Photo credit: China Postcard via Flickr
There is an engrossing account at The Financial Times about Yang Jisheng, the author of Tombstone, the book which revealed that about 35-40 million people starved to death in a man-made famine caused by Mao's policies between the years 1958-61.
"For most of his career, Yang, 69, had faithfully done what Xinhua reporters do: write stories, cleared through the propaganda system, for the public news wire. Backstage, he performed a second, covert function required of senior Xinhua journalists – he provided secret internal reports to the party itself. Yang had not pulled his punches in these on-the-ground dispatches, vital to Beijing’s efforts to monitor officials outside the capital. A number of his reports, about the military’s abuse of its powers, economic decline and official corruption, landed on the desks of senior leaders in Beijing, to the consternation of the party bosses in the regions where he was based. It was not until 1989 that Yang, angry and disillusioned over the violent military crackdown around Tiananmen Square, set off on a new path.The article ends on an upbeat note, the author has not suffered any punishment, his work ,though ignored, did not invite any adverse notice from the Chinese authorities. Yang sees this as an evolution of the decaying state- it has learned from its mistakes.
Instead of spying on the regions for Beijing, Yang launched a mission against his masters. Using the privileges afforded a senior Xinhua journalist, Yang was able to penetrate state archives around the country and uncover the most complete picture of the great famine that any researcher, foreign or local, has ever managed. The book he wrote was the consummate inside job, the product of a lengthy, clandestine co-operation with fellow party members determined to expose the lies told about the famine in China for decades."
- FT.com / Reportage - The man who exposed Mao’s secret famine.
