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Werken van Yang Jisheng

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Yang Jisheng's Tombstone is the newest of three exhaustive, country level surveys of the Great Famine that took place during China's Great Leap Forward.

Originally published in Chinese, the English translation has been cut in half. It is nevertheless a dense, wide-reaching work of demographic history. The book mostly focuses on decisions made at national party congresses, particularly the Lushan Conference. It also gets into details from local and provincial cadres officials who were obsessed with placating national leaders. There are some heart-rending, but not many, details from people who suffered through the famine based on interviews Yang conducted over the course of many years.

Yang adds very important context to the Great Famine. He shows evidence that there were many people within the state apparatus who tried to report the problems of the Great Leap Forward to national leaders. In fact, Mao and other top leaders in China knew that mass starvation was taking place as early as 1959, but they insisted that their political initiatives were more important, so they continued with intense grain procurement, communes, and political persecutions.

In editing the original Chinese, I think the translators and editors may have cut out a lot of the organizational text. Chapters are disjointed. They seem more like separate essays than a piece of a larger work.

Tombstone is similar to Frank Dikötter's Mao's Great Famine and Jasper Becker's Hungry Ghosts. All three books show that the Great Famine was avoidable, but Yang makes the best case that it was malicious, perhaps even purposeful.

All three books try to use demographic changes to make sense of the tragedy, placing death tolls between 20 and 35 million. As far as I know, Tombstone is the only book from a Chinese historian that exhausts available records to make sense of the tragedy.
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mvblair | 5 andere besprekingen | Jan 17, 2023 |
The investigative reporter Yang Jisheng memorializes in his exhaustive book the thirty-six million Chinese peasants who were the agrarian powerhouse for grain, livestock and progeny. They died of starvation during the years 1958 to 1962 as Chairman Mao pushed forward his plan to turn China into a Communist nation as quickly as possible. Mao brooked no criticism and pragmatic party officials learned not to comment on the realities in the countryside. Land and tools were collectivized, communal kitchens were established destroying the family unit’s ability to survive. Rough and rudely idealistic cadre became the local enforcers searching for every bit of grain when once collected would lie in warehouses while local people stripped the bark off trees, gathered weeds and turned to cannibalism, feeding off the bodies lying along the roads or eating the dead in their own households. Manpower was reassigned to dig ditches or smelt steel leaving women and children to till the fields but they became too weak to do anything. Meanwhile party officials sent phony statistics exaggerating their production quotas. Party leaders who dared to tell the truth were punished. All who were in some kind of position of power never starved or went without.
The gruesome calamities were all man made by leaders in a totalitarian system and as the author says were and are prone to “historical amnesia” to the brutality of the deaths of so many to achieve the Party’s ideals. This book is a must read as a reminder of what did happen when a nation switch to “rightist” thinking and control. China as a miracle economic power celebrating forty years of progress must not forget the sacrifice of so many.
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mcdenis | 5 andere besprekingen | Dec 30, 2018 |
Un incroyable massacre, en pleine paix...
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Nikoz | 5 andere besprekingen | Aug 7, 2016 |
I had no knowledge of these horrific events until I read this book. About 36 million people died in China in a famine due entirely to politics. Pure arrogance made leaders believe that socialism would increase crop yields. Toadyism led cadre members to grossly overestimate agriculture output. When harvests were diverted to the urban centers based on ridiculous grain targets, the farmers were left to starve. The starving masses were prevented from fleeing the countryside to cover up the crimes of the bureaucracy. It is an infuriating and heart-breaking book. The upper echelons of the Communist party were willfully blind or intentionally misinformed. In some cases, the mismanagement is almost comical. When Mao suggests "close planting", some fields were planted with rulers spacing out the crops, overturning centuries of farming wisdom. The end of the book focuses on the totalitarian system that was Communist China during the time of Mao. Yang argues that Mao simply copied the old imperial system with himself in place of the emperor. The book contains wider lessons on the dangers of "yes men", arrogance and stubbornness that can translate into any organization. After reading this, I wanted to see every statue of Mao covered with piles of this book.… (meer)
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theageofsilt | 5 andere besprekingen | Apr 11, 2013 |

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Werken
4
Leden
429
Populariteit
#56,934
Waardering
4.2
Besprekingen
6
ISBNs
28
Talen
5

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