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Communist Party Jiang chose Kuhn, a member of the U.S. To write his biography, Mao Zedong chose Edgar Snow, a member of the U.S. Reviewing it in Foreign Affairs, Sinologist Bruce Gilley drew an analogy: The English edition was generally labeled political propaganda, an officially sanctioned portrait of Jiang, perhaps commissioned by Jiang himself, a book that was flattering or fawning and more autobiography than biography. Others refused to buy it, dismissing it as propaganda”. The Post described public reaction in China as “mixed”, stating, “Some readers have praised the book for breaking a taboo against discussing the personal lives of high officials and for presenting details of Jiang's life that were new to them. The Wall Street Journal wrote: “His new book is a blockbuster in China, selling more copies here in a single month than any book since the last installment of ‘Harry Potter.’” The Washington Post reported that the “warm official embrace of Kuhn's book is unusual,” adding “the work represented his own best effort to write a ‘personal story as told by Jiang's family, friends and colleagues’ that conveys Jiang's ‘way of thinking’ in the context of Chinese history and culture”. The book is recognized as the first time that a biography of a living Chinese leader has been published on the Chinese mainland, and stories of its success and influence in China have run in the international press. Virtually overnight, the Chinese edition became the number one bestselling book in China with sales of over one million and substantial publicity across the country including front-page features and magazine cover stories. In China, it was published under the title Ta Gai Bian Le Zhong Guo: Jiang Zemin Zhuan ( 《他改变了中国:江泽民传》, literal translation "He Changed China: The Biography of Jiang Zemin") by Shanghai Century Publishing Group, one of China’s largest publishing groups. It was published worldwide except in China by Random House imprints (Crown Publishers in English, Random House Kodansha in Japanese, Random House JoongAng in Korean).