Roxane Witke

Roxane Heater Witke (born 1938) is an American author and a historian of China. She is best known for her biography Comrade Chiang Ch’ing, based on a week-long, sixty-hour interview with Jiang Qing in the summer of 1972. The interview was believed to have inspired The Red Empress (红都女皇), a purportedly risqué biography of Jiang published in Hong Kong in 1973 that threatened her political standing. Following the fall of the Gang of Four, Witke's interview was cited among the Chinese Communist Party’s charges against Jiang for leaking state secrets in pursuit of fame.

Early life and education Witke was born to Mr. and Mrs. William E. Heater of Los Altos, California.

Career After graduation, she became a professor of history at the State University of New York–Binghamton and a research associate of the East Asian Institute at Columbia University.

Motivated by her research on modern Chinese history and women’s issues, Witke sought to visit China to gain firsthand understanding of the country and to meet its female leaders. Through contacts with China’s delegation to the United Nations in New York, she obtained an invitation from the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC). In the summer of 1972, she traveled to China in her personal capacity, with all expenses covered by the CPAFFC.

While in China, Witke submitted to her hosts a list of interviewees she hoped to meet, which included Jiang Qing, then a member of the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party. After interviewing several historians, doctors, and artists, she was received by senior women’s leaders Deng Yingchao and Kang Keqing. The CPAFFC later reported her request to meet Jiang to Premier Zhou Enlai, who approved it, writing to Jiang: “If you are feeling well these days, you may meet this person for about one hour. If you do not wish to, you may decline.”

According to Witke’s own surmise, in his struggle against Jiang, Zhou Enlai deliberately took advantage of Jiang’s love of publicity by arranging for Witke to interview her, assigning his confidante Zhang Ying as the translator. Zhou then allegedly instructed Zhang to use the recordings as the basis for The Red Empress, which was said to have been published anonymously in Hong Kong. Zhou, Witke speculated, presented the book to Mao as evidence of Jiang’s misconduct, enraging him and contributing to the rift between Mao and Jiang. .

Personal life In 1965, while studying at the University of California, Berkeley, Witke was a student of literary scholar Tsi-an Hsia (夏济安), brother of C.T. Hsia. According to historian Tong Tekong, Hsia developed romantic feelings for her, but she declined his advances, leading him to suffer a cerebral hemorrhage and died a few days later.

Witke married Frederick A. Siegler in 1960, and Andrew J. Nathan in 1979. Both marriages ended in divorce. Then, her partner for many years was another China history scholar Charlton M. Lewis III until his death in 2023.

Publications

Books Witke, Roxane Heater (1970 [c. 1971]). Transformations of Attitudes Towards Women During the May Fourth Era of Modern China. [Berkeley : s.n.]. v, 80 leaves. — Doctoral thesis, University of California, Berkeley. Includes bibliographies. Reproduced as microfilm (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1975). Comrade Chiang Ch'ing (Little, Brown & Co., 1977, ISBN ; ISBN ), 549 pp. Illustrated with photographs. Author: Roxane Witke. — Biography of Jiang, the wife of Mao Zedong. Wolf, Margery; Witke, Roxane; and Martin, Emily (1975). Women in Chinese Society. Stanford University Press. 315 pp. ISBN. — A scholarly collection of essays on the changing roles, status, and lives of Chinese women in the twentieth century, covering both mainland China and Taiwan.

Articles and chapters Witke, Roxane (July 1967). "Mao Tse-tung, Women and Suicide in the May Fourth Era". The China Quarterly. 31: 128–147. doi:10.1017/S0305741000028733. Witke, Roxane (March 21, 1977). "Special Section: Comrade Chiang Ch'ing Tells Her Story". Time. Vol. 109, no. 12. — A profile and extended interview with Jiang (Madame Mao), recounting her early life, personal reflections, and self-presentation during the late Cultural Revolution period. Witke, Roxane (December 1991). "The Last Days of Madame Mao". Vanity Fair.