This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

It's hard to put into words the human toll following the so-called liberation in 1949 China.

It unleashed millions of deaths that even today are only lightly acknowledged by China's

government.

Frank to Carter's new book, The Tragedy of Liberation, details the run-up to the great famine that took so many lives.

We spoke following a forum for the book held last week.

We all know how Mao viewed this period.

It was a liberation. How do you characterize it?

It's often portrayed by the regime itself, but also by supporters abroad as a golden age,

as a sort of honeymoon period between the people and the party, but on the basis of very

detailed evidence that comes from the party archives themselves.

I think it would be much more accurate to describe it as a

period of broken promises, systematic violence, and calculated terror.

In your research using a lot of these newly provided documents from the Chinese Communist

Party, what was the most surprising thing that you discovered about the run-up to 1949?

The extent to which this was a Soviet-backed conquest really took me by surprise when I researched the book.

But to be honest, most of the original documentation, the party archives really The Party Archives really is about the post- 1949 period and there what

really surprised me is that you have mass rebellions, uprisings right in the beginning

1949 1950. That surprised me. We all know I think that in 1956 are mass

demonstrations, workers on strike intellectuals who speak out against

the Communist Party with so-called 100 flowers.

...