[sersi]

I mean I skimmed it earlier but I do plan to read it. That said my pre-established conclusions are based on first hand negative accounts of people who currently still live in China some of which do not speak English so weren't influenced by any "western narrative" (where I also lived for a number of years before moving to HK). Those are not accounts from a well-off diaspora.

EDIT: By the way, it's not that hard either to find books written by Chinese writers not part of the diaspora that are critical of the cultural revolution (Serve the people by Yan Lianke, 3 body problem by Liu Cixin) or the great leap forward (4 books by Yan Lianke). Obviously, writers living in China that have to deal with censorship tend to be less directly critical of it compared to writers from the diaspora but that doesn't stop some criticism to shine through.a

[xanthor]

Even the official CPC line is critical of Mao. The assertion is not that all Chinese people believe the same thing or all necessarily belief different things from dominant western narratives on every issue. The assertion is simply that: some narratives are dominant in the West and treated as closed issues without any room for critical discussion or nuance. Deviating from those narratives is punished in a variety of ways through social and institutional enforcement.