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Article
Facts of the 1958-1962 Disaster in Fengyang County, Anhui Province
The author of this book, Luo Pinghan, is a native of Anhua County, Hunan Province. He graduated from the Party History Department of Renmin University of China and served as director and professor of the Party History Teaching and Research Department of the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. This book was published by Fujian People's Publishing House in 2003.
With Mao Zedong's affirmation, the system of people's communes was rapidly promoted across the country in 1958. At that time, the people's commune was both a production organization and a grassroots political power. Its rise and fanatical development are closely related to the subsequent Great Famine.
As a scholar within the system, the author’s view of history also belongs to orthodox ideology. Although this book is narrated from the official ideology of the CCP, it uses rich and detailed historical materials to comprehensively and systematically introduce the history of the People's Communes, giving it a reference value for a comprehensive understanding of this movement.
Article
Memorandum on "Three Years of Natural Disasters"
The years 1959-1961 were very unusual in the history of disasters in China and the world in the 20th century. Anyone who has experienced it will recall the starvation years and the days when people starved to death everywhere. However, due to official concealment and denial, the number of people who died in this disaster has never been officially announced.
The purpose of Jin Hui's article is to estimate the number of unnatural deaths during the three years of the 1959-1961 disaster in China. Based on public data released by the authoritative National Bureau of Statistics in China Jin concludes that about 40 million people died, which roughly matches studies by foreign scholars, who have estimated up to 45 million.
Book
Political Struggles in China's Reform Era
The author of this book, Yang Jisheng, is a veteran journalist with 35 years of experience in journalism at Xinhua News Agency, China's official news organization. He knows a great deal about the ups and downs of Chinese politics after the end of the Cultural Revolution as well as the intricate power struggles at the top and has a lot of first-hand information. He personally interviewed Zhao Ziyang, Zhu Houze, Li Rui, Ren Zhongyi, An Zhiwen, Tian Jiyun, and other important people. “Political Struggles in China's Reform Era”, first published in Hong Kong in November 2004, was the subject of a series of crackdowns by the authorities against Yang Jisheng. It was republished in 2010 by Hong Kong's Cosmo Books.
Article
Special Feature｜Famine and County (3): Hao County's Tragedy
This article is taken from six accounts by Mr. Liang Zhiyuan. Mr. Liang Zhiyuan was the deputy director of the Bo County People's Committee (i.e., the government) office during the Great Famine. He also served as the head of the Production and Welfare Section of the County Party Committee's Rural Work Department and the deputy director of the County Party Committee's Living and Welfare Office, where he was responsible for a lot of things. In 2002 and 2005, based on three years of rural work notes and relevant historical information, Mr. Liang Zhiyuan wrote a number of articles describing the Bo County famine, including "A Painful Lesson in History - The Unnatural Deaths of the Rural Population in Bo County." and several other articles. Due to the sensitivity of the matter, these have not been published publicly, and many of these materials are released to the outside world for the first time in this article.
Book
Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962
The Great Famine in China in the 1960s was a rare famine in human history. From 1958 to 1962, according to incomplete statistics, 36 million people died of starvation in China; due to starvation the birthrate is estimated to have dropped to around 40 million. The number of people who died of starvation and the lowered birthrate due to starvation totaled more than 70 million, which is not only the largest number of deaths among all the disasters that occurred in China's history, but also the most painful and unprecedented tragedy in the history of mankind today. Was this a natural disaster or a man-made disaster? Officials deliberately covered it up and tried to minimize it, forbid any public discussion or expression about it. Yang Jisheng, a senior reporter of Xinhua News Agency, personally experienced the death of his father in the famine. Since then, he has devoted his heart and soul to this story. He has spent several years on it, running through a dozen or so provinces where the disaster was the most serious, and personally checking countless archives and records, both public and secret. He has interviewed the people involved and checked the evidence over and over again. Thus, he felt confident that he could, with the heart of the historical pen and the conscience of the news reporter, make a number of drafts, and truly recapture this tragic history of the human race and analyze the causes of this tragedy with a large amount of facts and data. With a wealth of facts and figures, he identifies the main cause of the famine as the totalitarian system. This is a book carries the collective memory of many ordinary Chinese people, and is a tombstone for the 36 million victims.
This book is published by Tiandi Books in Hong Kong. The English version of <i>Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962 </i> was translated by American author Stacy Mosher and can be purchased <a href= "https://www.amazon.com/Tombstone-Great-Chinese-Famine-1958-1962/dp/0374533997">here</a>.