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Book
Age of Revolutionary Revolt: Historical Manuscripts of the Cultural Revolution Movement in Shanghai, The
Shanghai is where the Cultural Revolution was launched, and the Shanghai Cultural Revolution is an important part of China's decade-long Cultural Revolution. This book is an important work about the decade-long Cultural Revolution in Shanghai. It has been commented that "Li Xun's book is the most detailed account of the Shanghai Cultural Revolution to date. Although other perspectives are possible, as far as political history is concerned, the basic framework is complete; and as far as the study and evaluation of the Cultural Revolution is concerned, the core of understanding the movement is almost lost without the Shanghai Cultural Revolution." This book was published by Oxford Press in 2015.
Here is a link to purchase the book from the publisher:
https://www.oupchina.com.hk/zh/general-interest/humanities/archives/2014/24_shanghai-cult-revolution
Book
At the Crossroads of History
This book is Gao Hua's next masterpiece after *How the Red Sun Rose*. It entails a selection of papers published by the author between 1988 and 2004, covering the fields of Republican history, Communist Party history, and contemporary Chinese history. It captures the historical interaction between the present and the past. Gao reflects deeply on the far-reaching Chinese Communist Revolution. With a rigorous and empirical research methodology, he sketches a complex and colorful picture of history, presenting the multiple facets of twentieth-century China's history.
Book
Footprints of the Missing: Trends of Youth Thought During the Cultural Revolution
During the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, ideological control was extremely harsh. However, a small group of young people at great personal risk still carried out extremely serious study and thinking.
This book is a study of this group of young thinkers. Written by Yin Hongbiao (b. 1951), a professor of history at Peking University, it examines the lives and motivations of some of these contrarian thinkers. Instead of focusing on well known thinkers from the Cultural Revolution, such as Yu Luoke, Professor Yin seeks to rescue "missing persons" from history. These are not mainstream public intellectuals, but grassroots thinkers who challenge the mainstream. In this book, they include people such as Chen Erjin, a young man from the mountainous province of Guizhou, who in 1976 published an essay "On Privilege" that proposed protection of human rights and a western-style separation of powers.
The book also allows us to understand the thinking of young people from the middle of the last century. As the critic Hu Ping noted in a review of this book (https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/pinglun/huping/hp-11302009095820.html):
"The 19th-century Russian thinker Herzen wrote: 'Can future generations understand and evaluate all the horrors and all the tragic aspects of our existence? ... Oh, let future generations linger on before we sleep under the tombstone, let us meditate and pay our respects; we are worthy of their respect!' Reading "Footprints of the Missing" written by Dr. Yin Hongbiao of Peking University reminds me of Herzen's words."
Book
Gu Zhun and His Times
This book is about Gu Zhun, a Chinese economist, historian and philosopher. Gu Zhun was the first person to put forward the theory of China's socialist market economy, which became a key concept in the Reform era, helping to justify the use of markets in a socialist system. He also devoted himself to the study of politics, history and philosophy, translating several foreign classic works on economics and democracy and writing a large number of articles. Due to his independent thinking and dissent, he suffered repeated political persecution, including during the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution (for more information on Gu Zhun, see his biographical entry). As he personally experienced the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Great Famine, and the Cultural Revolution, his diary is also considered a valuable source of information on these historical events. By documenting and analyzing his life, thoughts, and the eras in which he lived, Wang's book shows how Gu Zhun persisted in his "pursuit and search for the freedom and equal rights that are inherent to all human beings " (author's preface) in an era when independent thinking was suppressed. This book was published in 2015 by the Great Mountain Culture Publishing House in Hong Kong.
Book
Gu Zhun Diary
This book contains the only three surviving diaries of Gu Zhun: one from October 1959 to January 1960 when he was exile to work in a labor camp in Shangcheng, Henan Province, one from October 1969 to September 1971 when he was sent to work in the May Seventh Cadre School in Xi County, Henan Province, and one from October 1972 to October 1974 when he returned to Beijing. The first two diaries, written during the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution, record the tragedies Gu Zhun witnessed during the Great Famine as well as his own endurance of hunger, and how he underwent repeated punishment and ideological education as a Rightist. The third diary is a simple record of his life, but it shows that Gu Zhun spent the last two years of his life almost exclusively in reading, translating and writing. Since he personally experienced the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Great Famine, and the Cultural Revolution, these three diaries are considered a valuable source of information about these historical events. In addition to Gu Zhun's diary, the book includes Gu Zhun's translation manuscript of a chapter on Christianity in English political scientist George Catlin’s book *A History of Political Philosophers* published in 1939. The book also includes his last letter to his sixth brother Chen Minzhi, several articles by other people commemorating Gu Zhun, and interviews with Gu Zhun's close friends. The book was published by the Economic Daily Press in 1997.
Book
History of the Chinese Thought Movement
This book is a masterpiece by Chinese scholar Li Honglin. The author was a representative of the ideological liberation movement during reform and opening up and was arrested after the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989. This book summarizes the various ideological purges launched by the CCP since its establishment in 1949.
Book
Li Yizhe Incident - A Bottom-Up Appeal for Democracy and the Rule of Law in the Cultural Revolution
Li Yizhe is the signature of a famous large-print newspaper, “About Socialist Democracy and the Rule of Law,” during the Cultural Revolution in mainland China. The newspaper was co-authored by three people: Li Zhengtian, a student at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts; Chen Yiyang, a high school student; and Wang Xizhe, a factory worker. The name Li Yizhe was created with characters taken from each of the three names.
"Li Yizhe" wrote three drafts from September 13, 1973 to November 7, 1974. On November 10, 1974, the newspaper was publicly posted on the streets of Guangzhou, with a total of sixty-seven sheets of white paper and more than 26,000 words. The content called for socialist democracy and the rule of law, in the form of a critique of the "Lin Biao system." It pointed directly at the shortcomings of the CCP's ultra-leftist movement that had trampled on democracy and the rule of law since the founding of the CCP. The newspaper pointed out that the social and historical conditions under which Lin Biao's group emerged reflected the ideology of China's feudal society, which had lasted for more than 2,000 years, and that the essence of Lin Biao's counter-revolutionary group reflected the ideology of the extreme left. Without naming names, the broadsheet also pointed out the many crimes of those in power and, in connection with these phenomena, analyzed the serious problems of the socialist "system" itself. Li Yizhe and others were arrested in 1977 and rehabilitated a year later.
Book
Life of Storms: The New Life of a Disabled Prisoner, A
On August 8, 1966, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China adopted the "Sixteen Articles" of the Cultural Revolution. Soon after, Liu Wenhui, a young mechanic in Shanghai who had been labeled as a Rightist in 1957, wrote pamphlets and leaflets clearly opposing the Cultural Revolution, the "Sixteen Articles," authoritarianism, and tyranny. Liu was arrested on November 26 of that year. Four months later, he was executed for "counter-revolutionary crimes." Liu Wenhui became the first person known to have been publicly shot for opposing the Cultural Revolution. The author of this book, Liu Wenzhong, was Liu Wenhui's co-defendant and survived thirteen years in prison. In this autobiography, Liu Wenzhong describes in detail not only Liu Wenhui's ideology but also how he was killed by the tyrannical government.
Article
My Life: China's Direction
When the Cultural Revolution broke out, Yang Xiaokai was a senior high school student at No. 1 Middle School in Changsha. On January 12, 1968, he published an article entitled "Where is China Going?" which systematically put forward the ideas of the "ultra-leftist" Red Guards, criticized the privileged bureaucratic class in China, and advocated for the establishment of a Chinese People's Commune based on the principles of the Paris Commune. Yang Xiaokai recalled that his parents were beaten because they sympathized with Liu Shaoqi's and Peng Dehuai's views, and that he was discriminated against at school and could not join the Red Guards. As a result, he joined the rebel faction to oppose the theory of descent. Yang Xiaokai was later sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for this article. Yang Xiaokai died in 2004. This article is a retrospective of his life.
Book
Rebellion in All Its Shapes and Colors --The Formation and Evolution of the Spiritual Qualities of the Red Guards
This book seeks to reveal the characteristics of the Red Guard movement through the study of the Red Guard's spiritual qualities, such as the mode of action of the rebellion, the formation of factions and regional differences, as well as the types of Red Guard ideology and the trend of change before and after the Cultural Revolution, etc. The author is a peer of the Red Guard and has accumulated first-hand information on the subject through extensive interviews and documentary research. The author of this book, Xu Youyu, is a peer of the Red Guards, and has accumulated first-hand information about the research through a large number of interviews and documentary research. At present, there are very few studies that analyze the formation of the Red Guards' mentality based on oral data and case studies. Therefore, this book is of great reference value to researchers in this field. This book was published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong Press in 1999.
Book
Seventy Years of the Chinese Communist Revolution
Professor Chen Yongfa's book examines the history of the Chinese Communist Party from the perspective of modern Chinese history. It divides it into three stages: revolutionary seizure of power, continuous revolution, and farewell revolution. It delves into three major issues in CCP history: nationalism, grassroots power structure, and ideological transformation and control. published by Taiwan's Linking Publishing in 2001.
Film and Video
Spark
<i>Spark</i> tells the story of a group of young intellectuals who risked their lives to voice their opinions about the Chinese Communist Party in the 1950s and 1960s. Following the Hundred Flowers Campaign of 1957, many intellectuals were branded as Rightists and banished to work and live in rural China. A group of students from Lanzhou University were among those sent to the countryside. There, they witnessed mass famine which resulted from government policies to collectivize agriculture and force industrialization in rural China. Shocked and angered by the government’s lack of response to the Great Famine, these students banded together to publish <i>Spark</i>, an underground magazine that sought to alert the Chinese population of the unfolding famine. The first issue, printed in 1960, included poems and articles analyzing the root causes of failed policies. However, as the first issue of <i>Spark</i> was mailed and the second issue was edited, many of these students, along with locals who supported the team, were arrested. Some of the key members of the publication were sentenced to life imprisonment and later executed, while others spent decades in labor camps.
In this 2014 documentary, Hu Jie uncovers the stories of the people involved in the publication of <i>Spark</i>. He conducts interviews with former members of the magazine who survived persecution, and also shows footage of the manuscripts of the magazine. A digital copy of the original manuscript of the first volume of <i>Spark</i> is also held on our website.
This film was awarded the Special Jury Prize for Chinese Documentary at the 2014 Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival and the Award of Excellence in the Asian Competition. Later, it won the Independent Spirit Award at the Beijing Independent Film Festival.
Book
Ten-Year History of the Cultural Revolution, The
The authors of this book, Yan Jiaqi and Gao Gao, are a married couple. Both are scholars at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). Yan was the first director of the Institute of Political Science at the CASS and was involved in the Political Reform Office under Premier Zhao Ziyang. The couple went into exile in the U.S. after the June 4 Incident. The book was published by the Tianjin Publishing House in 1986. With a circulation of more than one million copies, many people began to learn about the full history of the Cultural Revolution from this book.
Book
The Age of Great Unrest: China 1949-1989
The author of this book, Wang Nianyi (1932 - September 13, 2007), was an expert on the history of the Cultural Revolution. He has a clear understanding of the causes and circumstances of the Cultural Revolution. He is regarded as doing "pioneering work" in China's domestic study of the Cultural Revolution. According to Qizhi's recollection, Wang Nianyi compiled <i>Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution</i>, <i>The First Year of the Cultural Revolution</i>, <i>Dictionary of the Cultural Revolution</i>, <i>Miscellaneous Discourses on the Cultural Revolution</i>, and <i>Research Materials on the Cultural Revolution</i>, which have not been published in China.
Book
The Brothers Mingjian Xue & Yefang Sun
This book concerns two Chinese economists, Xue Mingjian and Sun Yefang. Xue Mingjian (1895-1980, former name Xue Epei, he changed his name after joining the volunteer student armies during the 1911 revolution - Mingjian (明剑) meant “to eliminate the Qing government with sword and revenge on behalf of the Ming Dynasty (剑除满清，为朱明报复)” ) was "the founder of modern Chinese national enterprise economics, the pioneer of modern national industry, a civil society activist, educator and scholar" (author's preface). He served as a delegate to the National People's Congress of the Republic of China, Senate member of the Kuomintang, and a popularly elected legislator. Sun Yefang (1908-1983, former name Xue Eguo, he changed his name out of security concern after the incident that he got arrested by KMT when he was a underground CCP member), by contrast, a member of the Communist Party of China, was an important economist in post-1949 China, who was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution and regained attention and respect after the reform and opening-up period. The author tells the story of the two brothers' very different life trajectories, while pointing out that even though they were in different political camps, their concern for and practice of humanitarianism were in fact the same.
The book was first published by China SDX Joint Publishing in 2009, and was to be reprinted by Economic Press China in 2014, but it was censored. The version in our archive is published by Boden House in 2023.
Book
Who is the New China
Author Xin Hao Nian tries to analyze the modern history of China since the Xinhai Revolution. He pointsout that the People's Republic of China (PRC) is a restoration of the authoritarian system, and the Republic of China (ROC) represents China's road to a republic. The first volume of the book defends and clarifies the history of the Kuomintang (KMT), arguing that the KMT is not a "reactionary faction" as claimed by the CCP. The second volume criticizes the revolution and history of the CCP. The book was first printed in 1999 by Blue Sky Publishing House (USA) and reprinted in June 2012 by Hong Kong's Schaefer International Publishing. It is banned on the mainland.