Yang Jisheng > Quotes

“A tombstone is memory made concrete. Human memory is the ladder on which a country and a people advance. We must remember not only the good things, but also the bad; the bright spots, but also the darkness. The authorities in a totalitarian system strive to conceal their faults and extol their merits, gloss over their errors and forcibly eradicate all memory of man-made calamity, darkness, and evil.”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962

“Cadres who spoke the truth were labeled “deniers of achievement” and “right deviationists,” and were subjected to merciless struggle.”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962

“In a country in which an imperial mentality was deeply entrenched, people from the outset regarded the central government as the voice of authority, and the party used the “magical power” of the central government to instill its values in the entire populace. Inexperienced youth sincerely believed in these teachings, and their parents, out of either blind faith or fear of the regime, did their best to prevent their children from revealing any line of thought diverging from that of the government, requiring their children to be submissive and obedient.”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962

“Confronted by the severe consequences of the Great Famine, President Liu Shaoqi once said to Mao Zedong, “History will record the role you and I played in the starvation of so many people, and the cannibalism will also be memorialized!”26 In the spring of 1962, Liu once again noted that “Deaths by starvation will be recorded in the history books.”27 Yet after more than forty years, no full account of the Great Famine has been published in mainland China. More than regrettable from a historical standpoint, it is an offense to the memories of the tens of millions of innocent victims.”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962

“the CCP’s dictatorship of the proletariat made Mao the most powerful emperor who had ever ruled China.”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962

“An accountant for one production team recalled, “The production team cadres gathered at Zhangli for a meeting. Everyone had to report grain, and those who failed had to go through group training, criticism, struggle, and beating.”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962

“At the meeting, Lu Dingyi made self-criticism, admitting that it seemed unbelievable that he could have lived with Yan Weibing for twenty-five years without knowing about her letters, but insisting on his innocence. 'Yan Weibing is now at the Ministry of Public Security, so please ask her. If I knew anything about her letters before reading the Ministry of Public Security files, please treat me like a chief conspirator and accomplice of counterrevolution and punish me more harshly.' In reply to Lin Biao's grilling, Lu said: 'isn't it quite common for husbands not to know what their wives are up to?' Lin Biao said: 'I'm itching to shoot you right here and now!' He went on, 'I've always had a liking for some intellectuals, and I've been especially fond of you, Lu Dingyi. So why do you engage in this kind of mischief? What's your intention?' When Lu Dingyi said he really didn't know about the letters, Lin Biao smacked the table and said, 'How can you not know when you're in bed fucking every day?' The denunciation turned farcical as Zhou Enlai hurled a a tea mug in Lu Dingyi's direction, and Yang Chengwu shook his fist under Lu's face and said, 'This is the dictatorship of the proletariat!”
― Yang Jisheng, The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

“After the CCP gained power, it sealed China off from information beyond its borders, and imposed a wholesale negation of China’s traditional moral standards. The government’s monopoly on information gave it a monopoly on truth. As the center of power, the party Center was also the heart of truth and information. All social science research organs endorsed the validity of the Communist regime; every cultural and arts group lavished praise on the CCP, while news organs daily verified its wisdom and might. From nursery school to university, the chief mission was to inculcate a Communist worldview in the minds of all students. The social science research institutes, cultural groups, news organs, and schools all became tools for the party’s monopoly on thought, spirit, and opinion, and were continuously engaged in molding China’s youth. People employed in this work were proud to be considered “engineers of the human soul.” In this thought and information vacuum, the central government used its monopoly apparatus to instill Communist values while criticizing and eradicating all other values. In this way, young people developed distinct and intense feelings of right and wrong, love and hate, which took the shape of a violent longing to realize Communist ideals. Any words or deeds that diverged from these ideals would be met with a concerted attack. The party organization was even more effective at instilling values than the social science research institutes, news and cultural organs, and schools. Each level of the party had a core surrounded by a group of stalwarts, with each layer controlling the one below it and loyal to the one above. Successive political movements, hundreds and thousands of large and small group meetings, commendation ceremonies and struggle sessions, rewards and penalties, all served to draw young people onto a single trajectory. All views diverging from those of the party were nipped in the bud.”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962

“I harbored no doubts regarding the party’s propaganda about the accomplishments of the “Great Leap Forward” or the advantages of the people’s communes. I believed that what was happening in my home village was isolated, and that my father’s death was merely one family’s tragedy. Compared with the advent of the great Communist society, what was my family’s petty misfortune? The party had taught me to sacrifice the self for the greater good when encountering difficulty, and I was completely obedient. I maintained this frame of mind right up until the Cultural Revolution.”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962

“President Liu Shaoqi at one point frankly acknowledged this: At present there is a conflict between the amount of grain the government needs and the amount that the peasants are willing to sell, and this conflict is quite severe. The peasants’ preference is to sell the government whatever is left over after they’ve eaten their fill. If the government only took its procurement after the peasants had eaten their fill, the rest of us would not have enough to eat: the workers, teachers, scientists, and others living in the cities. If these people don’t get enough to eat, industrialization cannot be carried out and the armed forces will also have to be reduced, making our national defense construction impossible to implement.29”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962

“Recognizing their vulnerability to the roiling populace beneath them, officials suppressed any hint of resistance, intensifying the alienation and opposition.”
― Yang Jisheng, The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

“In China under the power market economic system, the ability to succeed in anything depends on relationships with key power-holders. The process of selling official positions and titles has formed a shadow network of personal bondage and gangs as power wielders at various levels serve one another's needs and utilize one another in a hotbed of corruption and protection removed from social justice. The ordinary people covered by this huge shadow network are powerless to defend justice or appeal against unjust treatment.”
― Yang Jisheng, The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

“By 1956, the wages of the highest-ranking party and government personnel were set at 36.4 times those of the lowest rank.3 (By way of comparison, the highest wage in the “corrupt” Nationalist government in 1946 was 14.5 times that of the lowest wage.)4 Officials enjoyed special housing privileges based on rank, as well as household staff, cars, office furnishings, health care, food provisions, and even exclusive summer resorts.”
― Yang Jisheng, The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

“During procurement, the leader of the Sanpisi production brigade told his commune party secretary, “People actually have no food to eat down there.” The commune secretary criticized him: “That’s right-deviationist thinking—you’re viewing the problem in an overly simplistic manner!” That brigade held four meetings to counter hoarding and to search out hidden caches, and local leaders became struggle targets. The brigade was compelled to report 120,000 kilos of concealed grain, but not a single kernel was discovered.17”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962

“It was the fundamental appraisal that the world had transitioned from the 'age of war and revolution' to the 'age of peace and development' that allowed China to make a fresh start on its domestic and foreign policies: Domestically, it replaced 'class struggle as the key link' with 'economic construction as the focus,' and externally, it abandoned the 'three fights and one increase' in favor of openness to the outside world, joining the Word Trade Organization and merging itself into the international mainstream.”
― Yang Jisheng, The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

“Most fundamental to social harmony is harmony between the social classes, and the key to harmony between the classes is social justice. That's why a society with a power market economy will never be harmonious. Fairness requires a new system that provides checks and balances on power and controls capital. Power must be caged by a constitution and operate within the confines of law. Capital needs to be controlled though a system that gives free rein to its positive aspects while controlling the danger its rapaciousness poses to society.
The experience of humanity over the past two centuries has shown us that constitutional democracy is an effective system for applying checks and balances on power and controlling capital. That requires breaking through the modern version of 'Soviet learning as the base, Western learning for application' that serves as the guiding ideology of reform, carrying out political systemic reform, and enacting fundamental change to the bureaucratic system. Of course, this will take time and cannot happen overnight. Sudden change is dangerous, and peaceful evolution is more appropriate.”
― Yang Jisheng, The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

“While at university, I served as the Youth League’s branch secretary and joined the Communist Party in May 1964. At that time young people like me were considered very naïve and simple, and it was true: our minds contained only the beliefs imbued by the public opinion apparatus, and nothing else. In this way the party molded the generation growing up under the new regime into its loyal disciples. If no major events had occurred during these decades, our generation would have retained those beliefs for our entire lives.”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962

“Ancient annals report cases of families exchanging children to consume during severe famines, but during the Great Famine, some families resorted to eating their own children. I met people who had eaten human flesh, and heard them describe its taste. Reliable evidence indicates there were thousands of cases of cannibalism throughout China at that time.23 Some are described in the chapters that follow. It is a tragedy unprecedented in world history for tens of millions of people to starve to death and to resort to cannibalism during a period of normal climate patterns with no wars or epidemics.”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962

“It was Zhang Zhidong who suggested this guiding ideology during the reforms of the late Qing. 'Chinese learning at the base' meant preserving the political system of the late Qing, and 'Western learning for application' meant introducing and utilizing Western experience to strengthen the political system, consolidate rule, and prolong the life of the declining Qing dynasty. In Den Xiaoping's era, 'Chinese learning as the base' preserved the road, theory, and political system left behind by Mao, and 'Western learning for application' was aimed at developing the economy and thereby bolstering and prolonging the political system that Mao left behind. However, since the political system of the Mao era was mainly imported from the Soviet Union, it would be more accurate to say 'Soviet learning as the base.'
Economic reforms drew China into a new era, but the reforms were led by the bureaucratic clique that was the ultimate victor in the Cultural Revolution. They controlled all the country's resources and the direction of reform, and in objective terms decided who would pay the cost of reforms and how the benefits of reform would be distributed.”
― Yang Jisheng, The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

“As opposed to parliamentary politics, China at that time had “conference politics.” The Chinese language artfully reverses the characters for parliament (yihui) to make the phrase for conference (huiyi)—in the process, transforming a democratic institution into an autocratic tool for implementing the intentions of the supreme leader and besieging those with dissenting views. In imperial politics, the ruler states his views, but if he attempts to wrongfully punish someone, another can speak in that person’s defense. “Conference politics” imposes a more devastating “dictatorship of the majority” in which all chime in to support the supreme leader, and it is impossible for an individual to intercede on behalf of the oppressed.”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962

“One Politburo meeting had an important topic to discuss, but before the meeting began, Jiang Qing raised a fuss, saying, 'Premier, you need to solve a serious problem for me, otherwise there will be real trouble!' Zhou Enlai asked, 'Comrade Jiang Qing, what is this serious problem?' Jiang Qing said, 'The toilet im my quarters is so cold that I can't use it in chilly weather - I'll catch the flu the moment I sit on it, and once I catch the flu, I can't go to see Chairman Mao for fear he'll catch it. Isn't this a serious matter?' Zhou Enlai said, 'How shall we deal with this? Shall I send someone to have a look at it after the meeting?' Jiang Qing found this unacceptable, saying, 'Premier, you lack class sentiment toward me; the class enemies are just waiting for me to die as soon as possible!' Zhou Enlai had no choice but to cancel the meeting and take us all over to Jiang Qing's quarters. Zhou Enlai looked at Jiang Qing's toilet and rubbed his chin thoughtfully without coming up with a solution. Finally he said, 'Comrade Jiang Qing, how about this: We don't have the technology to heat this toilet, but we could wrap the seat with insulating material, and also pad it with soft cloth, and that should solve the problem temporarily.' Jiang Qing agreed to this, and Zhou Enlai immediately told the Central Committee Secretariat to send someone over to deal with it.”
― Yang Jisheng, The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

“Later the county authorities ordered a “sanitation drive” in which all burial pits were stomped flat so that no trace could be found. Jing”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962

“On February 28, 1972, the Sino-U.S. Shanghai Communiqué was issued. It said, 'The United States believes that the effort to reduce tensions is served by improving communication between countries that have different ideologies so as to lessen the risks of confrontation through accident, miscalculation or misunderstanding ... Countries should treat each other with mutual respect and be willing to compete peacefully, letting performance be the ultimate judge. No country should claim infallibility and each country should be prepared to re-examine its own attitudes for the common good.”
― Yang Jisheng, The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

“At Hongguang Commune, a roadside area of more than 2,000 mu was cleared of more than 180 dwellings. At least 12,000 homes were dismantled throughout the county. Unrelated families were obliged to share quarters, sometimes with domestic fowl. Cadres burst into homes without notice, tossed out belongings, and reduced a house to rubble in an instant. Commune members returning from deployment elsewhere wept upon finding their homes, wives, and children gone. Some families relocated seven times in a year. Cadres ransacked homes, often snatching desirable goods. Some commune members retaliated by hiding snakes in their rice jars.”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962

“The campaign against right deviation revived the Communist Wind, Exaggeration Wind, Coercive Commandism Wind, and Chaotic Directives Wind that had been restrained during the first half of 1959.”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962

“Friends and relatives encouraged me to erect a gravestone for my father. I thought that even though I was not a high official, I would erect for my father a tombstone grander than any of those others. Then I recalled that in 1958, many of the village's tombstones had been dismantled for use in irrigation projects or as bases for smelting ovens in the steelmaking campaign during the Great Leap Forward; some had been laid out on roadways. The more impressive the monument, the greater the likelihood of it being demolished. My father's tombstone had to be erected not on the ground, but in my heart. A tombstone in the heart could never be demolished or trampled underfoot.”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962

“Under agricultural collectivization, everything produced by the peasants was purchased and marketed by the state, which managed industry and commerce and controlled all material goods. People relied on state allocation of everything they needed to sustain their lives.”
― Yang Jisheng, The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

“The report recommended meeting the procurement quota through a socialist education campaign and mass debates. While the report was being written, people starved to death.19”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962

“Controlled economy was the economic base of totalitarianism and fertile soil for bureaucratic privilege. Under a highly centralized political and economic system, survival depended on bureaucrats who could arbitrarily allocate state assets and ration the necessities of daily life. A strict household-registration system ensured that the vast majority of China’s peasants never ventured far from where they were born. Employees of government organs and state-run enterprises had their housing and all their daily necessities allocated by their work units. Secret dossiers decided the fate of every cadre and worker.”
― Yang Jisheng, The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

“China has undergone an enormous transformation. But because the political system remains unchanged, the great changes in the economic and social sphere have resulted in an unequal allocation of the fruits and costs of economic reform. The combined abuses under the exclusive profit orientation of a market economy and the untrammeled power of totalitarianism have created an endless supply of injustice, exacerbating discontent among the lower-class majority.”
― Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962