The author of The Vladimirov Diaries: Yenan, China, 1942~1945, Peter Vladimirov (Sun Ping in Chinese) was a Soviet citizen. The book was first published in the 1980s by Oriental Publishing House and reprinted in March 2004. Peter traveled to Yan'an from 1942 to 1945 as a liaison officer of the Comintern and a correspondent for the TASS news agency. He kept a diary of the political, economic and cultural aspects of Yan'an, including its opium economy. Against the background of the relationship between the CCP and the Soviet Union during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the book describes the CCP's Rectification Movement and the Seventh National Congress. It also comments on the CCP's contact with the U.S. Military Observer Group stationed in Yan'an at the time and on the relationship between the CCP and the Kuomintang.
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.
Wukan is a village in Luwei City, under the jurisdiction of Shanwei City, Guangdong Province. From 2011 to 2016, Wukan villagers have continued to fight to protect their land and fight for villagers' rights. Facing strong pressure from the government, some even paid with their lives. In the process, the villagers had elected their own villagers' committee by one person, one vote to practice their democratic rights. Although the protests were eventually suppressed, the impact was far-reaching. Ai Xiaoming rushed to the scene at the beginning of the Wukan incident and left this precious record.
Gao Hua was a renowned Chinese historian who died of liver cancer in Nanjing in 2011 at the age of 57. During his lifetime, Prof. Gao Hua focused on modern Chinese history. He was an expert in the history of the CCP and Mao Zedong. Several of his books were published overseas, and his book “The Revolutionary Years” was the only one published on the mainland. His masterpiece, “How the Red Sun Rises - The Ins and Outs of the Yan'an Rectification Movement”, was considered a classic work on CCP history when it was published in Hong Kong, but it soon became a banned book. Through this documentary, director Hu Jie records Gao Hua's voice and laughter during his lifetime, expressing the deep feelings of people mourning and commemorating Gao Hua.
Wang Nianyi is an expert on the history of the Cultural Revolution in China. Early on, he suggested that Lin Biao's defection was forced by Mao Zedong. This has long been considered a taboo view in China.
*What Else Did Zhao Ziyang Say - Du zheng's Diary* was published simultaneously in Hong Kong and Taiwan on January 17, 2010 (Hong Kong Tiandi Book Co., Ltd. and Taiwan Printing Literature and Life Magazine Publishing Co). The book is the first to publicize more than 30 unpublished conversations in Zhao Ziyang's recorded oral transcripts, covering a number of major issues. The book is illustrated with a selection of more than 40 rare photographs taken by the author. The book is divided into three parts: upper, middle and lower. It records Zhao Ziyang's exhaustive expressions on topics such as anti-corruption, the nascent bureaucratic capitalist class, federalism, punishment by words, media management, political system reform, and the new leftist trend of thinking.
This is an important article in Li Shenzhi's *Collected Writings*, which analyzes in detail why Mao Zedong wanted to "oppose the right," and how he launched the "anti-right" campaign.
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.
This film follows the stories of environmental activist Tan Zuoren and artist Ai Weiwei. In July 2009, Tan Zuoren was charged with the crime of “Inciting subversion of state power,” and his trial was held in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. Ai Weiwei was invited by Tan’s lawyer to testify in court, but the night before the trial, he was assaulted by the police and detained in a hotel. To everyone’s surprise, Ai turned on the tape recorder before the police entered his residence and managed to record the incident. Later, Ai and his colleagues released a documentary about this incident, titled “Disturbing the Peace” (or “Laoma Tihua”).
This film interviews the people behind the scenes of “Disturbing the Peace,” including the director, photographers, editors, and audiences of the film, who discuss the relationship between citizens and government authority.
This series of films are in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
Chinese human rights activist Dr. Xu Zhiyong, twice imprisoned for his longstanding advocacy of civil society in China, was sentenced to 14 years in prison by the Chinese government in April 2023. The documentary by independent director Lao Hu Miao was filmed over a four-year period, beginning with the seizure of the Public League Legal Research Center, which Xu Zhiyong helped found in 2009, and ending with Xu's first prison sentence in 2014.
How many people were "killed," "imprisoned," and "controlled" in the whole "anti-revolution" campaign? Mao Zedong later said that 700,000 people were killed, 1.2 million were imprisoned, and 1.2 million were put under control. Mao's statement was naturally based on a report made in January 1954 by Xu Zirong, deputy minister of public security. Xu reported at the time that since the anti-revolution campaign, the country had arrested more than 262,000, of which "more than 712,000 counter-revolutionaries were killed, more than 12,900,000 were imprisoned, and 1,200,000 were put under control, and more than 380,000 were released through education because their crimes were not considered serious after their arrest." (3) Taking the figure of 712,000 executed, it already amounts to one and two-fourths thousandths of one percent of the country's 500 million people at that time. This figure is obviously much higher than the one-thousandth of a percent level originally envisioned by Mao Zedong.
The revised edition of this book was published by *Open Magazine* in Hong Kong in 2007. The first edition was published in 1991 and was revised and reprinted twice, in 1993 and 1995. The book collects a large amount of information about the anti-rightist movement, including survey interviews with victims of the anti-rightist movement and their relatives and friends. It is a complete record of the anti-rightist movement, which comprehensively analyzes and discusses the whole process of the anti-rightist movement, as well as its ins and outs, causes and consequences. Regarding the number of "rightists," the statistics of the CCP authorities had been limited to 550,000 people. According to Ding Lyric's analysis, there were about 1.2 million people who were labeled as "rightists" in the Anti-Rightist Movement.
In March 1989, the book Yangtze Yangtze was published by the Guizhou People's Publishing House just as the Tiananmen student protests were about to begin in Beijing. The book fed into this intellectual ferment, challenging the technocratic reasons for the Three Gorges Dam, which eventually would dam the Yangtze River in the name of flood control and electrical power generation.
The book was edited by the journalist Dai Qing, the daughter of a well-known Communist Party activist and leader. The book challenged the project's decision-making process, with a broad array of scientists, journalists, and intellectuals arguing that it was not democratic and did not take into account all viewpoints. It was widely read in China and translated into foreign languages.
After the Tiananmen protests were violently suppressed, Dai Qing was arrested and imprisoned for ten months in Qincheng Prison as an organizer of the uprising. Yangtze Yangtze was criticized as “promoting bourgeois liberalization, opposing the Four Fundamental Principles (of party control), and creating public opinion for turmoil and riots.” The book was taken off the shelves and destroyed, with some copies burned. It became the first banned book resulting from the decision-making process of the Three Gorges Project.
The book is banned in China. The English-language edition can be read online at Probe International: https://journal.probeinternational.org/three-gorges-probe/yangtze-yangtze/.
This magazine was one of most important alternative history journals. It was founded in 1991 by a liberal faction in the CCP, with the help of people such as Xiao Ke, a general in the PLA, and Du Daozheng, a Chinese journalist who once served as head of Guangming Daily and the head of the National Press and Publications Administration of China. It attracted the support of other liberal CCP members, such as Xi Zhongxun, the father of Xi Jinping, and for many years its chief editor was the famous Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng.
The journal had upwards of 200,000 readers a month. In 2016 its reform-oriented management was dismissed as part of a crackdown on alternative histories.
The China Unofficial Archives has a complete set of <i>Yanhuang Chunqiu</i> in its database. Over time, we will index the individual issues and hope to provide English summaries.
In January 2007, Hong Kong Open Press published the book "Conversations of Zhao Ziyang under House Arrest". It was narrated by Zong Fengming and prefaced by Li Rui and Bao Tong. The narrator, Zong Fengming, is an old comrade of Zhao Ziyang. He retired from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1990. From July 10, 1991 to October 24, 2004, using the name of a qigong master, Zong Fengming visited Fuqiang, who was under house arrest in Beijing. Zhao Ziyang, who lives at No. 6 Hutong, had hundreds of confidential conversations with Zhao Ziyang. This book is a rich account of these intimate conversations. Zhao Ziyang talked about the power struggle and policy differences within the top leadership of the CCP, his relationship with Hu Yaobang, his evaluation of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, his criticism of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, Sino-US relations, the Soviet Union issue and Taiwan issues. He also conducted in-depth reflections on the history of the Communist Party.