Ian Johnson | Sparks: China's Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future
Publisher : Oxford University Press (September 26, 2023)
Language : English
Hardcover : 400 pages
ISBN-10 : 0197575501
Using history to challenge Communist Party rule.
Sparks: China's Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future describes how some of China's best-known writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to forge a nationwide movement that challenges the Communist Party on its most hallowed ground: its control of history.
The past is a battleground in many countries, but in China it is crucial to political power. In traditional China, dynasties rewrote history to justify their rule by proving that their predecessors were unworthy of holding power. Marxism gave this a modern gloss, describing history as an unstoppable force heading toward Communism's triumph. The Chinese Communist Party builds on these ideas to whitewash its misdeeds and glorify its rule. Indeed, one of Xi Jinping's signature policies is the control of history, which he equates with the party's survival.
But in recent years, a network of independent writers, artists, and filmmakers have begun challenging this state-led disremembering. Using digital technologies to bypass China's legendary surveillance state, their samizdat journals, guerilla media posts, and underground films document a regular pattern of disasters: from famines and purges of years past to ethnic clashes and virus outbreaks of the present--powerful and inspiring accounts that have underpinned recent protests in China against Xi Jinping's strongman rule.
Based on years of first-hand research in Xi Jinping's China, Sparks challenges stereotypes of a China where the state has quashed all free thought, revealing instead a country engaged in one of humanity's great struggles of memory against forgetting―a battle that will shape the China that emerges in the mid-21st century.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"...an intimate and compelling portrait of China's underground history movement." -- The New York Times"Johnson vividly describes the work of independent documentary filmmakers, independent journalists, amateur historians, novelists, and memoirists who obsessively pursue the forbidden truths of totalitarian misrule in China." -- Foreign Affairs"Illuminating. . . . [Johnson] offers a rare hopeful perspective." -- Melanie Kirkpatrick, The Wall Street Journal
"Ian Johnson is one of the most experienced and thoughtful Western journalists writing about China. Now he has turned his attention to one of the most important battles in contemporary China: the struggle to control history ... Moving and full of human character and detail. It's a compelling read, beautifully written, and the product of deep research carried out in China over many years ... an exemplary tribute." -- Rana Mitter, Literary Review"[a] compellingly written work. . . . a rare insight into the extraordinary risks that some Chinese take to illuminate the darkest corners of communism." -- The Economist"Ian Johnson has been 'a student of China' in the best sense of this phrase. . . . His cast of characters has grown and no matter how brief the appearance is, he diligently notes each person's name as if he, too, is fending off erasure. The landscape has widened, and he insists that readers see China the way he sees it: how the sprawling geography, history, and people who animate it are intricately intertwined." -- Han Zhang, The Atlantic"Superb, stylishly written." --The New Yorker"Johnson (The Souls of China) delivers a striking account of people who have defied authority to document negative aspects of life under the Chinese Communist Party... This immersive survey combines interviews, firsthand reportage, and historical research to paint a moving group portrait of China's political dissidents." -- Publishers Weekly"A brave book about inspiring people, underlining the value of freedom, independence, and courage." -- Kirkus Reviews"An indelible feat of reporting and an urgent read, Ian Johnson's Sparks is alive with the voices of the countless Chinese who fiercely, improbably, refuse to let their histories be forgotten. It's a privilege to read books like these." -- Te-Ping Chen, author of Land of Big Numbers"For decades, Ian Johnson has conducted some of the most important grassroots research of any foreign journalist in China. With Sparks, he turns his attention to history―not the sanctioned, censored, and selective history promoted by the Communist Party, but the independent histories that are being written and filmed by brave individuals across the country. A powerful reminder of how China's future depends on who controls the past." -- Peter Hessler, National Book Award-winning author, and New Yorker writer"Sparks tells the stories of underground historians who are determined to write down China's hidden histories of famines, massacres, and virus outbreaks. These stories show why Xi Jinping wants to control history―because memories like these are sparks of light in a heavy darkness." -- Li Yuan, New York Times columnist"A powerful narrative of how the human spirit has survived the cruel repression of Maoist totalitarianism and is still doing the same against Xi Jinping's efforts to impose a new form of digital totalitarianism. A must read for anyone interested in the Chinese and China." -- Steve Tsang, University of London"In the long years of Chinese people's pursuit of justice and equality, preserving historical truth has always been a fierce but unseen battle. As Ian Johnson's Sparks shows, today's fighters for the truth are backed by vast armies―the seen and unseen, the living and the dead―who together are prying open the lies on which totalitarianism is built." -- Cui Weiping, Beijing-based critic and translator of Vaclav Havel into Chinese"A stunning portrayal of some of the most courageous individuals in China today, who probe the forbidden and voice the unspeakable." -- Yangyang Chen, China Books Review"A powerful book that definitely qualifies as a work of history as well as of journalism." -- Jeffrey Wasserstrom, The Best China Books of 2023, Five Books
About the Author
Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who has spent twenty years in China writing for The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, as well as serving for five years on the editorial board of The Journal of Asian Studies. He is the author of three other books that focus on the intersection of politics and civil society, including The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, and Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China. He is the senior fellow for China at the Council on Foreign Relations.
