This book is a collection of nineteen feature articles by well-known contemporary scholars, researchers, and writers. They recapitulate their own experiences during the Cultural Revolution in a literary style.
When the Cultural Revolution broke out, they were all young people in their twenties. These reminiscence articles are the result of a rare collective reflection after the end of the Cultural Revolution. The authors described their own experiences during the Cultural Revolution in the articles, providing a personal perspective on history.
The chief editor of this book is the philosopher and activist Xu Youyu, a former researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Xu signed and made suggestions on Charter 08, and also is a co-founder of the New Citizens Movement. Since 2015 he has resided in New York City, where he has been a visiting scholar at the New School for Social Research.
This book was published by China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Publishing Corporation in 1998.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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>.
How can China build a true civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants.