing committed suicide. The ensuingobituary notices contained few regrets. Coincident with the tense run-upto the second anniversary of the 'Beijing Massacre', the prison hangingof Mao Zedong's 77 year old widow was cited as a fitting testimony tothe 'hard dog-eat-dog Chinese communist world'.1 Parallels were alsodrawn between the 'bloody excesses' of the Cultural Revolution (forwhich Jiang is now held to be especially responsible) and the violenceperpetrated by the current regime.2 By drawing a line of continuitybetween the two eras, the media forwarded a simple proposition. Thechange anticipated by Deng Xiaoping's program of 'modernisation' wasbut a chimera. China, as in the old Hegelian account, is said to be'vegetating on the edge of world history'.3

In effect, the obituaries presented Jiang Qing as a metaphor forChina, her life-story as an illustration of China's moral and politicalbankruptcy. Many commentators argued that Jiang was the widow of thefounding father of Chinese communism, hence the relation of her life-story offered more than a simple, if colourful, tale of 'high power, sex,and polities': it also provided some pointed reflections on the nature ofChinese politics.4 To support their respective claims, each accountmobilised a wealth of detail concerning Jiang's personal motivations,acting career, former loves, marriage(s), rise to political power, andsubsequent arrest and trial as leader of the 'Gang of Four'. The verityof the media's representations was thus guaranteed by knowledge ofJiang's life, by the narration of her biography.

This depiction of Jiang Qing as the embodiment of the dissolution ofChinese communism derives not, as one might expect, from the fancy ofFar Eastern correspondents, but from biographies of Jiang Qing

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produced within the academic field of 'Chinese Studies'. The obituariesowe much of their substance and form to three texts in particular:namely, Chung Hua-min's and Arthur Miller's Madame Mao: A Profileof Chiang Ch'ing (Union Research Institute) Hong Kong, 1968; RoxaneWitke's Comrade Chiang Ch'ing (Little Brown & Co.) Toronto &Boston, 1977; and Ross Terrill's The White-Boned Demon: ABiography of Madame.Mao Zedong (Heinemann) London, 1984.5 Inthis context, at least, China scholars and journalists adhere to similarmethodological premises. Extrapolating from the conventional view thatbiography reconstitutes a 'life', that is, the past or history and thus thetruth of the particular person being studied,6 both assume thatknowledge of Jiang Qing enables an accurate assessment of the CulturalRevolution and of the Chinese socio-political system. The formula issimple: to know Jiang Qing is to know China.

The routine use of such an equation begs three questions. How do weknow the life or figure that we call Jiang Qing? How does thatknowledge constitute a basis from which evaluation of her historical andpolitical significance can duly follow? And, how does that knowledgeenable an authoritative assessment of Chinese politics? As the process ofaddressing these questions necessarily raises broader issues concerningthe nature of biography and certain aspects of 'Chinese Studies', Ishould at this point indicate some of the theoretical co-ordinates inwhich my work is situated.

Biography is often framed, and assessed, in terms which aredominated by realist and referential conceptualisations. According to acommon, if variously inflected assumption, biography is the form ofwriting which best recovers the 'life-experience' of a given individual.This assumption rests on a familiar account of the relation betweenrepresentation and reality, with biographical practices being taken as anessentially transparent medium through which the life of the 'real-world' individual is reflected. In consequence, the veracity of abiographical account is frequently determined according to theperceived degree of correspondence between the profferedrepresentation and an a priori notion of reality. All too often, therelative value of any account is also measured according to howsuccessfully it situates the biographical subject such that s/heencapsulates the 'spirit of the times'. Assessed in these terms,biographical accounts of Jiang Qing expose essential truths concerningher life, significance, and socio-political milieu, hence Jiang can be readas an index of Chinese politics.

This article questions such protocols by focusing on the constructed,rather than given, nature of the biographical subject, Jiang Qing. Theterm 'constructed' is used here not to deny that Jiang was a real and

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material subject of history, but rather to emphasise that knowledge ofher cannot be isolated from the discursive frameworks through whichshe has been represented, and which shape or regulate what can beknown about her. The objective of this paper, therefore, is not to offera corrective—to expose false readings or remedy incomplete ones—butto examine the rhetorical and discursive conditions in whichbiographical accounts of Jiang Qing can be recognised as persuasive.

Accordingly, my analysis is divided into two broad sections, with theprincipal accounts of Jiang's life—the biographies by Chung and Miller,Witke, and Terrill—providing the primary basis for discussion. In thefirst section, I focus on some of the narrative and characterologicaltechniques employed by Jiang's biographers, in order to examine howthey constitute the life that is their subject, and also to consider how thatknowledge enables certain authoritative statements concerning herperceived significance. In the second, I examine the interlinking of thesetechniques with certain assumptions about the nature of power, and theposition of women, in both traditional and modern China. In doing so,my aim is twofold: to demonstrate how this conjunction legitimates thebiographers' use of sources and conclusions, and to suggest some of theconsequences of constructing Jiang Qing and China in these terms.

IIf the task of biography is to reconstitute a life J there is surprisingly

little consensus on how this is to be achieved. Leon Edel's suggestion,'the result of narrative is life; but don't ask how it is done, thefascination of biography is that it works in mysteries', is singularlyunhelpful in this respect.8 But it does register that the perceived, ifinexplicable, effect of narrative is 'life', and on this point manyreviewers of biography agree. William Joseph, for instance, criticisesnumerous flaws in The White-Boned Demon only to state that Terrill'smisguided sympathy for Jiang Qing cannot obscure 'the basic mean-spiritedness of the woman that comes through so clearly on nearly everypage'.9 This example is pointed, but by no means extreme. Reviewers ofbiographies of Jiang Qing frequently assert that the 'real' Jiang Qingemerges from the biographic page, and 'knowing' her we can moreaccurately assess the nature of the Cultural Revolution and of Chinesepolitics.10

So how do biographical accounts of Jiang Qing construct theirnarratives and thus their 'life'? The most common and significant deviceis the use of a chronological structure: the ordered retelling of Jiang's'life' from child to Shanghai actress, wife, political leader, arrest andtrial, and, more recently, death. This chronology, in turn, is enclosed orframed by a major event which functions both as a point of departureand as the end-point of each account.

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Madame Mao, for instance, begins at 7:30 am, 18 August 1966, withMao Zedong receiving one million red guards at a rally in TiananmenSquare, a 'matronly, bespectacled, middle-aged woman'—his wife, JiangQing—at his side.H For the authors, Jiang's presence suggests that anew leadership premised on the reassertion of Maoist politics is in themaking. The failure of the Great Leap Forward and other campaigns,they argue, saw Mao's prestige at a low ebb and left the Chairmansorely in need of loyal supporters—like a wife. The text then proceedsto retell Jiang's 'life-story' beginning at birth and concluding with heremergence to a position of political power during 1966-1967,attributing her particular style of politics to the combined effects of herpersonality and the unique position she occupied as Madame Mao.

In affirmation of the text's uniqueness, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing isframed by Roxane Witke's meeting with and subsequent departure fromJiang Qing in August 1972. Within this framework, Witke offers achronological account of Jiang's 'life' which gains additional authoritybecause of its claim to be semi-autobiographical, that is, the storypersonally related to her by Jiang. Although Witke stresses Jiang'sinterest in debates surrounding the role of literature and art inrevolutionary society, she emphasises Jiang's alleged struggle (as awoman confronting the misogyny of Chinese society) to realise anindependent political role, concluding that she successfully realised thisgoal. The epilogue, attached to account for Jiang's sudden fall frompower in October 1976, subsequently notes that she was 'accused ofcrimes linked conventionally to her sex'.12

The feminist overtones of the latter theme are writ large in TheWhite-Boned Demon. Here, Jiang's 1980-1981 trial is used as a framingdevice which, once again, encloses a chronological account of Jiang's'life'. Unlike Witke, however, Terrill accords scant attention to policydebates within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or to Jiang's role inthe cultural sphere. Instead, he focuses almost exclusively on Jiang'sposition as a woman in Chinese society, and the perceived consequencesof that position given the allegedly despotic and misogynist nature ofpower and society in both traditional and modern China. In effect, thetrial functions as a grid through which to filter Jiang's 'life' and also tomeasure the commitment of Deng Xiaoping's government to a new styleof politics. Similar concerns are evident in the press reportssurrounding Jiang's death, although it is Jiang's suicide which functionshere both as a point of departure and return, and as a 'testimony' to theunchanging nature of Chinese communism. 13

Within this chronological and teleological framework, the persuasivepower of the biographies is made more effective by plotting instances of'character-building' events throughout the protaganist's life. The

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emergent character traits are then significant precisely because the childis assumed to exist in direct causal relation to the adult. Hence Chungand Miller can simply assert that Jiang's childhood self-confidencepushed her towards the stage, and found final expression in thetheatricality of the Cultural Revolution.14 Or, as Terrill was to put it 16years later:

The Cultural Revolution had a personal meaning for Jiang Qing.Her independence of spirit, her will to struggle and herinclination to seek revenge—traits that go back to her girlhood—all came together.15

In short, the account we are offered of Jiang's upbringing andpersonality underwrites the conclusion that Jiang Qing and the CulturalRevolution are inextricably linked, that her personal drama is the key tounderstanding the Cultural Revolution, both being explicable in terms ofrevenge and the struggle for power.

While the generality of this conclusion is evident, it is seldomseriously challenged as reviews of biographical accounts of Jiang Qingillustrate. One explanation for this omission is the idealist terms inwhich biography is read or, more appropriately, presented to be read.Although Jiang's biographers' mobilise ample sources, evidence andargument, they offer little or no justification for the process ofinterpretation whereby value and meaning is ascribed to Jiang's 'life'.This effacement of process has a particular effect. It simultaneouslydistances the author, hence the author's engagement with Jiang as aproblem for us now, and foregrounds the 'life' that is their subject.With the politics of writing omitted from the biographic page, Jiang's'life' is presented as self-explanatory, it simply tells itself.16 Thisunderstanding is supported by the assumption that biography simplyreconstitutes what is already known or 'there'. As a result, thebiographer is able to make authoritative yet often unqualified andcontradictory statements about Jiang's characteristics and identity, forthe biographer, it is assumed, simply charts a chronology that alreadyexists.

Such assumptions can be challenged. Terrill, for instance, explainsJiang's role in the Cultural Revolution with reference to the charactertraits she developed as a child. Yet by his own admission (if one readsthe footnotes), his account of Jiang's childhood is an 'artistic piecingtogether' of diverse and flatly contradictory material.17 This admissionquestions the premise of Terrill's argument, and also demonstrates thecrucial role played by the biographer in ascribing meaning to JiangQing's 'life'.

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Similarly, Witke purports to tell Jiang's own account, yet their firstmeeting is not discussed in full until Chapter Twelve of the text, that is,after a framework for understanding Jiang has been established. WhileWitke's first account of that meeting, in Chapter One, turns on issuesrelating to food, health, and other pleasantries—factors routinely citedby critics as evidence of Jiang's hypochondria, 'unrevolutionary' tastefor luxury, and lack of political substance^—the latter account dealswith the Cultural Revolution. This example demonstrates Witke's role inconstructing the chronology she relates and suggests a possibleconsequence. Reviewers of Comrade Chiang Ch'ing might not haveinterpreted Jiang as quite so politically light-weight if Witke had chosento introduce her as a political leader, rather than as a host.

Ironically, reviewers often acknowledge the role of techniques ofcomposition in representing Jiang's 'life', only to dismiss or else creditthem according to the text's perceived correspondence to the 'real'. Inother words, the verity of the proffered account is determined on thebasis of prior knowledge of Jiang Qing and China, and analysis of thevarious representational forms and techniques used in the constructionof that 'life-history' is elided. Emily Honig, for instance, criticisesTerrill's account for its reliance on dubious sources and 'grandiosestatements', yet subsequently affirms the text on the grounds that itsuccessfully suggests 'the crucial role played by personalities andpersonal relations in Chinese polities'. The text may be flawed, sheargues, 'but then it is doubtful that it would be possible for anyone towrite a scholarly biography of Jiang Qing'.!9 Here, a prior conceptionof Jiang Qing (as a woman who baffles rational consideration, by virtueof her personality and/or the secretive nature of Chinese politics) isevoked to detract from the problematic nature of the text and endorsethe conclusions elicited by Terrill's account of the same 'life'.

I have argued, however, that the perceived reality of thebiographical 'life' is no act of magical transference. Rather, it is aneffect of the deployment of narrative techniques. By utilising achronological framework, and drawing on the understanding of life andcharacter as a product of history (the past), Jiang's biographers accord ateleology to the 'life' they depict. What is constituted, as opposed toreconstituted, is a meaning which can be inferred from a sequence ofevents, hence the final and concluding chapter of each biographypurports to reveal the repercussions and (moral) consequences of Jiang'slife, of which each biography is also an illustration. Structured in thisway, the biographies establish an authoritative framework forunderstanding Jiang Qing and measuring her significance. For even ifsuch accounts and the conclusions that they elicit cannot be theoreticallyjustified as 'true', they are nevertheless structured in practice ascomplete, coherent and final.20

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The preceding argument has at least two major implications. First, todiscount or credit a particular biography as a true or false account ofJiang Qing is to measure it in terms of professional norms, that is,agreed upon codes of understanding, conventions and techniques, ratherthan to measure it against the supposed lost reality of that 'life'. Second,and in consequence, the texts and their conclusions are comprehensiblenot only because of the terms in which biography is read, but alsobecause of the way we look at and construct knowledge of China.

II'Absolute power is a magnifying glass for personality', or so says

Ross Terrill.21 It is an interesting if somewhat hackneyed comment, forit weds the Western biographical focus on the 'life'— the Individual22—to Western liberal-democratic notions concerning the nature of powerin a 'totalitarian' society. In doing so, the basis of the claim thatknowledge of Jiang Qing enables a more accurate assessment of thenature of Chinese politics is revealed. Described as a one-time memberof the CCP leadership—a secretive, mysterious and authoritarian elitewho are perceived to play an instrumental, even determinative, andundoubtedly personalised role in ordering Chinese society—Jiang Qingis representative, not simply a representative, of China.

Drawing on such assumptions, Jiang's biographers present her as awitness to the essential characteristics of that 'other' society. She is thewoman China won't talk about, that is, a respected member of a secretelite about whom little information is to be gleaned,23 or, in morerecent accounts, the woman China doesn't want to talk about, except indisparaging terms designed to disguise the real workings of the Chinesepolitical system.24 The figure of Jiang Qing is thus posed as a question,an enigma, to be solved. She is the woman at the centre of Chinesesociety and the proposed key to understanding that world is knowledgeof her 'life'. And, as these examples suggest, the gendered identity ofthat 'life' is an integral part of this formulation.

The White-Boned Demon, for instance, is premised on an earlytheme (one which has its origins in Cold War rhetoric), namely, that theChinese leadership is enigmatic, and deliberately so, in order to hide thebasic workings of Chinese politics from foreign and domesticscrutiny.25 According to Terrill, the story of Jiang's 'life' epitomisesthe reasons why such subterfuge (and, presumably, political change) isnecessary, hence it will never be published in Communist China.26 Itreveals the crucial role played by personalities and personal disputes inChinese politics, and, in doing so, demonstrates that the reformsinitiated by the current regime are merely a facade. In this way, Terrillpresents Jiang's 'life' as a statement about the undesirable nature ofChinese politics.

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Terrill affirms his sources (thus the verity of his account) on similargrounds, and simultaneously implies a political dissonance betweenChina and the West. 'The Chinese', he argues, 'have their way ofcommunicating, even if they are not the West's ways'. From dynastictimes to the present, 'the people's' response to the state's authoritarianstranglehold on truth has been to gossip. Consequently, the 'eloquent"unofficial" voices of China' can reveal to a Westerner who is familiarwith Chinese language and history what the state is not willing toadmit.27 By asserting that the Chinese political system is authoritarian,and posing a historical and fundamental opposition between the state and'the people', Terrill can discount the CCP's account of Jiang Qing aspropaganda, a lie, and present his own account, which is largelypremised on anonymous sources,2** anecdotes, and hearsay, as the'truth'.

The problematic nature of the 'truth' status that Terrill ascribes tohis account is demonstrated by the fact that gossip is not always sopositively assessed. While Terrill validates his sources by recourse to alibertarian conception of gossip as an act of resistance against statism, healso cites gossip emanating from the CCP as further evidence of thepersonalised and factional nature of Chinese politics.29 This dualityindicates that gossip is neither intrinsically truthful nor inherentlyliberating. Rather, it is valued according to who is perceived to betalking and why. Considered in relation to women, for instance, gossipis often portrayed as idle, even malicious, talk. Because gossip isunderstood differentially across gendered and other social relations ofpower, its uses and functions cannot be readily assumed. Terrill'saccount is, accordingly, predicated on an appeal to specific historicalforms of argument, rather than any supposed 'objective' truth. Hisaccount can be recognised as persuasive because it appeals to dominantunderstandings of the way power operates in authoritarian societies, ofwhich imperial and communist China are held to be examples.

Even more problematic than Terrill's privileging of gossip are theclear and casually announced versions of national identity that are foundon virtually every page of his text. Terrill uses the phrase 'In China'like a refrain. In China, politics is 80 per cent intrigue (the other 20 percent is propaganda). In Chinese politics, individual taste, lust, vision andfear mean almost everything, and even more so in the case of awoman.30 I could go on, but the point should be clear. Terrill believeshe has the ability to recognise and articulate the essential nature ofChina and the Chinese, and is equally confident that no evidencewhatsoever need be offered to support what are often absurdly sweepingstatements. Such statements not only structure Terrill's narrative, theyalso encourage the reader to distinguish between Chinese and Western

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identities, as implied by our apparently different ways ofcommunicating and conducting political affairs.

Terrill is not alone in using such techniques to structure his accountand support his conclusions. Other biographers of Jiang Qing makesimilar gestures. Witke and Terrill, for instance, describe Jiang Qing'sinvolvement in the Cultural Revolution Group and the reform of PekingOpera in analogous terms. That is, it was as if the Pentagon suddenlytook over the Metropolitan Opera Company, and 'stipulated that theirsubsequent work be directed personally by a close female relative of thePresident'.31 Even worse, it was as if the President fired his cabinet andappointed the leaders of the Moral Majority, under the supervision ofhimself and his wife, to act as an emergency government of the UnitedStates.32 Despite different inflections, these examples illustrate thecultural generalisations which are sprinkled liberally throughout eachtext, and they produce similar effects. In this instance, they establish theUnited States as a normative referent, and on the basis of thiscomparison suggest that the politics of Jiang Qing and the CulturalRevolution era were prejudiced, unrepresentative and, implicitly,absurd.

In short, the biographies employ a number of narrative techniquesand rhetorical devices within a particular kind of comparativeframework; one that is not simply descriptive, but rather bothevaluative and expository. Such a practice works to register the implied(moral) differences between the investigating subject (the biographerand the reader) and the subject of the text (Jiang Qing, the CulturalRevolution, and China). Subsequently, from claiming to describe certaincharacteristics of Jiang and the Chinese socio-political system, thebiographies establish a framework for identifying (and assessing) theessential 'otherness' of their subject. In this respect, the biographies areactually constitutive of that which they claim to be an account. Theyproduce a kind of grid through which Jiang Qing, the CulturalRevolution and China will continue to be seen. Certainly, the cumulativenature of the biographies, and the distribution of their representationsthroughout a wide range of scholarly and popular literatures, indicatesthat this is the case.

The orientalist suppositions of this framework are accentuated by theemphasis accorded to Jiang's position as a female member of the CCP.Here, the woman and the political leader are brought together as 'our'enigma and mystery. Jiang's biographers, and their reviewers, routinelyask: How did Jiang Qing achieve a position of political power? Was sheMao's consort, or was she an independent political figure? What doesher political career tell us about the nature of Chinese politics? Toanswer these questions, Jiang's situation as a woman in Chinese society

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is constituted as a particular kind of problem, a focus which works, inturn, to foreground the (negative) qualities attributed to China.

Jiang's biographers commonly note that throughout China's historyonly a few women have occupied a prominent political position, thepublic realm being, in effect, the province of men.33 Historicalexceptions were a handful of empresses or concubines who rose'topower by usurping or manipulating the power of their husband, son orlover, only to be subsequently denounced for doing so. While a numberof women have held political posts in Communist China, their work hasprimarily related to so-called 'women's issues'. Jiang Qing is,accordingly, one of the few women—if not the only woman—in theCCP leadership to have occupied a major political position withresponsibility for 'affairs of state'.34 Having identified Jiang as unique,biographers proceed to account for her apparent singularity byreferring to traditional antecedents, Jiang's relationship to Mao, and toher alleged independent will and ambition. Despite varying emphases,their respective conclusions turn on the assumption that China, unlikethe West, is immured in history. This assumption is reiteratedirrespective of whether Jiang is compared to other female power-holders in China, or to a hypothetical Western counterpart.

Chung and Miller, for instance, assert that Communist China is stilltouched by the influence and ideas of the imperial past. Two widelyaccepted and persistent notions are that China's history is repetitive—China's past is China's present—and that court intrigues—'only toooften the work of ambitious empresses and concubines—are to beexpected'.35 Having evoked these historical antecedents, the authorsproceed to dismiss the latter notion as romantic, although they add thatmany analysts have explained Jiang's rise to power in analogous terms.Such analysts equate Jiang Qing with the Cultural Revolution, and claimthat she encouraged the violence associated with the red guards in orderto realise supreme power. In apparent refutation of this argument,Chung and Miller assert that Jiang cannot be described in traditionalterms, that is, as a usurping concubine or aspiring empress, because sheis the loyal servant of Mao. Accounting for Jiang's exercise of power intraditional terms, they argue, elides the culpability of Mao Zedong andZhou Enlai, among others, for the violence of the CulturalRevolution.36

Despite this criticism, Chung and Miller strategically evoke thewomen of China's past to support their conclusions. Their final wordsassert that the Cultural Revolution, if nothing else, has given Jiang aplace among the 'great women in China's ancient and ever-unfoldinghistory'.37 in making this claim, the charges of ruthless ambition andpromiscuous behaviour traditionally made against female power-holders

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in China are recalled, all of which are characteristics attributed to Jiangthroughout Madame Mao.

This apparent about-face is resolved, at least for Chung and Miller,by recourse to the notion that China, in the final analysis, is unchanging.Jiang can be distinguished from her predecessors because she soughtpower for her lover, not only for herself. By affirming this distinction,the authors are able to refute the claims of other analysts, andtemporarily salvage Jiang in order more effectively to condemn theCCP. Their concluding words are thus designed to reaffirm Jiang'sculpability and the major argument of the text, namely, that Jiang isMao's (read the Emperor's) 'revolutionary concubine'.38 Her eminenceduring the Cultural Revolution is explicable in terms of power struggleswithin the CCP leadership, which are portrayed as the most recent cyclein the court politics that have allegedly characterised China since earliesttimes.39

In somewhat similar fashion, Witke asserts: 'Contemporary China ismoved as much by the pull of tradition as by the push of revolution'.40

The CCP leadership, in particular, she argues, functioned within boththe Confucian and Marxist traditions, and this left Jiang Qingawkwardly situated. To attain a position of political power, Jiang had tostruggle against traditional disdain for women, resentment within theCCP towards wives of leaders who sought separate status, and the'nearly universal assumption' that authority in the arts is the 'naturalright of men'.41 Affirming Jiang's achievement, Witke portrays her asan unaware feminist revolutionary, a woman who both overcame andwent beyond Confucian and communist strictures in order to become apolitical power in her own right.42

Having constructed Jiang in these terms, Witke argues that Jiang'ssuccess in realising a position of political power indicates that the lot ofChinese women has somewhat improved under socialism. But thepositive assessment of China that this conclusion implies is halted by thecircumstances surrounding Jiang's sudden fall from power. The ensuingcampaign against Jiang, Witke argues, 'disgorged a vile residue fromthe past'.43 The accusations of promiscuity and prostitution broughtagainst her demonstrate that communist practices have failed torevolutionise the feudal mentality of the Chinese people. China is stillimmured in the legacy of its past, a past that is unprogressivelyauthoritarian and patriarchal.

As these examples demonstrate, the focus on Jiang as a womanreiterates the notion that China exists in a state of arrested development,and it also allows Jiang's character and motivations to be variouslyinterpreted. She can be compared to her alleged historical predecessors,

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but also appraised as a woman who sought independent political status—the perceived right of all women in modem societies, if not in China.44

The (Western) feminist implications of the latter theme, in particular,enable biographers to portray Jiang in ambivalent terms. They cancondemn her politics, yet admire her as a woman who confronted theingrained misogyny of Chinese society in order to attain politicalpower. This ambivalence is particularly marked in the accountspublished after Jiang's fall.45 Here, the CCP's campaign against Jiang iscited as evidence of the misogyny of Chinese society, a charge whichsupports a sympathetic reading of Jiang, and allows a more effectivecondemnation of Chinese communism.

The extent to which an ambivalent reading of Jiang Qing enables amore trenchant critique of Chinese politics can be illustrated byfocusing on a motif found in all the biographies: that is, Nora, the heroof Ibsen's play, A Doll's House. Nora embodies the individualistalternative. In her, Ibsen portrays a woman who finds herself inopposition to all social norms. She is the woman who forsakes herreligiously ordained duties as a wife, and mother, in order to realiseautonomy. Ibsen's advocacy of women's emancipation is predicated onthe individual's inalienable right to self-expression, and, in this respect,draws on the Western liberal-democratic tradition. Despite the culturalspecificity of Ibsen's concerns, however, the figure of Nora features inJiang's biographies. Ostensibly, this is because Lan Ping (Jiang Qing)played the role of Nora in a Shanghai production of A Doll's HousedBut the figure of Nora assumes a greater significance in the biographiesthan the relation of this simple 'fact' would suggest. Nora becomes astandard by which to measure Jiang's motivations and position withinChinese society, and also provides a framework for assessing the CCP.

In The White-Boned Demon, for instance, Nora's quest is astructural feature of text. Terrill's account is framed by Jiang's trial,and Nora's presence in these first and final chapters strengthens hisconclusions. Jiang was deeply influenced by Ibsen, he argues. Acting therole of Nora introduced her to the Western concepts of individualityand free will which encouraged her rejection of Confucian mores.47

Extending this comparison, Terrill asserts that the young actress took onthe persona of Nora, that 'Lan Ping was Nora'.48 His proof of thistransmogrification is the fanciful notion that Lan adopted the habit ofhumming to herself in emulation of Nora.4^ Fanciful or not, thisascription of Nora's habits to Jiang serves a rhetorical function. WhenTerrill states that Jiang hummed to herself in prison we know what thisaction implies: Jiang maintained her individuality, she refused to becowed by the system.50

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In comparing Jiang to Nora, Terrill also develops a number ofthemes from earlier texts. Like Chung and Miller, he argues that Jiang'sglamorous ways and promiscuous past were frowned upon at Yan'an,and added to the alleged controversy surrounding her relationship withMao.51 To assuage potential dispute, Jiang's and Mao's marriage wassanctioned on the condition that Jiang confine her activities to thedomestic sphere.52 Terrill extends this argument, however, by drawingon a theme emerging from Witke's work. Equality between the sexeswas not the norm at Yan'an, he asserts. In similar fashion to the malehead of the. feudal Chinese family, the Party decided what women coulddo with their lives. Jiang was thus obliged to be a communist version ofNora, 'a Nora whose political duty was to be an obedient wife'.53

Terrill subsequently concludes that the 'losers' in this totalitarian, evenfeudal, suppression of women's rights were the Chinese people. ForJiang's 'smouldering resentment', her determination to escape from the'Party-barricaded doll's house' and 'wreak revenge' on those who hadsought to confine her, erupted in the Cultural Revolution.54

At this point, Terrill's sympathy for Jiang is placed in abeyance. Ashe argues, 'However much it was the system of Chinese despotism, andher own upward struggle as a woman, that forced Jiang into a pattern ofpersonalized, arbitrary polities', the result was appalling. 'A nation wasdiverted from economic development to the vain rituals of courtpolitics'.55 The politics of the Cultural Revolution are thus explicable interms of Jiang Qing's personal motivations and age-old power struggles,both of which are diametrically opposed to the valued principles ofeconomic rationalism.

Much of the power of Terrill's condemnation of the CulturalRevolution derives from the metonymical equation of Jiang Qing withthis era, and the fact that Jiang is a woman. As Biddy Martin argues,femininity has figured in Western discourses as a severely reductiveconstruct, 'representing passivity and powerlessness on the one hand,and monstrosity and chaos on the other'.56 By focusing on Jiang'ssituation as a woman, Terrill presents her as the other side of thefeminine 'ideal': she is the empowered woman who exacts a savagerevenge for her former repression. In doing so, Terrill feminises—andthus effectively discredits—the politics of this era. This point is amplydemonstrated by his assertion that: 'No one understood the CulturalRevolution, perhaps because there was nothing to understand; nothingrational beneath the vanity, frustration and thirst for revenge thattriggered it'.57

Despite such criticism, Terrill's stress on Jiang's individual struggleserves a strategic function in both his assessment of Jiang's trial and itsfinal conclusion. Terrill maintains that Jiang was not tried for her

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crimes, but for being a woman. The CCP, he argues, tapped traditionalanti-woman sentiment in order to denounce Jiang and salvage aparticular conception of Mao for the purposes of the new regime.58Jiang's trial is subsequently cited as proof that the ghost of feudalism(incorporating Maoist politics and Confucian disdain for women) stalkscontemporary China, despite the professed commitment of Deng'sleadership to a program of 'modernisation'. In contrast to the hypocrisyhe associates with the new regime, Terrill views Jiang's persistentdefence of her role in the Cultural Revolution, and refusal to confess, asevidence of her individual integrity. Consequently, he can condemnJiang's politics, but admire what he calls her 'heartening celebration ofindividual will',59 with his endorsement of the latter serving to indictcontemporary Chinese communism.60 Terrill concludes by assertingthat Jiang's defence questioned the 'fairness' of the trial and the CCP'saccount of the Cultural Revolution, hence it also challenged China'salleged move to 'rule of law' and the legitimacy of the new regime.61

In sum, the narrative of Jiang's 'life', when combined with certainauthoritative assumptions about the nature of power and the position ofwomen in both traditional and modern Chinese society, is writ large asan indictment of Chinese communism. The gendered identity ascribed toJiang Qing is a crucial component of such a reading, for it is theemphasis accorded to Jiang's struggle as a woman that enablesbiographers to portray her in ambivalent terms. As a woman, Jiangbecomes a signifier for the individual and collective oppression of theChinese people. She is the woman whose struggle against the systemculminates in the Cultural Revolution, hence her oppression becomesthat of the Chinese people. As Jiang's character, and, ultimately, theCultural Revolution, are portrayed as products of the state system, thestory of her 'life' constitutes a warning against totalitarian suppressionof the individual.

Jiang's biographers are able to legitimate their sources andconclusions, and present Jiang's 'life' as a varied yet succinct statementabout Chinese society, Chinese 'otherness', by constructing both JiangQing and China in terms of, and as other than, a Western referent.Certainly, much of the persuasive power of the biographies derivesfrom the conception of a monolithic and unproblematic entity calledChina, an entity which unifies a diverse array of assumptionsconcerning national identity, the nature of power, and the situation ofwomen. Without recourse to such generalities, would the conclusionselicited by biographical accounts of Jiang Qing be so effective? I doubtit. One point, however, is certain: the biographies' emphasis on JiangQing as the explanation for the Cultural Revolution offers a colourfulbut ultimately minimalist, and starkly gendered, account of the issuesthat continue to be raised by that era.

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Notes

Thanks are due to Susan Magarey, Helen O' Shea, and Andrew Watson.for theirhelpful comments regarding this paper.

1. See Yvonne Preston, 'Empress of Revenge', Age, Melbourne, 6 June 1991, p.11; and Geoffrey Crothall, 'Press Gives Jiang's Death Notice Low Priority',South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, 6 June 1991, p. 11.

2. Catherine Sampson, 'Death of Mao's Widow "Suicide"', Times, London, 5June 1991, p. 12.

3. Michael Dutton, 'The Massacre and the Method', Asian Studies Review, vol.14, no. 1, 1990, p. 30.

4. 'Obituary: Jiang Qing', Times, London, 5 June 1991, p. 20.5 . The influential nature of these texts is clear. One only has to browse among the

library shelves to discover that the majority of texts dealing with the CulturalRevolution, and written after 1977, cite either one or more of these biographiesif they refer to Jiang Qing; whether textbooks for students of Chinese politics,for instance, Bill Brugger's China: Radicalism to Revisionism 1962-1979(Croom Helm) London, 1981; or articles in popular magazines such as CarmenPedrosa's 'Leaders of Men', Woman's Journal, 1988, pp. 88-93.

6. Meaghan Morris, 'I Don't Really Like Biography' in S. Magarey (ed.), WritingLives: Feminist Biography and Autobiography (Australian Feminist StudiesPublications) Adelaide, 1993, p. 14; Jean-Michel Raynaud, 'What's What inBiography', Reading Life Histories: Griffith Papers on Biography (GriffithUniversity: The Institute for Modern Biography) Griffith University, 1981, p.87; David Saunders, 'Unities, Differences; Biographic Representations',Reading Life Histories, p. 101.

7. Morris, 'I Don't Really Like Biography', p. 14; Raynaud, 'What's What inBiography', p. 87; Saunders, 'Unities; Differences; BiographicRepresentations', p. 101.

8. Raynaud, 'What's What in Biography', p. 88.9. William Joseph, 'Review', Pacific Affairs, 1985, p. 310.10. See Edward Rice, 'A Review of Comrade Chiang Ch'ing', Pacific Affairs,

1978-1979, p. 645; Nancy and David Milton, 'Understanding China: The LongMarch, a Series of Book Reviews', Nation, vol. 225, p. 22; Mark Elvin,'Mistress of the Arts: A Review of Comrade Chiang Ch'ing,', ObserverReview, 31 July 1977, p. 28; Anne Thurston, 'A Review of Comrade ChiangCh'ing', Political Science Quarterly, vol. 93, 1977, pp. 163-4; Parris H.Chang, 'A Review of Madame Mao', Journal of Asian Studies, no. 28, 1969,p. 847; and Emily Honig, 'A Review of The White-Boned Demon', PoliticalScience Quarterly, vol. 100, 1985, p. 357.

11. Chung Hua-min & Arthur Miller, Madame Mao: A Profile of Chiang Ch'ing(Union Research Institute) Hong Kong, 1968, p. 9.

12. Roxane Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing (Little Brown & Co.) Toronto &Boston, 1977, p. 472.

13. Yvonne Preston, 'Empress of Revenge', p. 11.14. Chung & Miller, Madame Mao, p. 173.15. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, p. 299.16. Morris, 'I Don't Really Like Biography', p. 16.17. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, p. 401, see the footnote which refers to p.

21.18. Edward Friedman, 'Review Article', Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 37, no. 3,

1978, pp. 521-3; and Keith Kyle, 'The Fourth Madame Mao], Listener, vol.98, 28 July 1977, pp. 124-5.

19. Honig, 'A Review of the White-Boned Demon', p. 358.20. Morris, 'I Don't Really Like Biography', pp. 14-5; Raynaud, 'What's What in

Biography', p. 93.

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21. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, p. 318.22. As Wang Gungwu notes: 'individuality was never the theme in traditional Asian

biography', cited in Raynaud, 'What's What in Biography', p. 89. For anaccount of the development of Western conceptions of the person and thesubject see also Marcel Mauss, 'A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion ofthe Person: The Notion of the Self in M. Carrithers, S. Collins & S. Lukes(eds), The Category of the Person (Cambridge University Press) Cambridge,1985, pp. 1-25.

23. See Chung & Miller, Madame Mao; and Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing.24. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, p. 18.25. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, p. 18.26. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, p. 19. Ironically, while Terrill legitimates his

account by claiming it is the 'true' story which will never be published inChina, a translated version of The White-Boned Demon is now available inpopular book stores throughout China.

27. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, pp. 19, 398.28. This is not to deny that China scholars have long encountered considerable

difficulties in obtaining 'hard' information and/or sources who are willing to puttheir name on record which can, no doubt, be related to the nature of the statesystem. It is, however, to question both the status Terrill accords such sourcesand the conclusions he mobilises them to support.

29. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, pp. 339-40.30. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, pp. 240, 319.31. Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch' ing, p. 326.32. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, p. 258.33. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, p. 308; Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, p.

384.34. Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, p. 449.35. Chung & Miller, Madame Mao, p. 174.36. Chung & Miller, Madame Mao, pp. 174-8.37. Chung & Miller, Madame Mao, p. 178.38. Chung & Miller, Madame Mao, pp. 177-8,54.39. See also Simon Leys, 'Chiang Ch'ing, Madame Mao', The Chairman's New

Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution (Allison & Busby) London, 1977,pp. 243-5.

40. Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, pp. 7-8, see also Terrill, The White-BonedDemon, p. 308.

41. Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch' ing, pp. 8-9.42. Witke describes Jiang as a feminist but not in the usual sense. Jiang rarely

complained about men, says Witke, because of ideological reasons. For if Jiangcomplained of male supremacy it would question the regime's claim to haverealised socialism; consequently, when Jiang spoke out against men it was bycalling them 'revisionist' or 'counter-revolutionary'. By dismissing Jiang'sMarxist terminology as ideological (empty phrases designed to obscure realmeaning), Witke proceeds to interpret Jiang as a feminist who is unable toopenly support feminism. See Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, pp. 9, 316,342, 344.

43. Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, p. 472.44. See David Bonavia, Verdict in Peking: The Trial of the Gang of Four (Burnett

Books) London, 1984.45. See Terrill, The White-Boned Demon.46. Chung & Miller, Madame Mao, pp. 56-7; Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, p.

102; Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, p. 68; and Vera Schwarz, 'Ibsen'sNora: The Promise and the Trap', Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol.7, no. 1, 1975, pp. 3-5.

47. Terrill. The White-Boned Demon, p. 299.

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48. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, p. 68.49. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, pp. 68, 127, 392.50. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, p. 392.51. Chung & Miller, Madame Mao, pp. 48-9, 56-7; Terrill, The White-Boned

Demon, p. 149.52. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, pp. 154-5; see also John Gittings, 'Obituary:

Jiang Qing: The Rise and Fall of Green Waters', Manchester Guardian, 5 June1991, p. 39.

53. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, p. 150; Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, pp.189-91.

54. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, pp. 154-5.5 5. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, p. 320.56. Biddy Martin, 'Feminism, Criticism and Foucault', New German Critique, vol.

27, 1982, pp. 3-30.57. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, p. 298.58. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, pp. 288, 391; see also Batya Weinbaum,

'Chinese Women's Second Liberation, but from Mao's Wife?, Off Our Backs,1979, pp. 8-9; and Schwarz, 'Ibsen's Nora'.

59. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, p. 391.60. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, pp. 13-19, 383.61. Terrill, The White-Boned Demon, pp. 374-394.

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