In 'Sparks,' Ian Johnson highlights China's 'grassroots historians'

NPR's Book of the Day

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2023

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Since being named general secretary of China's ruling Communist Party, Xi Jinping has exerted his power to control historical narratives in China. But in his new book, Sparks, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ian Johnson profiles the people who've fought back to record – and report – the country's full history, including famines, virus outbreaks and ethnic conflicts. In today's episode, Johnson speaks with NPR's John Ruwitch about how the advancement of technologies like PDFs, digital cameras and VPNs have allowed journalists, filmmakers and artists to correct China's collective memory.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaung. We cover a lot of history books here at NPR,
0:07.8	and whether it's about a politician or an event or a social movement or whatever, each history
0:12.8	book adds another layer of context or questions or information to our collective story.
0:19.3	Ian Johnson is on the pod today. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter
0:22.1	who's got a new book out called Sparks, China's underground historians and their battle for the future.
0:28.1	In it, he documents China's growing grassroots movement to document their history and
0:32.3	preserve real stories about labor camps, famine, and, you know, desperation.
0:38.2	Listen to his conversation with NPR's John Ruich after the break.
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0:57.8	Okay, so Ian Johnson and NPR's John Rew, which start with some background information as to how we got
1:02.8	here in China. But in his first answer here, Ian pushes back against this idea that all of China
1:08.6	is a dystopian surveillance state. And it's a real testament to what the
1:12.7	people who work on underground histories really have to go through. Your book is about these
1:17.9	creators of Mingyen Li Shur, right, grassroots history in China. And you write that it amounts to
1:23.9	a movement. I want to dive into that in a little bit, but first of all, maybe you can
1:28.8	talk a little bit about the backdrop, about the context in which this is happening, right? It's
1:33.2	China. Communist Party rules with a pretty firm hand, and it's gotten tighter and tougher
1:38.7	under Xi Jinping, less tolerant of non-official viewpoints, right? Yeah, that's exactly right.
1:44.1	This is a movement that really, I think this is one of the things I try to make tolerant of non-official viewpoints, right? Yeah, that's exactly right.
1:48.7	This is a movement that really, I think this is one of the things I try to make clear in this book that's been going on since the founding of the People's Republic of China nearly 75 years ago,
	...

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