was always respectful towards "female comrades". Due to this and other reasons, Qi believed Li's claim that Mao had affairs was a lie. Frederick Teiwes, an American academic specializing in the study of Maoist China, was also critical of The Private Life of Chairman Mao, arguing in his book The Tragedy of Lin Biao: Riding the Tiger during the Cultural Revolution 1966-1971 (1996) that despite Li's extensive claims regarding the politics behind the Cultural Revolution, he was actually "on the fringe" of the events taking place in the Chinese government. He went on to criticise the book as being overtly and polemically "anti-Mao", being "uncritical" in its outlook and being "dependent on the official sources" to create a picture of the revolution. He characterised Li's book as offering nothing new but "recycling widely available information and interpretations". The Private Life of Chairman Mao was presented as revealing new information about Mao, but historian Mobo Gao has argued, "For those who are familiar with the literature in Chinese, there was in fact very little that was really new in the book when it hit the Western market. For the significant figures and events described in Li's book, memoirs and biographies published previously in China and Hong Kong have revealed as much, if not more." References Footnotes Bibliography Books Articles 1994 non-fiction books Books about Mao Zedong Books about Maoist China Book censorship in China Chinese-language books Chatto & Windus books Chinese memoirs Censored books