This is the first of what we anticipate will be a semi-regular feature of the China Unofficial Archive—a note from some of the site’s curators explaining different aspects of the archive. This first note will focus on our launch today, December 13, 2023, helping you understand our aims and our goals for the future. 

First, an introduction. My name is Ian Johnson, a former journalist and currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. (You can read more about me on my homepage, [here](https://ian-johnson.com/about-me/).) I came up with the idea for the China Unofficial Archives when I was writing my book [Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sparks-9780197575505?cc=us&lang=en&). One of the book’s premises is that over the past quarter century it has become easier for Chinese people to write or film independent accounts of their country’s history, and to access books, films, and magazines, many of them banned by the government. I called these works “underground” histories, but another term could have been “unofficial” or “citizen” histories that are different from the official narrative promoted by the Chinese Communist Party. 

Despite this explosion of unofficial histories, many people inside China told me that these works could use a proper home. Although people can relatively easily share PDFs or digital films, some of this sharing is ad hoc—you get one book but don’t realize that other people have also published or made films on the same topic. In addition, it can still require much time to find these items online. There are some sites that offer some of this material, but many of them are marred by invasive advertising, and political commentary. None of them introduce the material and explain, in a neutral but authoritative way, why they matter. They also do not tag the material by creator, topic, era, or format, allowing users to explain other related material in a systematic way. So I began to see that there was a need for an independent, reliable, non-partisan home for this material that could be accessed (with a VPN) inside China.

In addition, even though most of this material is in Chinese, I thought that even for people who can’t read Chinese it would be useful to see the sheer scope and ambition of China’s citizen historians. Many people outside China believe that independent thought inside the country has been crushed. This archive shows that this is not the case. 

We began putting this site together in June after we received news that we would get a grant from a foundation that supports free speech. I work on this site in my spare time, but we needed to hire a web designer and other people to help input the material. The grant allowed us to begin to do that. We also got pro bono legal counsel to help us register as a non-profit charity in the United States. And we partnered with The [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/), which has helped us digitalize public-domain books and films.

Over the past few months, our team has put in a huge amount of work, but we are far from finished; on the contrary, you should view today’s launch as a soft opening. We have 850 items in the collection, but sharp-eyed observers will note that about half of them are individual issues of two magazines, Remembrance (记忆) and China Through the Ages (炎黄春秋). Compared to the vast output of China’s citizen historians over the past decades, our offering needs to expand many times over. 

Our priorities for 2024, include:

* Uploading 175 new films, which will radically expand the films we have on offer.
* In partnership with the Internet Archive using AI to generate English subtitles for some of the films that do not have subtitles.
* Indexing Remembrance and China Through the Ages so that users can search the magazines for specific articles.
* Uploading two other important alternative history magazines, Yesterday (昨天) and Small Scars of the Past (往事微痕), and making them searchable. 
* Testing the feasibility of auto-translating material to give English-language readers a chance to savor key works.
* Attending the [Association of Asian Studies annual meeting](https://www.asianstudies.org/conference/) in Seattle on March 15-17. We will present the archive and host a panel discussion. 

We want to keep these posts short, so I’ll sign off. In the future, other members of our staff or advisory board will contribute notes on issues related to selecting, translating, and organizing the archive, or introducing a text that is especially important. In the meantime, enjoy the site and please send constructive feedback to [minjiandanganguan@gmail.com](mailto:minjiandanganguan@gmail.com) 

Ian Johnson

Welcome to our archive

![](uploads/lin-zhao.jpeg)

On the 56th anniversary of Lin Zhao's death, the China Unofficial Archives wants to highlight several key additions to our collection of works about Lin Zhao, in memory of one of the most important freedom fighters and thinkers in the history of the People’s Republic.

On April 29, 1968, Lin, a 36-year-old political dissident, was sentenced to death and executed the same day. Inspired by Communist ideas, Lin passionately followed the Chinese Communist Party until the Anti-Rightist Campaign, when she witnessed and experienced the cruelty of those in power disguised in lofty ideals. She "could not allow herself to be degraded as a lackey of a tyrannical government" (“*A Letter to the Editorial Board of People's Daily*”), and turned into a staunch critic of the authorities. Though subject to torture behind bars, she continued to write, sometimes in her own blood when denied paper and pen, criticizing CCP’s tyrannical rule and expounding her thoughts on democracy, freedom, and political resistance.

In the years after her death, Lin Zhao's personal files were briefly made public and then sealed again, and memorizing Lin Zhao was allowed until one day authorities started to prevent visitors to grave. Today in China, there’s no room for even low-profile memorials, or texts that deviate from the official narrative. We hope that the China Unofficial Archives can do its part to preserve the history and let more people know and remember Lin Zhao. 

The Archive currently holds several entries about Lin Zhao (please scroll to the end), including her own writings, as well as books and documentaries about her. This collection is far from complete, and we will continue to include more relevant contents. Among these are Lin Zhao’s most famous writing from prison “*A Letter to the Editorial Board of People's Daily*,” (also called “the 140,000-words letter”) and her eloquent poem “*The Day Prometheus Suffered*,” which was published in the first and only issue of the underground magazine *Spark*. Soon available will be  *Lin Zhao Anthology*, a collection compiled and edited by Lin’s friends, containing nearly one hundred of Lin's works, including essays, poems, commentaries, and news reports written since her middle school years, as well as her manuscripts and letters that were written in prison and later returned to her family. 

These unofficial records show how Lin Zhao stood firm in her values, and testified for history with her life in that era when fear paralyzed the whole society. Through the different perspectives of the writings, we can also look beyond the abstract, monolithic heroic image of dissidents, and understand Lin’s real, complicated experience as a woman and a unique individual. 

Reading Lin Zhao creates a strong sense of connection for people today: then, as now, we live in an era of voicelessness, and people who "treat freedom as air and food" (“*The Seagull*”) were labeled political "aliens" (“*Father's Blood*”) and subject to cruel persecution. About the goal of resistance, she argued that resistance should not lead to another tyranny, and "as long as there are still people enslaved, no one is really free, not even those who enslave others!" ("*A Letter to the Editorial Board of the People's Daily*") On the strategies of resistance, she pointed out that organization is only a form, and the core lies in people: it's like making a necklace: as long as the beads are there, "one can use any thread to string" ("*Thought Report and Self-Criticism*"). Such political wisdom and vision remain relevant to today’s social movements.

After Lin Zhao was rehabilitated in 1980, her family and friends held a memorial service for her in Beijing, at which one of the couplets read: "?" and "!". More than 40 years apart, this wordless couplet seems to echo the white paper appearing on streets and in campuses since the end of 2022. History’s power of connection is precisely why authorities spare no effort to monopolize it. At the end of his documentary *In Search of Lin Zhao's Soul*, the independent filmmaker Hu Jie asks, "Will history enter our memory? How will history enter our memory?" Lin Zhao answered in her poem “*The Day Prometheus Suffered*”: "Fire belongs to human beings, how can it be hidden forever in Heaven? Even without me stealing the fire, people will always find the light."

China Unofficial Archive Editorial Group 

Lin Zhao Collection：

1. Lin Zhao: *[A Letter to the Editorial Board of the People's Daily](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E6%9E%97%E6%98%AD%EF%BC%9A-%E5%8D%81%E5%9B%9B%E4%B8%87%E8%A8%80%E4%B9%A6-%EF%BC%88%E3%80%8A%E7%BB%99%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E6%97%A5%E6%8A%A5%E7%BC%96%E8%BE%91%E9%83%A8%E7%9A%84%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%81%E4%BF%A1%E3%80%8B%EF%BC%89)*
2. Zhang Chunyuan, Gu Yan, Tan Chanxue, Xiang Chengjian, Lin Zhao, Miao Qingjiu: *[Sparks, Vol.1](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/spark-vol-1)*. 
3. Gan Cui: *[The Soul of Peking University-From Lin Zhao to the 1989 Democracy Movement](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E7%94%98%E7%B2%B9%EF%BC%9A%E5%8C%97%E5%A4%A7%E9%AD%82%E2%80%94%E2%80%94%E4%BB%8E%E6%9E%97%E6%98%AD%E5%88%B0%E5%85%AB%E4%B9%9D%E6%B0%91%E8%BF%90)*
4. Zhao Rui: *[Holy Virgin on the Altar - A Biography of Lin Zhao](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E7%A5%AD%E5%9D%9B%E4%B8%8A%E7%9A%84%E5%9C%A3%E5%A5%B3-%E2%80%94%E2%80%94%E6%9E%97%E6%98%AD%E4%BC%A0)*
5. Lian Xi: *[Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, A Martyr in Mao's China](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E8%A1%80%E4%B9%A6%EF%BC%9A%E6%9E%97%E6%98%AD%E7%9A%84%E4%BF%A1%E4%BB%B0%E3%80%81%E6%8A%97%E4%BA%89%E4%B8%8E%E6%AE%89%E9%81%93%E4%B9%8B%E6%97%85)*
6. Xu Juemin (edited): *[Lin Zhao: No Longer Forgotten](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E6%9E%97%E6%98%AD-%E4%B8%8D%E5%86%8D%E8%A2%AB%E9%81%97%E5%BF%98)*
7. *[The Goddess of Freedom of the Chinese Nation - An Anthology of Essays in Honor of Lin Zhao 40 Years After Her Death](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E6%B0%91%E6%97%8F%E7%9A%84%E8%87%AA%E7%94%B1%E5%A5%B3%E7%A5%9E-%E2%80%94%E2%80%94-%E6%9E%97%E6%98%AD%E7%BD%B9%E9%9A%BE40%E5%B9%B4%E7%BA%AA%E5%BF%B5%E6%96%87%E9%9B%86)*
8. Hu Jie: [*In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul* (with English subtitles) ](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/in-search-of-lin-zhaos-soul)
9. Tiger Temple: *[Memory of Lin Zhao](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/memory-of-lin-zhao-documentary)* 
10. Lin Zhao (edited by Tan Chanxue, Ni Jingxiong and others): *[Lin Zhao Anthology](https://minjian-danganguan.org/zh/collection/%E6%9E%97%E6%98%AD%E6%96%87%E9%9B%86)*

Curators Notes