Tombstone

“This book is really important and valuable. Yang Jisheng was a Xinhua reporter for most of his life. The book was written originally in Chinese, and it’s been translated into English. It’s a compendium of documents and analysis on the Great Famine, which happened between 1958 and 1962. It’s largely based on documents that remained internal and that the Party has not disclosed. I remember giving the Chinese language version of the book to a friend of mine, who is Chinese and very well-informed. He has lived internationally. His grandfather was actually eaten by cannibals. And yet he didn’t know that this famine was a national event. He thought it might have just been a crazy person, a one-off that happened in his own province. That’s the level of knowledge that you have in China about this famine! The Party caused the deaths of millions and millions of people, it’s still undetermined exactly how many. There’s the number that directly died, and many failed to be born as a result, and so on and so forth. But it was easily 30 million people and yet the average Chinese person doesn’t even know about it. I found it a very compelling narrative and interesting exploration.” Read more...

Books to Change the Way You Think About China

Anne Stevenson-Yang, Entrepreneurs & Business People