Explore the collection
Showing 127 items in the collection
127 items
Film and Video
People’s Representative Yao Lifa
Yao Lifa, a teacher from Hubei, was an independent candidate for the 2003 General Election of Deputies to the National People’s Congress. This documentary records the process in which Yao publicized and educated the public on election laws, and his experience with the grassroot electoral campaign. This documentary also reflects the budding grassroot awareness of civil rights in China through voices from the media and ordinary people.
This film is in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
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
Remembering Tiananmen Square
The author was a Hong Kong-based observer for the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch. Remembering Tiananmen is a long article first published in The Nationmagazine in November 1990. It was written after witnessing the crackdown around the square during the night of June 3 until 4 a.m. the next morning.
Book
Rethinking China's Democracy Movement
Author Hu Ping was involved in the Xidan Democracy Wall movement in the late 1970s and now lives in the United States.
He has successively chaired the pro-democracy publications <i>China Spring</i> and <i>Beijing Spring</i>. This book, published in 1992, analyzes the reasons for the failure of the June Fourth Movement and summarizes the lessons learned. The last two chapters suggest how to continue the pro-democracy movement in the future.
Book
Science, Democracy, Rationality: Xu Liangying's Anthology
Chinese intellectual Xu Liangying is a scholar of the history of scientific thought and an active warrior in defense of human rights. He weathered China's most extreme political storms and began to speak out again after China opened up slightly in 1977. This book collects his political speeches between 1977-1999. Originally published by Spiegel Publishing in Hong Kong in 2001, the book was later made into a PDF version by Xu Liangying's family in the hope that it would be circulated online to a wider audience.
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.
Periodicals
Spark, Issue 1
<i>Spark</i> was an underground magazine that appeared in the Tianshui area of Gansu Province in northwestern China during the 1959-1961 Great Famine. The magazine was lost for decades but in the late 1990s began to be republished electronically, becoming the basis of documentary films, essays, and books.
In 1959, the Great Famine was spreading across China. It was witnessed by a group of Lanzhou University students who had been branded as Rightists and sent down to labor in the rural area of Tianshui. They saw countless peasants dying of hunger, and witnessed cannibalism.
Led by Zhang Chunyuan, a history student at Lanzhou University, they founded <i>Spark</i> in the hope of alerting people to the unfolding disaster and analyzing its root causes. The students pooled their money to buy a mimeograph machine, carved their own wax plates, and printed the first issue. The thirty-page publication featured Lin Zhao's long poem, "A Day in Prometheus's Passion." The first issue also featured articles, such as "The Current Situation and Duty," which dissected the tragic situation of society at that time and hoped that the revolution would be initiated by the Communist Party from within.
The students planned to send the magazine to the leaders of the provinces and cities with a view to correcting their mistakes. But before the first issue of Spark was mailed and while the second issue was still being edited, on September 30, 1960, these students in Wushan and Tianshui were arrested, along with dozens of local peasants who knew and supported them. Among them: Zhang Chunyuan was sentenced to life imprisonment and later executed; Du Yinghua, deputy secretary of the Wushan County Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for having interacted with the students, and later executed. Lin Zhao was detained and also executed. Other key members, such as Gu Yan, Tan Chanxue, and Xiang Chengjian, were all sentenced to long years in labor camps.
In the 1990s, Tan Chanxue devoted herself to researching historical information and figures to bring this history to life. She found in her personnel file (<i>dan'an</i>）photographs of the magazine, as well as self-confessions and other evidence used in the students' trial. Eventually, the photos were collated into PDFs, which began to circulate around China.
Editors' note: This site the original handwritten version and a PDF of all the articles from the first issue of <i>Spark</i>. We will also make available transcripts of the essays in Chinese and are searching for volunteers to translate the texts into English. Please contact us if you're interested in helping!
Book
Stand off at Tiananmen
This book goes beyond the individual perspective of a memoir to recount the movement from the perspective of the student collective. It focuses on the vivid portrayal of characters and their interactions. As the author puts it, this is the first time that the 1989 pro-democracy movement and the June 4 tragedy are "recounted as a complete and coherent attempt at narrative history." This book was originally written in English and published in 2009 on the 20th anniversary of June Fourth. The author himself later translated it into Chinese and released it on the eve of June 4 this year. The author, Eddie Cheng, was originally a student in the Physics Department of Peking University in the class of '80. He caught up with the election campaign right after he entered the school. Later, he became an important organizer of the student movement, having spearheaded the two campus pro-democracy campaigns of '84 and '85. In 1986, he went to the United States to study abroad. Currently he resides in the US state of Colorado.
The book can be purchased <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0982320302">here</a>.
Film and Video
Taishi Village
In the fall of 2005, residents of Taishi Village became increasingly frustrated and angered by the sale of land by village officials; hundreds of villagers signed a petition calling for the removal of the village chief. The villagers occupied the village committee’s financial office and expressed their demands through sit-ins and other forms of protests. The government dispatched the police to arrest village activists, but the villagers insisted on starting a formal recall process. The government finally sent a team to the village to verify the signatures for the petition.
<i>The Taishi Village</i> recall incident generated attention from Chinese and foreign media, and caused uneasiness among local government officials. On September 12, 2005, police arrested dozens of villagers who were participating in a sit-in in the village committee room. Despite the pressure, villagers elected a committee to remove the village committee director. The government then dispatched more men to exert pressure, forcing elected members to withdraw one by one. Hired patrol teams eventually drove lawyers and reporters out of the village.
This documentary records the protest scenes and tragic ending of Taishi village’s movement for autonomy, and presents the surging rights consciousness in rural areas in Guangdong. This incident demonstrates villagers’ ability to exercise their right to vote and the government’s inertial approach to grassroots democracy movements.
This documentary is in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
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 Big Bang of History：June Fourth Movement Record
This book was published in Hong Kong in 2009, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of June Fourth. The author, Zhang Wanshu, was the Director of the Domestic News Department of Xinhua News Agency during the June Fourth Incident. This book provides a historical account of the June 4 incident from the unique perspective of the official media, including a lot of insider information. Famous journalist Yang Jijian commented that the book's historical authenticity is beyond doubt, and that it is an indispensable historical document for the study of the June Fourth Incident. In the form of daily events, the book records the situation from April 14th to June 10th, 1989—including the mobilization of 10 armies by the Central Military Commission from the five major military regions, their march to Tiananmen Square along six routes, and the army's entry into the city in disguise, etc. Of particular interest is Zhang Wanshu's citation of Tan Yunhe, then party secretary of the Red Cross Society of China, who said that there were 727 deaths in the June 4 incident—including 713 students and mass deaths and 14 military deaths. This figure is far from the 2,700 recorded by the Red Cross Society of China and has led to much controversy.
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
The Goddess of Freedom of the Chinese Nation -- An Anthology of Essays in Honor of Lin Zhao 40 Years After Her Death
Lin Zhao, formerly known as Peng Lingzhao, a native of Suzhou, was admitted to the journalism department of Peking University in 1954, but was classified as a Rightist in 1957. She was arrested and imprisoned in October 1960 because of her involvement with the underground magazine <i>Spark</i>. In 1965, Lin Zhao was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment for "counter-revolutionary crimes." On April 29, 1968, she was sentenced to death and executed on the same day at the age of 36. This book is a collection of more than sixty articles written in memory of Lin Zhao.
Book
The Herald of History: The Solemn Promise of Half a Century Ago
Compiled by the Sichuan writer Xiao Shu (b. 1962), this book offers a variety of pro-democracy statements released by the Chinese Communist Party media, including short commentaries, speeches, editorials, and documents from <i>Xinhua Daily, Jiefang Daily, Party History Bulletin</i>, and <i>People's Daily</i> from 1941 to 1946. The essays criticize the Kuomintang government for running a "one-party dictatorship" and promised freedom, democracy and human rights.
The book was published by Shantou University Press in 1999. <a href="https://archive.ph/20220329191611/https://www.rfi.fr/tw/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B/20130817-%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF%E5%A4%A7%E5%AD%B8%E5%86%8D%E7%89%88%E3%80%8A%E6%AD%B7%E5%8F%B2%E7%9A%84%E5%85%88%E8%81%B2%E3%80%8B">According to Xiao Shu</a>, the book was heavily criticized by the then-head of the Propaganda Department, Ding Guangen. The publishing house was temporarily suspended, and copies of the book were destroyed. It was republished in Hong Kong by the Bosi Publishing Group in 2002, and reprinted by the Journalism and Media Studies Center of the University of Hong Kong in 2013.
Book
The Last Secret : The Final Documents from the June Fourth Crackdown, Introduction by Andrew J. Nathan
The documents in this book come from two high-level meetings of the CCP held after the June 4 Tiananmen Square Incident in 1989, namely, the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Committee of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the CCP and the Fourth Plenary Session of the Thirteenth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which was held on June 23rd and 24th at the Beijing West Guest House. The author claims that the documents were copied and kept for many years by an unnamed senior official within the CCP. This set of documents was formed when the CCP made its final conclusions on the June 4 incident. It is also a record of the high-level political operations within the CCP. These documents reveal the ultimate secret of the mechanism by which the Communist Party has always held absolute power. It was published by New Century Press in 2019. Special thanks to Bao Pu, founder of Hong Kong's New Century Press and son of Bao Tong, former political secretary of Zhao Ziyang, for authorizing CUA to share the book.
Book
The People Will Not Forget: A Chronicle by 64 Hong Kong Reporters
This book, published by the Hong Kong Journalists Association, collects the June 4 reports from 64 Hong Kong journalists. The first edition was released in July 1989, and the book was reprinted on the 20th anniversary of June Fourth in 2009.
Book
The Power of Tiananmen：State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement
<i>The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement</i> is a sociological monograph. It explains the process of the 1989 school movement and interprets the political and economic situation from four perspectives: state legitimacy, ecological environment and mobilization structure, discourse and modes of action, and public opinion. Author Zhao Dingxin interviewed 70 participants in the movement at the time. He also examined many little-known domestic documents. Thus, theory and evidence are closely intertwined.
The book won the 2002 Distinguished Book Award (Collective Action/Social Movements) and the 2001 Distinguished Book Award (Asian and Asian American) from the American Sociological Association.
It is published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong Press.