impossible. For instance, whilst Li claimed that he was present at exclusive meetings for high-ranking Communist Party members such as the CCP Politburo Standing Committee meetings, Lin et al. argued that it would have been an extreme breach of protocol for him to be allowed into these events, though it is difficult to conclude that this would have been impossible. In one particular case, Li claimed to have witnessed a public argument between Mao and Deng Xiaoping at the CCP Eighth Party Congress in September 1956, with the latter criticising the use of personality cult centred around Mao in China, which Li alleged Mao favoured. Lin et al. argue, however, that Mao himself had publicly criticised the personality cult in April 1956, when he stated that it was a lesson to be learned from the regime of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. Lin et al. therefore believe that the debate between Mao and Deng that Li was referring to simply never happened, though not everyone would draw the same conclusion. They also criticise some of Li's claims regarding Mao's personal life, for instance challenging his assertion that Mao was sterile, in which they are supported by Professor Wu Jieping, who was another of Mao's medical care-givers. They theorise that Li had fabricated this story in order to explain why Mao did not have many illegitimate children with the many women that, Li controversially claimed, he had sexual intercourse with. Other critics Another Chinese critic of Li's work was Qi Benyu, who was formerly a member of the Cultural Revolution radicals in Beijing. Qi had been arrested and imprisoned at Mao's order in 1968, subsequently spending the next eighteen years in prison. Despite his persecution at the hand of Mao however, Qi criticised Li's portrayal of the Chinese leader, claiming that "aside from his account of the support-the-left activities (zhi zuo) in which he [Li] personally participated, most of the Cultural Revolution part of his memoirs consists of stuff gleaned from newspapers, journals and other people's writings. To make Western readers believe that he had access to core secrets, Li fabricated scenarios, resulting in countless errors in his memoirs." Having lived in proximity to Mao for a number of years, Qi remarked that during this time he heard no rumour of Mao ever having extra-marital affairs despite the fact that other senior Party members were known to, and that Mao