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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
Disillusionment of Splendor: A Cautionary Tale of a People's Commune
This book tells the story of China's first people's commune - the Chayashan People's Commune in the author's hometown. Chayashan is a township located in Suiping County, Xinyang City, southern Henan (now part of Zhumadian District). It is the location of the country's first people's commune established by Mao Zedong in 1958, and was also a model commune during the Great Leap Forward period. At the Lushan Conference in 1959, the commune was used in Mao Zedong's counterattack against Peng Dehuai, a general who opposed Mao's policies.
The author Kang Jian is a war veteran. More than thirty years after the Great Famine, Kang Jian visited the villages in Chayashan to conduct an oral history investigation. He used oral interviews to record the daily lives and experiences of farmers under collective economic practices. The author writes in the form of interviews, showing the history of Chayashan People's Commune in detail, and using specific cases to present the relationship between national political behavior and individual destiny.
Periodicals
Examination of the Great Famine of the 1960s in Gansu Province
This book is a series of studies on the socio-economic situation in Gansu Province during the Great Famine of 1958 to 1961. The book is, divided into two parts.
The first part consists of five research articles, which document the miserable situation of the people of Gansu during the Great Famine. According to the book, the Gansu Provincial Party Committee admitted in a report that there were incidents of cannibalism in the area during the Great Famine. The articles also expose a series of activities by local authorities during the Great Leap Forward Campaign, such as the irrational construction of mega hydraulic projects, the false reporting of grain output, the operation of communal canteens that caused huge waste, and misleading the hungry people to eat bark and mud. The articles also analyze the reasons behind the disaster.
The second part of the book contains important historical documents reflecting the situation at that time, which are the evidence to support the author's research and analysis, including Gansu Provincial Party Committee's directives on the People's Commune, as well as a number of reports on the Committee’s work submitted to the Central Party Committee. In addition, the book contains news, propaganda posters and photographs published in newspapers at the time.
This book is the 20th series of the Lanzhou Literary and Historical Materials (there is a total 23 series) compiled by the Literary and Historical Materials and Study Committee of the Lanzhou Municipal Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the CCP (which is actually directly directed and supervised by CCP). This gives the book special value, as it reflects a semi-authoritative voice that supports independent historians' contention that the famine was far deeper and widespread than official historiography admits.
The book was published in 2002, written by Wu Wenjun and edited by Wang Jialuo. Wu Wenjun and Wang Jialuo also worked together on the 22nd series of the Lanzhou Literary and Historical Materials *Examination of the Great Famine of the 1960s in China* (which is also held by the archive). All but the 20th and 22nd series are available on the website of the Lanzhou Municipal Political Consultative Conference (https://www.gslzzx.gov.cn/col/col11760/index.html) .
Book
Hu Yaobang and the Vindication of Wrongful Convictions.
This book recounts Hu Yaobang's efforts to overturn people falsely accused of being "Rightists" during the Anti-Rightist Campaign of the 1950s. It is written by Dai Huang (1928-2016， formerly known as Dai Shulin), a Communist propagandist and later senior editor at the Xinhua News Agency, who was also persecuted in the Mao era and rehabilitated thanks to Hu's efforts.
This means that the book is not entirely objective–Dai does not analyze too closely Hu's history of slavishy following Mao's policies. Instead, he aims to capture the excitement felt by the hundreds of thousands who suffered in the Mao era and who were rehabilitated in the 1970s and '80s thanks to Hu. At 300,000 Chinese characters, or more than 200,000 English words, it is a weighty compendium that includes previously unreported details of famous public intellectuals and party members persecuted by the party and how Hu rehabilitated them. For example, Dai recounts the case of Ge Peiqi, who was a Communist Party spy who was toppled for his opposition to the party's corruption and privilege. Dai explains the case in depth and how Ge was eventually cleared.
Dai represented a liberal wing of the party that believed in the need for the party to address its mistakes. At his funeral people such as Du Daozheng (the editor of China Through the Ages 炎黄春秋) and Tie Liu (publisher of the alternative history journal 往事微痕) attended. The book also contains a preface by Li Rui, who participated in China Through the Ages and was also a mainstay of the party's liberal wing.
Book
Lushan meeting factual record
This book is a historical record of the 1959 Lushan Conference written by Li Rui. Based on the author's personal experience and the literature of the relevant departments of the Communist Party of China, the author has recorded the important points and events before and after the meeting. The first edition of this book was published in April 1989 by the Spring and Autumn Publishing House and Hunan Education Publishing House in mainland China; the updated edition was published in June 1994 by Henan People's Publishing House.
Book
Mao in Power (1949-1976)
The author of this book, Shan Shaojie, is a scholar from mainland China. For several years, he wrote this book from an independent position. Former political secretary of Mao Zedong, Li Rui, and Princeton University professor, Yu Yingshi, wrote the foreword for this book. In addition to a systematic account of the Maoist era, Shan Shaojie's book "Mao in Power" emphasizes that almost all members of the Communist Party's highest decision-making echelons, with the exception of Mao Zedong, made efforts, in varying degrees and successively, to stop Mao's insanity. Moreover, they took turns to resist and ultimately to leave Mao alone, but did not really stop Mao's madness. This book was published by Linking Publishing in 2001 and has been reprinted several times.
Book
Mao: The Unknown Story
This book presents the dramatic life of Mao Zedong, revealing a wealth of unheard-of facts: why Mao joined the Communist Party, how he came to sit at the top of the Chinese Communist Party, and how he seized China step by step. Writers Jung Chang and her husband Jon Halliday took ten years to complete this book, interviewing hundreds of Mao's relatives and friends, Chinese and foreign informants and witnesses who worked and interacted with Mao as well as dignitaries from various countries.
Purchase link：https://www.amazon.com/Mao-Story-Jung-Chang/dp/0679746323.
Book
Personal experiences of political movements
This book is a collection of many authors, most of whom were former senior officials of the Communist Party of China, such as Li Rui, Xiao Ke and others. Through the author's recollections, we can learn about the political movements of the Mao Zedong era, including the Cultural Revolution, the Anti-Rightist Movement, etc., as well as the details of many unjust cases, such as the Hu Feng case, which is quite convincing. This book was published by the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau Press in mainland China in 1998.
Book
Revisiting 1957
<i>Revisiting 1957</i> is not just about the history of the Anti-Rightist Campaign but is also a theoretical reflection on that history. Written by Wei Zidan (the penname for Wei Liyan), the book has three sections: upper, in which the author discusses philosophical problems of the campaign; middle, in which he discusses the origins of the campaign; and lower, which contains his thoughts on lessons for the future. In Wei's view, the people who were declared rightists stood up for freedom of speech. The campaign, therefore, was an assault on freedom of expression and resulted in a human rights catastrophe for China. The book also has an eleven-part appendix with reflections on miscellaneous events.
Wei Zidan was born in Henan Province in 1933 and was a teacher in the Anyang Middle School. He himself was labeled a rightist and brings a unique insider's account of the movement but unlike some personal accounts of suffering, Wei also brings a more analytical approach to the issue.
After moving to the United States in his later years, he collected information and found the freedom to complete this book. Published in Hong Kong in 2013 by the May 7 Society Press.
Book
The Doubtful Clouds of 1957-- Cracking the Code of the Anti-Rightist Movement
The Anti-Rightist Movement in China began in 1957 with the reorganization of intellectuals, followed by the Great Leap Forward, the People's Commune, and a series of calamities such as the Great Famine. The Hong Kong Five Sevens Society was founded in 2007 with the aim of collecting, organizing, and researching historical information about the Anti-Rightist Movement. It is headed by Wu Yisan, a writer who moved to Hong Kong from mainland China. The author of this book, Shen Yuan, who was also a Rightist at the time. He has systematically researched and organized the Anti-Rightist Movement that took place in 1957 and attempted to answer some of the unanswered questions.
Book
The Great Leap Forward: An Intimate Memoir
Li Rui, who once served as Mao's secretary, is also an expert on Mao Zedong. Like his famous <i>Proceedings of the Lushan Conference</i>, this book is also an important historical work. It focuses on the author's personal experience of the Great Leap Forward initiated by Mao Zedong.
Book
Thirty Years of New China
Tang Degang is a historian and biographer who specializes in oral history. In the latter half of his life, he settled in the United States and taught at Columbia University and the City University of New York. In the field of history, he put forward the "Three Gorges Theory of History", which divides the change of Chinese social system into three major stages: feudalism, imperialism, and civil rule. The book was originally titled <i>Mao Zedong's Dictatorship, 1949~1976</i>, but was renamed <i>Thirty Years of New China </i> when it was released on the mainland.
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.