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An estimated 460,000 to 1.4 million people were persecuted in the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957-1959). The event was one of the most important political campaigns in the history of the People's Republic because it effectively silenced independent intellectual thought in the Mao era, paving the way for disasters, such as the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution. 

Wu Yisan spent more than ten years researching the lives of this campaign's victims. At 33,000 entries, the list is far from complete but it gives the human perspective on the tragedy in a scope never before attempted. Among the devastating details is the story of Qian Zhongshu, one of 20th century China's best-known writers. Qian's father, Qi Jibo, had been declared a Rightist but died before he could be publicly humiliated. So Qian Zhongshu and his brother-in-law Shi Shenghuai, were forced to attend a mass rally and be criticized in his place. They did so while holding the dead man's "spirit tablet," a piece of wood used in a family shrine with the deceased name, and birth and death dates.

The dictionary was originally published as a CD-Rom. Mr. Wu has made the text version available to the China Unofficial Archive and we are now working to make it a searchable PDF for those who cannot access the CD-Rom version. The Dictionary of Names of 1957 Victims was published by the Humanities Publishing Center and funded by the Laogai Research Foundation.

 The stories behind the CCP's purge of China's educated class

Dictionary of Names of 1957 Victims

The Summer of 1957: From Hundred Schools of Thought to Two Schools of Thought

This book comprehensively records and analyzes the Anti-Rightist Campaign.

The author Zhu Zheng was born in 1931. He was once the editor of Hunan People's Publishing House and a well-known expert on Lu Xun in China. He was classified as a Rightist in 1957 and personally experienced the Anti-Rightist Campaign. This book references information from CCP party newspapers at that time, as well as his recollections, making this book informative and reliable.

The "two dueling schools of thought" in the subtitle of this book comes from The Selected Works of Mao Zedong. Mao called for one hundred schools of thought to contend but in fact only intended for two to compete: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. 

This book was first published by Henan People's Publishing House in 1998. It is one of the earliest studies of the movement in China

 A Panoramic Description of the Anti-Rightist Campaign

Summer of 1957: From One Hundred Schools of Thought to Two Schools of Thought

1966: Memories of Our Generation

This book is a collection of nineteen feature articles by well-known contemporary scholars, researchers, and writers. They recapitulate their own experiences during the Cultural Revolution in a literary style.

When the Cultural Revolution broke out, they were all young people in their twenties. These reminiscence articles are the result of a rare collective reflection after the end of the Cultural Revolution. The authors described their own experiences during the Cultural Revolution in the articles, providing a personal perspective on history.

The chief editor of this book is the philosopher and activist Xu Youyu, a former researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Xu signed and made suggestions on Charter 08, and also is a co-founder of the New Citizens Movement. Since 2015 he has resided in New York City, where he has been a visiting scholar at the New School for Social Research.

This book was published by China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Publishing Corporation in 1998.

Nineteen Scholars' Memories of the Cultural Revolution

A Chronicle of Rural Remediation of Communes in Difficult Times

Two years after the Great Famine of 1958, the government sent "rectification" work teams of about 10,000 people to many of the most severely affected provinces, such as Henan, Shandong, Anhui, Guizhou, Sichuan, Qinghai, and Xinjiang. The author of this book, Hui Wen, had just graduated from Renmin University of China and was assigned to work at the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for half a year. In December 1960, he was sent to Jianyang, Sichuan to participate in the whole society. The book records what he saw during this period. heard.

Hui Wen came into contact with a large number of farmers and witnessed the situation of rural areas on the front line. Each article in the book records the date, place and passage of writing at that time, which adds to the history and authenticity of the book. After the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, the author compiled these records into a volume. Through a case study of Jianyang, this book uses specific historical details to reflect the relationship between the Great Leap Forward policy and the Great Famine.

After the book was completed, due to China's strict publishing censorship system, the author did not submit it to a publishing organization and chose to circulate it among friends first. Later, he handed the manuscript to the website "China's Great Famine Archives," and this historical record was made public to the world.

A first-hand report from the front lines of the Great Famine

Chronicle of Rural Remediation of Communes in Difficult Times

A Non-governmental White Paper on the June Fourth Massacre

At the turn of the spring and summer of 1989, democratic protests broke out in Beijing and other cities in China. In the early hours of June 4, the Chinese government dispatched troops to suppress the movement. In 2009, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the June 4th Incident in 2009, some participants in the movement jointly released the "Unofficial White Paper on the June 4th Incident". The book has 48 pages and a large number of illustrations. 

This white paper attempts to provide a complete political background and legal analysis of the events based on reports from Chinese newspapers, radio and television stations at the time, as well as memoirs and interviews that have been published over the past 20 years. Participants in this book believe that the Chinese government has not conducted a comprehensive investigation and objective evaluation of the June 4th Incident, and has long blocked relevant information and prohibited private investigation and discussion of the matter. The report is called a "white paper" to emphasize its rigor and normative nature.

Participants in this book include Hu Ping, Yan Jiaqi, Wang Juntao, Wang Dan, Yang Jianli and others. The book was written by Li Jinjin, a doctor of law.

A civil society effort to lay out the facts of the events of June 4 1989 

The AB Corps and the Tomita Incident  

In 1930, a mutiny erupted in the Red Army in the town of Futian. In the ensuring purge, more than 700 officers were executed. After this, the campaign to root out Anti-Bolshevik (AB) groups spread to various parts of China, with 70,000 executed. Occurring just nine years after the founding of the CCP, it is one of the earliest and most significant purges in the party's early history.

The first person to pay attention to the Futian Incident was Professor Dai Xiangqing of the Jiangxi Provincial Party School. Starting in late 1979, he and other colleagues went to southern Jiangxi to collect materials, conduct interviews and investigate, and found that this was an unjust and wrong case, and began to publish articles on the matter. 

In the early 1980s, Dai Xiangqing sent his article to a senior general in the PLA, Xiao Ke. After that, the research on the Futian Incident attracted the attention of senior central officials. The CCP's party history research agency sent people to Hunan and Jiangxi to investigate and collect materials. The Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China sent a review team for the Futian Incident and reported the vindication documents to the central government, but even today there is currently no official conclusion on the matter.

This book is an important study of the early history of the Communist Party of China, often mentioned by prominent independent historians, such as Yang Kuisong. As an officially recognized research project, this book does not make ideological breakthroughs, but its detailed historical materials, and its data index make it particularly valuable for understanding this historical event.

This book was published by Henan People's Publishing House in 1994.

The Red Army mutinies and is purged

AB Corps and the Futian Incident

It's Like a World Apart: A Look Back at Jia Bian Gou

This book was published by Lanzhou University Press in 2004. The author, Xing Tongyi, once served as deputy director of Gansu People's Broadcasting Station and director of the Standing Committee of the Jiuquan Municipal People's Congress.

Jiabiangou Farm is a farm located on the edge of the Badain Jaran Desert in Jiuquan, Gansu Province, about 30 kilometers northeast of Jiuquan City. It became a labor camp in 1957. Before it was banned in October 1961, more than 3,000 intellectuals who were labeled as rightists were detained here. During the Great Famine, most of the intellectuals in farm labor camps died due to starvation and excessive workload. This is known as the Jiabiangou Incident. Jiabiangou has also become a symbol of the concentration camps where persecuted intellectuals were imprisoned.

Xing Tongyi was born in Tianshui, Gansu. He said that when he was young, he witnessed a neighbor named Guo being beaten as a rightist and sent to Jiabiangou Labor Camp. In 1961, he learned that this neighbor had starved to death in Jiabiangou. When he was in school at No. 1 Middle School in Tianshui City, his math teacher was Li Jinghang, a Christian who survived Jiabiangou. Xing Tongyi later served as a reporter and deputy director of Gansu Radio Station for a long time, and went to work in Jiuquan in 1996. After that, he took advantage of various opportunities to go deep into Jiabiangou and some surrounding labor reform farms. By consulting a large number of historical materials, he interviewed dozens of rightists who had undergone labor reform in Jiabiangou, or the children of these rightists. It took eight years to complete this book.

Unlike Yang Xianhui's novelistic description of Jiabiangou, Xing Tongyi's narrative is composed of interviews with the people involved and quotations from first-hand historical materials. According to Xing Tongyi, the historical materials he referred to include the Jiabiangou Farm's "Plan and Mission Statement" and the anti-rightist report of "Gansu Daily" in 1957. In addition to interviewing Jiabiangou survivors or their children, he also found information on more than 40 of the more than 2,000 rightists who were in labor camps at the time and were prosecuted by the Jiuquan County Procuratorate for resisting labor camps. After the book was published, people continued to provide him with historical materials, such as death notices and diaries of the victims.

How many labor camp inmates were there in Jiabiangou at that time? In order to clarify this issue, Xing Tongyi interviewed dozens of people, reviewed information, and also found Luo Zengfu, the production section chief of Jiabiangou Labor Camp, the only farm management cadre alive at the time. Based on the information provided by Luo Zengfu, Xing Tongyi's research concluded that there were a total of about 2,800 inmates in Jiabiangou Farm at that time, including about 2,500 rightists. This number is considered to be relatively accurate.

An official investigates China's most notorious labor camp

Worlds Away: A Look Back at Jiabiangou

Part 1: A Labor Camp for Rightists

Part 2: Youth in the Camp

Part 3: Winter in Mingshui

Part 4: Saving Lives

Part 5: Where to Rest in Peace

A five-part documentary by the filmmaker and feminist scholar Ai Xiaoming on the persecution of inmates at the Jiabiangou labor camp in Jiuquan, Gansu province, where more than 2,000 people died. The movie includes interviews with the few remaining survivors and documents efforts to commemorate the dead. The director interviewed survivors of Jiabiangou and the children of the victims and listened to their stories about the past; she also found former correctional officers and their descendants to understand the causes of labor camps and the Great Famine from different angles. 

Shot by Ai and a team of volunteers, the film presents the conflict between the preservation and destruction of memory.

Ai Xiaoming's epic documentary of a death camp

Jiabiangou Elegy: Life and Death of the Rightists

During the Great Famine in 1960, a group of  Lanzhou University  teachers and students who had been branded Rightists decided to publish the underground magazine *Spark*  to make people aware of the problems of CCP rule. Only two issues of this underground publication were printed before it was broken up as a "counter-revolutionary group case" and 43 people were arrested. 

This book is written by Xiang Chengjian, a student in the chemistry department of Lanzhou University who was caught up in the Anti-Rightist Campaign. Along with the others, he  was sent don to a labor camp in Tianshui, Gansu Province. Xiang was a major participant in creating Spark. It was Xiang and another student who were entrusted with printing the first issues of the magazine, which they did secretly while working in an old sulphuric acid plant in a suburb of Tianshui. Xiang also wrote for the magazine, including an essay called "Letter to the People," which criticized top leaders for corruption. 

Xiang was sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment and was only rehabilitated in the early 1980s. This book is his autobiography, which contains a detailed description of the anti-rightist movement at Lanzhou University and the story of Spark.

Because of China's censorship system, this book has not yet been officially published, but is being prepared for publication; The PDF version will be available in  CUA in the future.

Autobiography of Mr. Xiang Chengjian, one of the founders of the underground magazine "Spark"

Return of the Soul from Purgatory

Sparks   (An underground magazine during the Great Famine，The first issue ，Mimeograph ） 

Spark 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 (see: Anti-Rightist Campaign) 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 Spark 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 (CCP), 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 (档案）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 Spark. 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!

An underground magazine published during the Great Famine

Spark, Issue 1

The Disillusionment of Splendor: A Cautionary Tale of a People's Commune

This book tells the story of China's first people's commune - the Chayashan People's Commune in the author's hometown. Chayashan is a township located in Suiping County, Xinyang City, southern Henan (now part of Zhumadian District). It is the location of the country's first people's commune established by Mao Zedong in 1958, and was also a model commune during the Great Leap Forward period. At the Lushan Conference in 1959, the commune was used in Mao Zedong's counterattack against Peng Dehuai, a general who opposed Mao's policies. 

The author Kang Jian is a war veteran. More than thirty years after the Great Famine, Kang Jian visited the villages in Chayashan to conduct an oral history investigation. He used oral interviews to record the daily lives and experiences of farmers under collective economic practices. The author writes in the form of interviews, showing the history of Chayashan People's Commune in detail, and using specific cases to present the relationship between national political behavior and individual destiny.

The Birth and Demise of a People's Commune

Disillusionment of Splendor: A Cautionary Tale of a People's Commune

Seeking: A Chronicle of the "Rightist Counter-Revolutionary Group" at Lanzhou University

During the worst years of the 1960 famine, a group of teachers and students at Lanzhou University decided to publish an underground publication, Spark, to alert Chinese people to the growing disaster and expose the authoritarianism of the Chinese Communist Party. Only two issues of this underground publication were printed before it was broken up as a counter-revolutionary group case and 43 people were arrested. 

The author of this book, Tan Chanxue, was a key participant and helped save the memory of Spark from being lost. Tan was the girlfriend of Zhang Chunyuan, the magazine's founder, and participated in key moments of the magazine's short lifespan. She was sentenced to 14 years in prison, but was later released and rehabilitated, and taught at the Jiuquan Teachers' Training School. In 1982, she was transferred to the Dunhuang Research Institute as an associate researcher, and retired in 1998, settling in Shanghai. 

It is largely through Tan's efforts that we know about Spark. She was able to look into her personnel file (dang'an), where she discovered the issues of the magazine, as well as confessions of the people arrested, and even her love letters to Zhang. She photographed this material and later it was turned into PDFs, which circulated around China starting in the late 1990s, helping to inspire books and movies.

Tan Chanxue's effort to reconstruct the legendary 1960 student journal

Sparks: A Chronicle of the Rightist Counter-Revolutionary Group at Lanzhou University

The Rise and Fall of the Red Guards: A Handbook of the Old Red Guards at Tsinghua High School

The Red Guard movement originated in the Tsinghua University Affiliated High School, a secondary school for faculty and staff of the university, as well as others aspiring to attend the elite university, including the sons and daughters of high-ranking cadres. Song Bailin was a senior high school student at Tsinghua High School, one of the founders and a core member of the Red Guards. 

Song kept a diary during the first years of the Cultural Revolution. Yu Ruxin, a researcher of the Cultural Revolution, felt that a section of Song Berlin's diary involving the Red Guards of Tsinghua High School was of historical value. Yu decided to publish the diary in its entirety as it was, with no deletion except for the correction of obvious typos. The diary covers the period from May 1966 to February 1968, the launching phase of the Cultural Revolution. A selection of diary entries from January to April 1966 has been included to give a better understanding of the political climate in China on the eve of the Cultural Revolution as well as the ideological trends of high school students.

Because the diary is a historic document directly from an era that is now more than half a century old, the diary lacks historical background and footnotes that might help current readers understand the context of that time. Fortunately, the current publication has a preface written by Luo Xiaohai, who explains the political atmosphere in the years leading up to the Cultural Revolution and some of the key events of that time.

For readers today, the diaries are at times hard to decipher. The Red Guards quickly were criticized by others, including those in power. As the writer Hu Ping notes [in a 2007 review of the book](https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/pinglun/huping/Hu_ping-20071112.html), the reversal of support for the Red Guards must have caused confusion and even a sense of betrayal by many involved. The diary, however, reveals none of this inner turmoil, Hu Ping ascribes the Red Guards' silence to the fact that keeping a diary in that era was a way for participants to prove their revolutionary zeal. Thus they self-censored and wrote with the expectation that their words would be discovered and could be used against them. This means the diary provides little in the way of psychological insights in the Red Guards. 

It does, however, provide a way of understanding how totalitarian terror and power works on individual psychology. Thus when his classmates beat classmates and teachers, Song expressed embarrassment that he lacked their fervor and did not participate. This means that the diary is best seen as a primary document that shows the way young people thought at that time, rather than an exercise in self-reflection or criticism.

Diary of a Red Guard During the Cultural Revolution

Rise and Fall of the Red Guards: A Handbook of the Old Red Guards at Tsinghua High School

Wheat Seedling and Vegetable Blossom: A Chronicle of the Great Famine in Western Sichuan Province

Traditionally, the western Sichuan plain was known as China's "Land of Abundance," but it became a focal point of the Great Famine of 1959-1961. Sichuan was one of the hardest-hit areas, with the largest number of deaths from starvation in the country and one of the highest death rates. 

The title of the book, "Apricot Blossoms and Wheat Seedlings"  is taken from a popular revolutionary song of the Mao era. In March, 1958, the Communist Party held a central work conference (known as the Chengdu Conference) at the Jinniu Dam Guest House near Chengdu, during which Mao Zedong inspected the Hongguang (Shining Red) Commune in nearby Pixian County. Two songs were written to commemorate that occasion.. One was "Red Flowers Bloom in the Shining Red Commune," and the other was "Apricot Blossoms and Wheat Seedlings."

The author of this book, Dong Fu (the pen name of Wang Dongyu), was born in Wenjiang, in the western Sichuan plains. He belonged to the "lao san jie"--students whose education was disrupted during the Cultural Revolution. His father was a veteran CCP cadre who engaged in underground party work and who later was responsible for economic policies. As a youth and as a soldier during the Great Leap Forward in Sichuan, Dong Fu saw the famine first-hand. During the Cultural Revolution he enlisted in the army and worked as a reporter for the Chengdu Military District's Zhanqi News. 

After graduating from college, he began to work on this history. He was able to draw on his father's connections to research the book, in the 1980s and 1990s interviewing retired officials who knew his father and who could confide in him. Many have since passed away, giving this book great historical value. He was also able to collect extensive material from historical archives, also in part due to his father's and his own personal connections to the region.

This book was published by the Tianyuan Bookstore in Hong Kong in 2008 on the 50th anniversary of the start of the famine (some historians date the famine from 1958-1962, others from 1959-1961). In contrast to macro accounts of the Great Famine, such as Yang Jisheng's *[Tombstone](https://main--minjian-danganguan.netlify.app/collection/%E6%9D%A8%E7%BB%A7%E7%BB%B3-%E2%80%93-%E5%A2%93%E7%A2%91%EF%BC%9A%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E5%85%AD%E5%8D%81%E5%B9%B4%E4%BB%A3%E5%A4%A7%E9%A5%A5%E8%8D%92%E7%BA%AA%E5%AE%9E)* or Frank Dikötter's *[Mao's Great Famine](https://www.frankdikotter.com/books/maos-great-famine/)*, Dong Fu's work is a case study of the famine in one area. By focusing on the western plains around Chengdu, the author shows how Mao's policies destroyed agricultural life in even historically rich areas that in normal times are China's breadbaskets. 

Another feature of this book is its writing style. [In reviewing this book in 2009](https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/zhuanlan/shuwenpingjian/huping-05062009153055.html), the theorist Hu Ping notes that history writing in China was shaken up by William Manchester's *The Glory and the Dream*, which was published in China in 1979. It was a vividly written history of the United States between 1932 and 1972 that showed that history could be engaging and entertaining. Hu Ping sees Dong Fu's work as inspired by Manchester's work, giving a panoramic, deftly written account suitable for the general reader, but based on solid research. Dong Fu weaves in the top-level battles with ordinary people's views, as well as social and cultural history. He mines the archives for telling details, such as complaints that people filed with the government, witty jingles that they composed to express their pain, and folk traditions. Hu Ping, who also grew up in the same region around the same time, writes:

"During the years of the Great Leap Forward, I was in primary school and junior high school in Chengdu. Reading the relevant chapters of Dong Fu's book, I felt very close to it, and many people and events from that year came vividly to mind. This feeling is something I have never experienced when reading other books about the Great Leap Forward period—whether they are theory books, history books, or even literature books."

How Mao Zedong turned the land of heaven into a land of starvation

Wheat Seedlings and Vegetable Blossoms: A Chronicle of the Great Famine in Western Sichuan Province

On Family Background

Yu Luoke (May 1, 1942 - March 5, 1970): Worker, freelance writer, and public intellectual. 

Yu was born into an educated family in northeastern China, which for a period of time was under Japanese occupation. His father studied on a state scholarship in Waseda University in Tokyo, while his mother came from a wealthy family in Beijing and studied business at Tokyo Girls High School. When the two returned to China, they went into business, married, and had three children.

When the CCP took power, the family was declared part of the “bourgeois class” and like other “black elements”--classes of people who the party declared to be enemies–was persecuted. The father was arrested in 1952 on charges of tax evasion and released. In 1957, Yu Luoke’s parents were declared Rightists and sent to labor camps. In 1959, Yu graduated from high school with highest honors but as the offspring of an undesirable class was not permitted to attend university. In 1961, he was allowed to work on a farm in a Beijing suburb, where he realized that class identity was also important in rural China–landlords and their children were even beaten to death. In 1964 he returned to the city and apprenticed at a machinery factory. Yu realized that he was part of an untouchable caste in Maoist China and would be condemned forever, no matter what he believed or how hard he worked.

These experiences were the genesis of Yu’s essay, which became one of the most famous texts of the Mao era. Yu wrote it at the start of the Cultural Revolution. The ten-thousand character essay is called chushenglun, or “On Family Background” (sometimes translated as “On Class Origins"). In it, he warned that the “five black categories'' were becoming a permanent underclass, while China’s rulers were from the hongwulei, or “five red categories:” poor and lower-middle peasants, workers, revolutionary soldiers, revolutionary officials, and revolutionary martyrs, including their family members, children, and grandchildren. He warned of a new ruling class based on bloodlines. 

The essay was published in a journal that Yu and his brother Yu Luowen called the "Journal of Secondary School Cultural Revolution." In January 1967, about thirty thousand copies were printed, and the young men began distributing them around the capital, selling them for two cents a copy. They sold out in a few hours. In February, they printed another eighty thousand copies. 

Soon, hundreds of letters each day arrived at Yu Luoke’s local post office—so many that he had to go collect them in person. The missives detailed how the Communists’ policies had caused them to suffer. People traveled from across China to visit them at their home, excited that someone finally had uncovered how the Chinese Communist Party ruled. The editorial board was expanded to twenty people, and the group sponsored debates and seminars.

The Journal was closed down in April 1967. Yu Luoke began to write on economic inequality. In January 1968, he was arrested. Two years later, on 5 March 1970, Yu was executed by firing squad at Beijing Workers Stadium.

The creation of a caste system in Maoist China

Yanhuang chunqiu, 2013, issue 11

*Yanhuang Chunqiu*, or *China Through the Ages*, was one of most important alternative history journals.

The magazine 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 Yanhuang Chunqiu in its database. Over time, we will index the individual issues and hope to provide English summaries. 

We chose this issue as one of our "Highlights" for its variety of topics, especially the article 狼牙山五壮士的细节分歧 ("Discrepancies Regarding the Five Heroes of Langya Mountain") on page 46 by Hong Zhenkuai that deconstructs a Communist Party myth about Red Army soldiers who miraculously fought and escaped Japanese soldiers by jumping off a cliff on Langya Mountain in Hebei Province. The story was taught to generations of Chinese school children but Mr. Hong proves it to be false. The article became instantly controversial and resulted in years of lawsuits against Mr. Hong. The article is widely seen as one of the triggers that resulted in the magazine being banned.

A classic issue of one of China's most important alternative history journals

Yanhuang Chunqiu, 2013, Issue 11

Remembrance, issue 112

*Remembrance* is arguably the most important journal of alternative history in the history of the People's Republic. Founded in 2008, it has published more than 250 issues, all of which are held by the China Unofficial Archive. 



The issue we chose for the highlight issue number 112 from April 30, 2014. It deals with one of the most controversial episodes of the past decade, an effort at an apology by some of the women involved in the killing of the school teacher Bian Zhongyun. Bian's killing is one of the most famous incidents in the Cultural Revolution, commemorated by the independent film director Hu Jie in his classic film *Though I Am Gone* (also held in the archive, and among our Highlights). One of the then-school children widely seen as being responsible for Bian's killing was Song Binbin, who soon afterwards was honored by Mao on the rostrum at Tiananmen. Years later, in 2014, Song gave an apology for her role in Bian's killing. Although denying direct responsibility, she said that she and the other girls in the school didn't stop the other students from torturing Bian to death and thus bear responsibility.



In this issue, Song's apology is analyzed on page 19 by one of the founders of Remembrance, who wrote the article under the pseudonym Qi Zhi. On page 3, one of Song's friends, Ye Weili, gives a long account of the day when Bian was killed. Other authors in the issue also chime in with their analyses of the events, the adequacy of Song's apology, and who ultimately bore responsibility for Bian's death–the girls who turned on their teacher, or the system that raised and encouraged such barbaric behavior?

In this 2014 issue of the biweekly journal, a rare effort at Cultural Revolution apologies. 

Remembrance, Issue 112

History of the Rural People's Commune  

The author of this book, Luo Pinghan, is a native of Anhua County, Hunan Province. He graduated from the Party History Department of Renmin University of China and served as director and professor of the Party History Teaching and Research Department of the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. This book was published by Fujian People's Publishing House in 2003.

The book is divided into nine chapters, narrating the history of the people's communes from the perspective of an orthodox view of historical development. The time nodes selected by the author include the rise, tide, adjustment, repetition, retreat, and disintegration of the Great Leap Forward. With Mao Zedong's affirmation, the system of people's communes was rapidly promoted across the country in 1958. At that time, the people's commune was both a production organization and a grassroots political power. Its rise and fanatical development are closely related to the subsequent Great Famine. 

As a scholar within the system, the author’s view of history also belongs to the orthodox ideology. Although this book is narrated from the official ideology of the CCP, it uses rich and detailed historical materials to comprehensively and systematically introduce the history of the People's Communes, giving it a reference value for a comprehensive understanding of this movement.

The Rise and Fall of the Institution at the Heart of the Great Famine.

Working Toward a Civil Society (Episode 5): Cui Weiping

The Xi’an-based videographer Zhang Shihe, or Tiger Temple, has been a fixture on the independent Chinese history scene for more than twenty years. In 2010, he began a thirty-part series of short interviews with leading Chinese thinkers called “Working Toward Civil Society,” in which he explores how China can build a true civil society. Some of those interviewed have now been silenced, passed away, or moved abroad, making the series itself a work of history. 



In this episode, Zhang interviews one of China’s most thoughtful public thinkers, Cui Weiping. Cui is a professor at the Beijing Film Academy, and translator of Havel into Chinese. She was a signer of Charter 08, and friend of the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Although the interview is only 8 minutes long, Cui touches on some of the key problems that continue to plague China: how to break free of overwhelming government control of civic life? 



Note to English speakers: this interview only has Chinese subtitles. The CUA is working to add English subtitles to all of our video offerings so check back in a few months.

Civil Society in China

Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 5): Cui Weiping

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 *Xinhua Daily, Jiefang Daily, Party History Bulletin, and People's Daily 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. [According to Xiao Shu](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), 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.

The Communist Party's Promises Before Taking Power

The Herald of History: The Solemn Promise of Half a Century Ago  

Footprints of the Missing: Youth Thinking During the Cultural Revolution

During the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, ideological control was extremely harsh. However, a small group of young people at great personal risk still carried out extremely serious study and thinking. 

This book is a study of this group of young thinkers. Written by Yin Hongbiao (b. 1951), a professor of history at Peking University, it examines the lives and motivations of some of these contrarian thinkers. Instead of focusing on well known thinkers from the Cultural Revolution, such as Yu Luoke, Professor Yin seeks to rescue "missing persons" from history. These are not mainstream public intellectuals, but grassroots thinkers who challenge the mainstream. In this book, they include people such as Chen Erjin, a young man from the mountainous province of Guizhou, who in 1976 published an essay "On Privilege" that proposed protection of human rights and a western-style separation of powers.

The book also allows us to understand the thinking of young people from the middle of the last century. As the critic Hu Ping noted [in a review of this book](https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/pinglun/huping/hp-11302009095820.html):

"The 19th-century Russian thinker Herzen wrote: 'Can future generations understand and evaluate all the horrors and all the tragic aspects of our existence? ... Oh, let future generations linger on before we sleep under the tombstone, let us meditate and pay our respects; we are worthy of their respect!' Reading "Footprints of the Missing" written by Dr. Yin Hongbiao of Peking University reminds me of Herzen's words."

   Salvaging History's Missing People

Footprints of the Missing: Trends of Youth Thought During the Cultural Revolution

Facts of the 1958-1962 Disaster in Fengyang County, Anhui Province

The author of this book, Luo Pinghan, is a native of Anhua County, Hunan Province. He graduated from the Party History Department of Renmin University of China and served as director and professor of the Party History Teaching and Research Department of the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. This book was published by Fujian People's Publishing House in 2003.

With Mao Zedong's affirmation, the system of people's communes was rapidly promoted across the country in 1958. At that time, the people's commune was both a production organization and a grassroots political power. Its rise and fanatical development are closely related to the subsequent Great Famine. 

As a scholar within the system, the author’s view of history also belongs to orthodox ideology. Although this book is narrated from the official ideology of the CCP, it uses rich and detailed historical materials to comprehensively and systematically introduce the history of the People's Communes, giving it a reference value for a comprehensive understanding of this movement.

A case study of famine in one county

Spark 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 Spark, 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 Spark 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 Spark. He conducts interviews with former members of Spark 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 Spark can also be found on our website, [here](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/spark-vol-1).

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.

Hu Jie's classic documentary films explores an underground magazine and resistance in Maoist China. 

Spark

Lin Zhao: 140,000 Words (A Letter to the Editorial Board of People's Daily)

This is one of the most significant essays written by Lin Zhao, the pen name of the Christian intellectual Peng Lingzhao, who was born on January 23, 1932 in Suzhou.

 In 1947, she attended a Methodist girls school and was baptized. Soon after, however, she joined the underground Communist Party and began writing critiques of the Kuomintang-led government under the pen name Lin Zhao. Before the Communist takeover in 1949, Lin Zhao ran away from home to attend a journalism school run by the party. During this time she joined party campaigns to eradicate the landholding gentry that ran local society.

Lin Zhao was admitted to the Chinese Department of Peking University in 1954. It was there that she broke with Communism and gradually rediscovered her Christian faith. She was classified as a rightist in 1957 for speaking up for other students. During this time, she met Zhang Chunyuan, one of the founders of the magazine *Spark*, which the China Unofficial Archives also holds. She contributed two epic poems to the magazine. The magazine was shut down in 1960 and people affiliated with it were detained, including Lin. 

She was released on medical parole in early 1962 due to tuberculosis, but was arrested and imprisoned again in December of the same year. She was detained in Shanghai No. 1 Detention Center and Tilanqiao Prison. When she was denied a pen and paper, she sometimes used a sharpened straw or chopstick to prick her finger and write in blood.

While in prison, she wrote a large number of texts, including the 140,000-word essay to *People’s Daily* that we feature here. This essay is the fullest expression of Lin’s political beliefs. She wrote it in 1965, dating it July 14 because it was the date of the storming of the Bastille in the French Revolution. It took Lin five months to finish the letter, which ran to 137 pages. She wrote the essay in ink, but stamped it repeatedly with a seal bearing the character “zhao” that she inked in her own blood. 

The letter has not (yet) been translated into English so a few salient points are worth mentioning. 

As Lin’s biographer, the Duke University professor Lian Xi wrote in his biography of Lin (*Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao’s China*, Basic Books, 2018):

“Lin Zhao challenged the theory of a continuous ‘class struggle,’ which the Communists saw as intrinsic to human history and from which there was no escape. Since the 1920s, the CCP had looked upon this theory as an immutable truth and had used it to justify the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat after 1949….”

Lin Zhao scoffed at this. ‘I do not ever believe that, in such a vast living space that God has prepared for us, there is any need for humanity to engage in a life-and-death struggle!’  The CCP dictatorship was but a modern form of ‘tyranny and slavery,’ she wrote in her letter to the party’s propagandists. 

“‘As long as there are people who are still enslaved, not only are the enslaved not free, those who enslave others are likewise not free!’ Those seeking to end Communist rule in China must likewise not ‘debase the goal of our struggle into a desire to become a different kind of slave owner,’ she wrote. ‘The lofty overall goal of our battle dictates that we cannot simply set our eyes on political power—the goal must not and cannot be a simple transfer of political power!’

“The end was ‘political democratization… to make sure that there will never be another emperor in China!’

Professor Lian continues: “Lin Zhao wrestled with the moral question of whether violence was a justified means to that end. Her Christian faith had hardened her for the fight. At the same time, it also tempered her opposition. She acknowledged the occasional ‘sparks of humanity’ even in those who were at the ‘most savage center’ of Chinese communism. As strenuously as she argued against her imprisonment, against Mao’s dictatorship, and for a free society, she was unable to sanction violence in that struggle. ‘As a Christian, one devoted to freedom and fighting under the Cross, I believe that killing Communists is not the best way to oppose or eliminate communism.’ She admitted that, had she not ‘embraced a bit of Christ’s spirit,’ she would have had every reason to pledge ‘bloody revenge against the Chinese Communist Party.’”

The same year that the letter was finished, Lin Zhao was sentenced to 20 years for counterrevolutionary crimes. On April 29, 1968, the sentence was changed to death and she was executed on the same day. She was 36 years old.

Lin Zhao's most famous letter from prison

Lin Zhao: A Letter to the Editorial Board of People's Daily

Special Collections ｜Famine and County (8) Huanjiang County, Guangxi: Frenzy and Its Disasters

Huanjiang County is a county in northwest Guangxi and home to multiple ethnic groups. The area is a major grain-producing county with abundant resources. In 1958, local officials followed the frenzy of the Great Leap Forward, and engaged in "satellite launches"--giving astronomically high grain production rates. This formed the basis of taxation policies, which stripped localities of grain and was a key reason for the famine. Huanjiang County exaggerated grain production up to three times the actual production. 

In order to complete the high procurement, the county merged all the people's rations and feed grains for pigs, cattle and livestock into the national warehouse, and implemented the policy of not opening the warehouse for relief even if people died of starvation. As a result, widespread famine occurred in the county. Huanjiang County has a population of about 150,000, and about 50,000 farmers starved to death.

This article uses specific figures and historical details to fully describe how the regime created false grain figures step by step, and how the upper-level leaders encouraged such a trend. From it we can see the specific process of the Great Leap Forward policy.

The policies of exaggeration that underlay the Great Famine

Famine and County (8) Huanjiang County, Guangxi: Frenzy and Its Disasters

Pastor Wang Yi's Anthology: Carrying the Cross - A History of Chinese House Churches

Wang Yi, of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, is a well-known Chinese intellectual who later became a pastor. The Early Rain Reformed Church that he led was one of the most famous unregistered churches in China. The church occupied the floor of an office building in Chengdu and had its own bookstore, seminary, and pre-school. It regularly had services of hundreds of people. Later, the church had internal conflicts, while at the same time Wang became more outspoken in his criticism of the government. In 2018, he criticized Xi Jinping for abolishing term limits and allowing himself to become ruler of China for life. Pastor Wang was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2019.

This book is based on the recordings of Pastor Wang's classes at Early Rain in 2018. The first five chapters were reviewed by Pastor Wang himself, but he was arrested before he could complete the review of the last five chapters. The essays cover key issues that concerned Wang, including the role of the church in China as a city on the hill, the role of the Reform church in China, and the history of unregistered churches in China.

Records of a writer and pastor

Pastor Wang Yi's Anthology: Carrying the Cross - A History of Chinese Family Churches  

Hu Yaobang and the Vindication of Wrongful Convictions

This book recounts Hu Yaobang's efforts to overturn people falsely accused of being "Rightists" during the Anti-Rightist Campaign of the 1950s. It is written by Dai Huang (1928-2016， formerly known as Dai Shulin), a Communist propagandist and later senior editor at the Xinhua News Agency, who was also persecuted in the Mao era and rehabilitated thanks to Hu's efforts. 

This means that the book is not entirely objective–Dai does not analyze too closely Hu's history of slavishy following Mao's policies. Instead, he aims to capture the excitement felt by the hundreds of thousands who suffered in the Mao era and who were rehabilitated in the 1970s and '80s thanks to Hu. At 300,000 Chinese characters, or more than 200,000 English words, it is a weighty compendium that includes  previously unreported details of famous public intellectuals and party members persecuted by the party and how Hu rehabilitated them. For example, Dai recounts the case of Ge Peiqi, who was a Communist Party spy who was toppled for his opposition to the party's corruption and privilege. Dai explains the case in depth and how Ge was eventually cleared.

Dai represented a liberal wing of the party that believed in the need for the party to address its mistakes. At his funeral people such as Du Daozheng (the editor of China Through the Ages 炎黄春秋) and Tie Liu (publisher of the alternative history journal 往事微痕) attended. The book also contains a preface by Li Rui, who participated in China Through the Ages and was also a mainstay of the party's liberal wing.

Memoirs of Dai Huang, a former reporter for the Xinhua News Agency

Hu Yaobang and the Vindication of Wrongful Convictions.

Restoring 1957

*Revisiting 1957* is not just about the history of the Anti-Rightist Campaign but is also a theoretical reflection on that history. Written by Wei Zidan (the penname for Wei Liyan), the book has three sections: upper, in which the author discusses philosophical problems of the campaign; middle, in which he discusses the origins of the campaign; and lower, which contains his thoughts on lessons for the future. In Wei's view, the people who were declared rightists stood up for freedom of speech. The campaign, therefore, was an assault on freedom of expression and resulted in a human rights catastrophe for China. The book also has an eleven-part appendix with reflections on miscellaneous events.



Wei Zidan was born in Henan Province in 1933 and was a teacher in the Anyang Middle School. He himself was labeled a rightist and brings a unique insider's account of the movement but unlike some personal accounts of suffering, Wei also brings a more analytical approach to the issue.



After moving to the United States in his later years, he collected information and found the freedom to complete this book. Published in Hong Kong in 2013 by the May 7 Society Press.

A participant reflects on a campaign that crushed China's intellectual class.

Revisiting 1957

The author of this book, a graduate of Yanjing University and a former employee of the Ministry of Finance of the Kuomintang government, was retained by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after 1949. In 1951, he was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment  on the trumped-up charge of "counter-revolution" by the CCP for "suppressing the counter-revolution". During his imprisonment, he suffered horrors and hardships. Upon completion of his sentence, he was forced to "voluntarily stay in the field for employment," and in 1982 he was rehabilitated. After the June 4 massacre in 1989, he took up the pen at the age of 76 to describe this counter-revolutionary campaign. The book records many historical facts of the incarcerated labor reform and political campaigns in a down-to-earth and objective manner, providing details and supporting evidence for the study of this period of history. 

The book can be purchased at [this website](https://www.amazon.com/%E9%95%87%E5%8F%8D%E6%B2%89%E5%86%A4-%E6%88%91%E7%9A%84%E5%8A%B3%E6%94%B9%E4%B8%89%E5%8D%81%E5%B9%B4-Chinese-%E4%B8%95%E5%BF%A0-%E7%8E%8B/dp/1685600263?).

A victim tells his perspective on being suppressed as a counter-revolutionary

My Thirty Years of Re-education through Labor

 Yangtze River Yangtze River

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](http://sanxiaguancha.com/sx_show.php?cid=7497) “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 [here](https://journal.probeinternational.org/three-gorges-probe/yangtze-yangtze/).

A groundbreaking critique of China's technocratic Three Gorges mega-dam

Yangtze Yangtze 

This is the first of what we anticipate will be a semi-regular feature of the China Unofficial Archive—a note from some of the site’s curators explaining different aspects of the archive. This first note will focus on our launch today, December 13, 2023, helping you understand our aims and our goals for the future. 

First, an introduction. My name is Ian Johnson, a former journalist and currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. (You can read more about me on my homepage, [here](https://ian-johnson.com/about-me/).) I came up with the idea for the China Unofficial Archives when I was writing my book [Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sparks-9780197575505?cc=us&lang=en&). One of the book’s premises is that over the past quarter century it has become easier for Chinese people to write or film independent accounts of their country’s history, and to access books, films, and magazines, many of them banned by the government. I called these works “underground” histories, but another term could have been “unofficial” or “citizen” histories that are different from the official narrative promoted by the Chinese Communist Party. 

Despite this explosion of unofficial histories, many people inside China told me that these works could use a proper home. Although people can relatively easily share PDFs or digital films, some of this sharing is ad hoc—you get one book but don’t realize that other people have also published or made films on the same topic. In addition, it can still require much time to find these items online. There are some sites that offer some of this material, but many of them are marred by invasive advertising, and political commentary. None of them introduce the material and explain, in a neutral but authoritative way, why they matter. They also do not tag the material by creator, topic, era, or format, allowing users to explain other related material in a systematic way. So I began to see that there was a need for an independent, reliable, non-partisan home for this material that could be accessed (with a VPN) inside China.

In addition, even though most of this material is in Chinese, I thought that even for people who can’t read Chinese it would be useful to see the sheer scope and ambition of China’s citizen historians. Many people outside China believe that independent thought inside the country has been crushed. This archive shows that this is not the case. 

We began putting this site together in June after we received news that we would get a grant from a foundation that supports free speech. I work on this site in my spare time, but we needed to hire a web designer and other people to help input the material. The grant allowed us to begin to do that. We also got pro bono legal counsel to help us register as a non-profit charity in the United States. And we partnered with The [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/), which has helped us digitalize public-domain books and films.

Over the past few months, our team has put in a huge amount of work, but we are far from finished; on the contrary, you should view today’s launch as a soft opening. We have 850 items in the collection, but sharp-eyed observers will note that about half of them are individual issues of two magazines, Remembrance (记忆) and China Through the Ages (炎黄春秋). Compared to the vast output of China’s citizen historians over the past decades, our offering needs to expand many times over. 

Our priorities for 2024, include:

* Uploading 175 new films, which will radically expand the films we have on offer.
* In partnership with the Internet Archive using AI to generate English subtitles for some of the films that do not have subtitles.
* Indexing Remembrance and China Through the Ages so that users can search the magazines for specific articles.
* Uploading two other important alternative history magazines, Yesterday (昨天) and Small Scars of the Past (往事微痕), and making them searchable. 
* Testing the feasibility of auto-translating material to give English-language readers a chance to savor key works.
* Attending the [Association of Asian Studies annual meeting](https://www.asianstudies.org/conference/) in Seattle on March 15-17. We will present the archive and host a panel discussion. 

We want to keep these posts short, so I’ll sign off. In the future, other members of our staff or advisory board will contribute notes on issues related to selecting, translating, and organizing the archive, or introducing a text that is especially important. In the meantime, enjoy the site and please send constructive feedback to [minjiandanganguan@gmail.com](mailto:minjiandanganguan@gmail.com) 

Ian Johnson

Welcome to our archive

![](uploads/curator-notes-2-image.png)

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the 1989 pro-democracy movement and its violent suppression on the night of June 3-4. In the past few years, the repression of memories about June Fourth has further intensified. Now even in Hong Kong, public libraries have removed books about June Fourth from their shelves, and commemoration of June Fourth has become a crime. However, many people continue to pursue truth and accountability despite such censorship and suppression. As people around the world commemorate June Fourth, the China Unofficial Archives would like to share our collection of June Fourth material in an effort to restore truth and reconstruct our memories.

At present, CUA holds 31 entries on the 1989 pro-democracy movement and the June Fourth incident. Among these, there are accounts by participants and journalists, such as Wu Renhua's [Major Events, Tiananmen 1989](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E5%85%AB%E4%B9%9D%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%97%A8%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6%E5%A4%A7%E4%BA%8B%E8%AE%B0), Jiang Qisheng's [Civilian Report on the Situation of the June Fourth Victims in China](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E6%B1%9F%E6%A3%8B%E7%94%9F%EF%BC%9A%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E5%8F%97%E5%AE%B3%E8%80%85%E7%8A%B6%E5%86%B5%E6%B0%91%E9%97%B4%E6%8A%A5%E5%91%8A), proceedings of the “Historical Review and Reflection of the 1989 Student Movement Seminar”  held in Paris in 1991 by seventeen exiled student leaders ([Retrospect and Reflection](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E5%9B%9E%E9%A1%BE%E4%B8%8E%E5%8F%8D%E6%80%9D%E2%80%94%E2%80%94%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E6%B5%81%E4%BA%A1%E5%AD%A6%E7%94%9F17%E4%BA%BA)), and [Living Monument in the Square: June Fourth Bloodshed through the Eyes of a Hong Kong Woman Reporter](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E5%B9%BF%E5%9C%BA%E6%B4%BB%E7%A2%91%EF%BC%9A%E4%B8%80%E4%B8%AA%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF%E5%A5%B3%E8%AE%B0%E8%80%85%E7%9C%BC%E4%B8%AD%E7%9A%84%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E8%A1%80%E5%85%89) by Choy Suk Fong, former reporter of Sing Tao Daily; and perspectives of key figures at the top, such as [Li Peng's June Fourth Diary](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E6%9D%8E%E9%B9%8F%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E6%97%A5%E8%AE%B0) and Zhao Ziyang's memoir [The Course of Reform](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E6%94%B9%E9%9D%A9%E5%8E%86%E7%A8%8B); as well as scholarly analysis of the movement from different perspectives, such as Zhao Dingxin's sociological analysis [The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%97%A8%E7%9A%84%E5%8A%9B%E9%87%8F%EF%BC%9A%E5%9B%BD%E5%AE%B6%C2%B7%E7%A4%BE%E4%BC%9A%E5%85%B3%E7%B3%BB%E4%B8%8E1989%E5%AD%A6%E7%94%9F%E8%BF%90%E5%8A%A8) and political science scholar Chen Xiaoya's [History of the 1989 Democracy Movement](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/history-of-the-1989-democracy-movement).

In addition, CUA also holds official documents, such as the State Council communiqué issued after the June Fourth incident ([Chronicle of the 1989 Counter-Revolutionary Rebellion in Beijing](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/1989%E5%B9%B4%E5%8C%97%E4%BA%AC%E5%88%B6%E6%AD%A2%E5%8A%A8%E4%B9%B1%E5%B9%B3%E6%81%AF%E5%8F%8D%E9%9D%A9%E5%91%BD%E6%9A%B4%E4%B9%B1%E7%BA%AA%E4%BA%8B)), the official account of June Fourth compiled by the Department of Ideological and Political Work of then State Education Commission ([Fifty- Six Thrilling Days](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E6%83%8A%E5%BF%83%E5%8A%A8%E9%AD%84%E7%9A%84%E4%BA%94%E5%8D%81%E5%85%AD%E5%A4%A9)), and a 1989 diplomatic memorandum of the Canadian Embassy in Beijing ([Declassified Files of the Canadian Government on the June Fourth Incident](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E5%8A%A0%E6%8B%BF%E5%A4%A7%E6%94%BF%E5%BA%9C%E2%80%9C%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6%E2%80%9D%E8%A7%A3%E5%AF%86%E6%A1%A3%E6%A1%88)). 

We would also like to express our 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 include the 2019 book [The Last Secret : The Final Documents from the June Fourth Crackdown](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E6%9C%80%E5%90%8E%E7%9A%84%E7%A7%98%E5%AF%86%E2%80%94%E2%80%94%E4%B8%AD%E5%85%B1%E5%8D%81%E4%B8%89%E5%B1%8A%E5%9B%9B%E4%B8%AD%E5%85%A8%E4%BC%9A%E2%80%9C%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E2%80%9D%E7%BB%93%E8%AE%BA%E6%96%87%E6%A1%A3). The documents in this book are from two high-level Chinese Communist Party meetings held after June Fourth, which were formed when the CCP made its final conclusions on the June Fourth incident.

For this 35th anniversary of the crackdown, Bao Pu has also written an exclusive piece for the archives,  [New Evidence Concerning the Authenticity of the Tiananmen Papers.](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E3%80%8A%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%97%A8%E6%96%87%E4%BB%B6%E3%80%8B%E7%9C%9F%E4%BC%AA%E7%9A%84%E6%96%B0%E8%AF%81%E6%8D%AE) In confronting the formidable forces that obscure and distort history, we need to always be vigilant and carefully scrutinize the materials at hand. It’s in this spirit that Bao critically analyzes , [The Tiananmen Papers](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%97%A8%E6%96%87%E4%BB%B6-%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E2%80%9C%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E2%80%98%E7%9C%9F%E7%9B%B8), which is included in our archive. This book is made up of documents that allegedly were compiled from internal government files provided by a person who goes by the pseudonym Zhang Liang. Since its publication in 2001, there have been questions about its authenticity. Bao, however, points out inconsistencies in The Tiananmen Papers by comparing them with other historical sources and recently published books. Many of the references he mentions are also included in our archive.

To access all related entries, please click  on “Explore the Collection” on the homepage, and select “1989 Tiananmen protest and suppression” from the drop-down menu under “Themes” on the left side of the webpage.

In the past couple of years, we see that the three-year long COVID-19 lockdown and the “White Paper Movement” have added new layers to the June Fourth commemoration. On the one hand, we see the continuation of the pursuit of freedom and democracy; on the other hand, the younger generation of activists has also shown deep, critical reflections on the movement itself and its participants. Therefore, CUA  will also work on collecting more contents about the present going forward. We welcome suggestions and resources from our readers.

The 1989 Pro-Democracy Movement and June Fourth

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On the 56th anniversary of Lin Zhao's death, the China Unofficial Archives wants to highlight several key additions to our collection of works about Lin Zhao, in memory of one of the most important freedom fighters and thinkers in the history of the People’s Republic.

On April 29, 1968, Lin, a 36-year-old political dissident, was sentenced to death and executed the same day. Inspired by Communist ideas, Lin passionately followed the Chinese Communist Party until the Anti-Rightist Campaign, when she witnessed and experienced the cruelty of those in power disguised in lofty ideals. She "could not allow herself to be degraded as a lackey of a tyrannical government" (“*A Letter to the Editorial Board of People's Daily*”), and turned into a staunch critic of the authorities. Though subject to torture behind bars, she continued to write, sometimes in her own blood when denied paper and pen, criticizing CCP’s tyrannical rule and expounding her thoughts on democracy, freedom, and political resistance.

In the years after her death, Lin Zhao's personal files were briefly made public and then sealed again, and memorizing Lin Zhao was allowed until one day authorities started to prevent visitors to grave. Today in China, there’s no room for even low-profile memorials, or texts that deviate from the official narrative. We hope that the China Unofficial Archives can do its part to preserve the history and let more people know and remember Lin Zhao. 

The Archive currently holds several entries about Lin Zhao (please scroll to the end), including her own writings, as well as books and documentaries about her. This collection is far from complete, and we will continue to include more relevant contents. Among these are Lin Zhao’s most famous writing from prison “*A Letter to the Editorial Board of People's Daily*,” (also called “the 140,000-words letter”) and her eloquent poem “*The Day Prometheus Suffered*,” which was published in the first and only issue of the underground magazine *Spark*. Soon available will be  *Lin Zhao Anthology*, a collection compiled and edited by Lin’s friends, containing nearly one hundred of Lin's works, including essays, poems, commentaries, and news reports written since her middle school years, as well as her manuscripts and letters that were written in prison and later returned to her family. 

These unofficial records show how Lin Zhao stood firm in her values, and testified for history with her life in that era when fear paralyzed the whole society. Through the different perspectives of the writings, we can also look beyond the abstract, monolithic heroic image of dissidents, and understand Lin’s real, complicated experience as a woman and a unique individual. 

Reading Lin Zhao creates a strong sense of connection for people today: then, as now, we live in an era of voicelessness, and people who "treat freedom as air and food" (“*The Seagull*”) were labeled political "aliens" (“*Father's Blood*”) and subject to cruel persecution. About the goal of resistance, she argued that resistance should not lead to another tyranny, and "as long as there are still people enslaved, no one is really free, not even those who enslave others!" ("*A Letter to the Editorial Board of the People's Daily*") On the strategies of resistance, she pointed out that organization is only a form, and the core lies in people: it's like making a necklace: as long as the beads are there, "one can use any thread to string" ("*Thought Report and Self-Criticism*"). Such political wisdom and vision remain relevant to today’s social movements.

After Lin Zhao was rehabilitated in 1980, her family and friends held a memorial service for her in Beijing, at which one of the couplets read: "?" and "!". More than 40 years apart, this wordless couplet seems to echo the white paper appearing on streets and in campuses since the end of 2022. History’s power of connection is precisely why authorities spare no effort to monopolize it. At the end of his documentary *In Search of Lin Zhao's Soul*, the independent filmmaker Hu Jie asks, "Will history enter our memory? How will history enter our memory?" Lin Zhao answered in her poem “*The Day Prometheus Suffered*”: "Fire belongs to human beings, how can it be hidden forever in Heaven? Even without me stealing the fire, people will always find the light."

China Unofficial Archive Editorial Group 

Lin Zhao Collection：

1. Lin Zhao: *[A Letter to the Editorial Board of the People's Daily](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E6%9E%97%E6%98%AD%EF%BC%9A-%E5%8D%81%E5%9B%9B%E4%B8%87%E8%A8%80%E4%B9%A6-%EF%BC%88%E3%80%8A%E7%BB%99%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E6%97%A5%E6%8A%A5%E7%BC%96%E8%BE%91%E9%83%A8%E7%9A%84%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%81%E4%BF%A1%E3%80%8B%EF%BC%89)*
2. Zhang Chunyuan, Gu Yan, Tan Chanxue, Xiang Chengjian, Lin Zhao, Miao Qingjiu: *[Sparks, Vol.1](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/spark-vol-1)*. 
3. Gan Cui: *[The Soul of Peking University-From Lin Zhao to the 1989 Democracy Movement](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E7%94%98%E7%B2%B9%EF%BC%9A%E5%8C%97%E5%A4%A7%E9%AD%82%E2%80%94%E2%80%94%E4%BB%8E%E6%9E%97%E6%98%AD%E5%88%B0%E5%85%AB%E4%B9%9D%E6%B0%91%E8%BF%90)*
4. Zhao Rui: *[Holy Virgin on the Altar - A Biography of Lin Zhao](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E7%A5%AD%E5%9D%9B%E4%B8%8A%E7%9A%84%E5%9C%A3%E5%A5%B3-%E2%80%94%E2%80%94%E6%9E%97%E6%98%AD%E4%BC%A0)*
5. Lian Xi: *[Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, A Martyr in Mao's China](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E8%A1%80%E4%B9%A6%EF%BC%9A%E6%9E%97%E6%98%AD%E7%9A%84%E4%BF%A1%E4%BB%B0%E3%80%81%E6%8A%97%E4%BA%89%E4%B8%8E%E6%AE%89%E9%81%93%E4%B9%8B%E6%97%85)*
6. Xu Juemin (edited): *[Lin Zhao: No Longer Forgotten](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E6%9E%97%E6%98%AD-%E4%B8%8D%E5%86%8D%E8%A2%AB%E9%81%97%E5%BF%98)*
7. *[The Goddess of Freedom of the Chinese Nation - An Anthology of Essays in Honor of Lin Zhao 40 Years After Her Death](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E6%B0%91%E6%97%8F%E7%9A%84%E8%87%AA%E7%94%B1%E5%A5%B3%E7%A5%9E-%E2%80%94%E2%80%94-%E6%9E%97%E6%98%AD%E7%BD%B9%E9%9A%BE40%E5%B9%B4%E7%BA%AA%E5%BF%B5%E6%96%87%E9%9B%86)*
8. Hu Jie: [*In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul* (with English subtitles) ](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/in-search-of-lin-zhaos-soul)
9. Tiger Temple: *[Memory of Lin Zhao](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/memory-of-lin-zhao-documentary)* 
10. Lin Zhao (edited by Tan Chanxue, Ni Jingxiong and others): *[Lin Zhao Anthology](https://minjian-danganguan.org/zh/collection/%E6%9E%97%E6%98%AD%E6%96%87%E9%9B%86)*

In Memory of Lin Zhao

When built out, this site will feature more than 80 years of material by Chinese counter-historians, from the Yan’an rectification movement in 1942 to the Covid protests of 2020 to 2023.

Scope

This is the first neutral, nonpartisan online documentation of China’s counter-history movement. Our advisory board is made of established experts in the field. We do not endorse any document posted to this site.

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The China Unofficial Archive offers public-domain books, essays, and videos that users are free to use.

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This archive is purely a public service. It does not charge
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with other colleagues, friends and similar institutions. This
website accepts donations of private archives and
collections. We'd love to be in touch.

Highlights from the Collection

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