Ian Johnson on "Sparks," his new book on China's underground historians

Sinica Podcast

Kaiser Kuo

Culture, China News, Hangzhou, Chinese, International Relations, Chongqing, Beijing, Sichuan, Currentaffairs, China, Politics, Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou, China Economy, News, China Politics, Business, Film, Shenzhen

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 21 September 2023

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on Sinica, Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran journalist Ian Johnson, now a senior China fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, joins Kaiser to discuss his new book, Sparks" China's Underground HIstorians and their Battle for the Future. Profiling both prominent and lesser-known individuals working to expose dark truths about some of the grimmest periods of the PRC's history, including the Great Leap Forward famine and the violence of the Cultural Revolution, Johnson argues that the efforts of China's "counter-historians" have managed to survive the stepped-up efforts of Xi Jinping to control the historical narrative completely.

03:27 – Is the obsessive control of historical narratives a particularly Chinese phenomenon?

07:19 – The life of Ai Xiaoming and the creation of a collective memory as one of the main themes in the book

21:46 – The story of Jiang Xue, citizen journalist

25:22 – Journalistic stubbornness of Tan Hecheng

28:39 – Cheng Hongguo and the Zhiwuzhi salon

30:26 – Common traits shared by many Chinese regime critics

37:17 – Is there a link between dissent in China and Christianity?

39:53 – Historical nihilism and sensitive topics for the Chinese Communist Party

47:08 – Are counter-historians especially noteworthy because they’re exceptional, or representative?

57:36 – The most important insight the book adds to our understanding of regime critics in China

A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations:

Ian: The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas by Gal Beckerman

Unofficial Chinese Archives

Kaiser: Death in Venice and Other Tales by Thomas Mann, translated by Joachim Neugroschel

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Cynical podcast, the weekly discussion of current affairs in China,
0:12.9	brought to you by The China Project. Subscribe to the China Project to get the early release,
0:18.0	ad-free version of this podcast every week,
0:23.5	and of course to get our daily newsletter,
0:27.4	the best way there is to stay informed about China.
0:31.0	You'll also have access to all the original writing on our website at theChinaproject.com.
0:33.0	We've got reported stories, essays, and editorials, great explainers,
0:38.4	regular columns, and, of courseials, great explainers, regular columns,
0:41.5	and of course, a growing library of podcasts.
0:45.9	We cover everything from China's fraught foreign relations to its ingenious entrepreneurs,
0:50.3	from the ongoing repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim peoples in China's Xinjiang region,
0:55.3	to Beijing's ambitious plans to shift the Chinese economy onto a post-carbon footing.
1:01.5	It's a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world.
1:04.2	We cover China with neither fear nor favor.
1:10.1	And if you like this podcast, you will love our next China event on November 2nd in New York with a special VIP evening
1:11.8	featuring a live Cynica podcast on November 1st. It's going to be a night and a day of the
1:17.4	most interesting and informative discussions on China that you will hear this year. And really
1:22.2	great networking opportunities as well. Please come introduce yourself to me and I will talk
1:26.2	more about this before recommendations.
1:28.7	Speaking of live Cynica podcasts, the last one we did was a while ago now in New York back
1:33.9	in January when Jeremy Goldcoran and I chatted with our good friend Ian Johnson at the
1:38.8	Rzoli bookstore. At the end of that conversation, Ian gave us a little tease about his new
	...

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