Chinese Whispers: how China's 'underground historians' battle the state narrative
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The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 14 November 2023
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
That’s why it’s so important and interesting to look at those Chinese people who are documenting the bits of history that the Party doesn’t want you to know about. They interview survivors from Communist labour camps, or keep their own memoirs of the Cultural Revolution, and try to keep the memory of past horrors alive through film, magazines and paintings.
A new book called Sparks documents their work. Its author is Ian Johnson, a Pulitzer-Prize winning writer and long time China journalist. Ian calls these people the ‘underground historians’. He joins this episode of Chinese Whispers.
Visit https://minjian-danganguan.org/ to see some of their work documented, in an upcoming website founded by Ian and others.
Produced by Cindy Yu and Patrick Gibbons.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher. |
| 0:31.4 | Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu. Every episode, I'll be talking to journalists, experts and long-time China |
| 0:38.2 | watches about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more. There'll be a smattering |
| 0:43.4 | of history to catch you up on the background knowledge and some context as well. How do the |
| 0:47.8 | Chinese see these issues? Controlling history is key to the Chinese Communist Party's control of the country. |
| 0:55.0 | Whether it's playing up the century of humiliation or whitewashing past mistakes like the Great Loop Forward or the Tianmen protests, |
| 1:02.0 | the party expends huge effort and resources on controlling the narrative. |
| 1:07.0 | That's why it's so important and interesting to look at those Chinese people who are documenting the bits of history that the party doesn't want you to know about. |
| 1:14.6 | They interview survivors from communist labour camps or keep their own memoirs of the Cultural Revolution |
| 1:20.6 | and try to keep the memory of past horrors alive through film, magazines, art. |
| 1:26.6 | A new book called Sparks documents their work. |
| 1:29.8 | Its author is Ian Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize winning author and long-time China journalist. |
| 1:35.4 | Ian calls these people the underground historians. |
| 1:38.5 | I'm delighted to say that Ian is on the podcast today to talk about Sparks. |
| 1:42.4 | Ian, welcome to Chinese Whispers. |
| 1:44.4 | It's my pleasure. Now your book is all about the underground historians in China and their battle |
| 1:48.5 | against the Chinese Communist Party's official narrative. But I think to understand why the |
| 1:54.1 | underground historians are so important, we need to understand first the official history, |
| 1:58.0 | why it is that the Chinese Communist Party sees history are so important to |
| 2:03.4 | bolstering its rule, because I think that's something that maybe in democratic countries, |
| 2:07.7 | having an official narrative isn't as important. So can you explain just how important that is? |
| 2:12.0 | Yeah, of course, every country has its myths and founding stories and history is contentious |
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