“Sparks”, a new book by Ian Johnson, looks at China’s censored history
It carefully avoids the most sensitive topics, such as Tiananmen, but pulls no punches on the Mao era.
Mr Johnson’s description of the historians’ efforts exposes an important facet of Chinese life that is often ignored because it is so hard to access. Police keep close watch on meetings and communications with the party’s critics. Mr Johnson’s ability to evade controls and gain the trust of his subjects is evident in his compellingly written work. The result is a rare insight into the extraordinary risks that some Chinese take to illuminate the darkest corners of communism.
The chroniclers of suppressed memories, interviewed by Mr Johnson over the course of many years working in China, are commendable for their courage. The history they tell is bleak. One is Tan Hecheng, a “garrulous, stubborn and emotional editor”. Mr Tan has spent more than four decades researching a massacre in 1967 of around 9,000 people in Hunan province by officials who falsely accused the victims of engaging in a counter-revolutionary plot.
But the historians have not given up. What is striking, Mr Johnson writes, is their persistence. The outbreak in Wuhan can be seen as an example of the party’s ability to project and wield enormous power. But Mr Johnson argues that it is better viewed as “a classic example” of repeated eruptions in China against “unchecked government authority”.
Such a claim may sound like wishful thinking. Many observers believe that China’s citizens are supportive of the party and its nationalist cause and that truth-seeking contrarians are a marginal force. But as Mr Johnson writes, “Saying that ‘most people’ don’t know or care is a truism applicable to almost every society in every era: what matters is that many Chinese do know and continue to battle, today, to change their society.
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