Jung Chang (1952- ) is a Chinese-British writer. Born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, Chang's maternal grandfather was Xue Zhiheng, a military general in the Nationalist government, and her father was the deputy propaganda minister in Sichuan.
During the Cultural Revolution, Chung briefly joined the Red Guards, and worked as a farmer, in a sand foundry, and as an electrician. Her parents were later labeled capitalist roaders and persecuted because of her father's mild criticism of the Cultural Revolution. In 1973, Chang enrolled in the department of foreign languages of Sichuan University, where she stayed on to teach after graduation.
In 1978, she was sponsored by the Chinese government to study linguistics at the University of York, where she received her PhD in 1979, making her the first Chinese mainlander to receive a doctoral degree from a British university since the CCP came to power. She has taught at SOAS University of London, where she is an honorary fellow.
Chang is the author of a number of historical biographies influential in the West, including Madame Sun Yat-sen (co-authored with her husband Jon Halliday, 1986), a family autobiography Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1992), Mao: the Unknown Story (co-authored with Halliday, 2005), Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (2013) and the story of the Soong sisters Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister (2019).
