Sparks

China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future

By: Ian Johnson

Narrated by: Ian Johnson

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. One of Xi Jinping's signature policies is the control of history, which he equates with the party's survival.

But in recent years, 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 accounts that have underpinned recent protests in China against Xi Jinping's strongman rule.

Based on years of 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 China in the mid-21st century.

©2023 Ian Johnson (P)2023 Tantor

Incredible detail

A moving portrait of many important writers and thinkers who have struggled to record controversial events in China. It was great that the author including Tsering Woeser, a dissident Tibetan writer to balance the rest of the focus on the Han. The research on contemporary historians is well buttressed by richly detailed examples of ancient history and literature. This should be a must read for anyone interested in contemporary PRC politics and history.

Compelling and important

A profound tribute to the creative and energetic efforts of unofficial “underground” historians in the PRC - including writers and filmmakers - who seek to document and explain important aspects of China’s modern experience since 1949 that are often neglected and suppressed. Johnson also helpfully points readers to important works by these committed individuals, both in Chinese and in English translation, enabling these voices to reach a broader audience. The book connects the present to the past, deepening our understanding of modern China. It’s clearly the result of many years of dauntless on-the-ground reporting, interviews, and vast reading. As with all of Ian Johnson’s writing, the book is richly detailed, probing, nuanced, and human.

The audio narration by the author is, like his previous ones, clear and highly engaging. The occasional odd pronunciations of some common words in English and Mandarin are a wee bit distracting—but that said, when most audiobooks about China are sadly butchered by narrators with no knowledge of Chinese, thankfully this one does not fall into that category at all—Johnson is fluent in Chinese, having lived and worked in the mainland and Taiwan in and off for many years since the 1980s.

Overall, this is an important and riveting book that is equally illuminating and accessible for general readers interested in China, undergraduates, and advanced scholars—a rare balance that Ian Johnson admirably manages to achieve in all his writing. Deserves another Pulitzer!

A great book

Other than a few language mistakes, the book excellently told a piece of sad history and brave people who wrote it down.

Enjoyable, informative, and hopeful

I enjoyed this book after I read about it in the FA. There is a different China, one of hope and courage. This is the story about it.

brilliant

you don't get a lot of books that provide insight into the Chinese culture and history writing being practiced quietly, outside Party direction. This book not only provides insight but is engaging to read. Absolutely fantastic.