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As events would prove, Chiang Ch'ing was far less her own person than she believed. In trying to move from the sex of the "first rounds" to the power that "sustains interest in the long run," she never really won enough power to survive on her own. The very fact that she gave her interviews to Roxane Witke is being used in the current campaign to vilify her past behavior. By talking to an outsider, and showing that outsider intimate details of her private life, Chiang Ch'ing put on the record all the ammunition her enemies would ever need to destroy her. -
On the next eight pages, TIME presents key portions of Chiang Ch'ing's own story as recounted by Roxane Witke, along with many previously unpublished photographs of Chiang Ch'ing. The excerpts begin with Witke's description of her first formal session as Chiang Ch'ing's anointed biographer. She had just arrived in Canton, where she stayed in a government guesthouse and awaited her encounter with Madame Mao.