1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,190
My name is Frank Dikötter and I wrote a
2
00:00:02,190 --> 00:00:05,100
book called "The Tragedy of Liberation:
3
00:00:05,100 --> 00:00:08,719
A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957"
4
00:00:08,719 --> 00:00:13,080
one of the key ideas of the book is
5
00:00:13,080 --> 00:00:16,049
that there wasn't a golden age of course
6
00:00:16,049 --> 00:00:19,199
we've had decades of propaganda in China
7
00:00:19,199 --> 00:00:21,930
about the peaceful liberation of China
8
00:00:21,930 --> 00:00:25,439
in 1949 and even the broad many believe
9
00:00:25,439 --> 00:00:28,230
that the first years after the red flag
10
00:00:28,230 --> 00:00:30,960
went up over the Forbidden City in
11
00:00:30,960 --> 00:00:35,520
Beijing in 1949 were marked by peace and
12
00:00:35,520 --> 00:00:38,399
stability. On the contrary what the book
13
00:00:38,399 --> 00:00:41,090
shows, on the basis of very detailed
14
00:00:41,090 --> 00:00:43,170
documents from the party archives
15
00:00:43,170 --> 00:00:47,610
themselves, is that from '49 to '53 there
16
00:00:47,610 --> 00:00:51,360
was a period of systematic violence and
17
00:00:51,360 --> 00:00:55,530
calculated terror in 1953 to '57. Every
18
00:00:55,530 --> 00:00:57,239
promise that was made to every
19
00:00:57,239 --> 00:01:00,600
disaffected group was broken. We have in
20
00:01:00,600 --> 00:01:04,799
mind images of people welcoming the
21
00:01:04,799 --> 00:01:07,500
People's Liberation Army when we hear
22
00:01:07,500 --> 00:01:10,260
the term "liberation" and it is true that
23
00:01:10,260 --> 00:01:13,110
in many cities people felt great relief
24
00:01:13,110 --> 00:01:16,110
at the end of civil war and expressed
25
00:01:16,110 --> 00:01:18,450
the hope that they might be able now to
26
00:01:18,450 --> 00:01:21,060
get on with rebuilding their lives
27
00:01:21,060 --> 00:01:23,939
destroyed by the Second World War and of
28
00:01:23,939 --> 00:01:26,310
course by the civil war itself. But the
29
00:01:26,310 --> 00:01:29,640
period in particular from 1949 to '52 was
30
00:01:29,640 --> 00:01:31,770
extraordinarily violent. Land reform
31
00:01:31,770 --> 00:01:34,500
alone resulted in the expropriation of
32
00:01:34,500 --> 00:01:38,130
some 10 million people. About 1.5 to 2
33
00:01:38,130 --> 00:01:41,040
million people were killed as landlords
34
00:01:41,040 --> 00:01:44,159
tyrants or traitors, even if their wealth
35
00:01:44,159 --> 00:01:47,399
was barely more visible than that of
36
00:01:47,399 --> 00:01:49,110
their neighbors. And then there is a
37
00:01:49,110 --> 00:01:51,570
campaign of terror that starts the moment
38
00:01:51,570 --> 00:01:54,810
that Mao enters the Korean War in
39
00:01:54,810 --> 00:01:57,509
October 1950. For a year there was a reign of
40
00:01:57,509 --> 00:02:00,090
terror with a killing quota of one per
41
00:02:00,090 --> 00:02:03,270
thousand where Mao orders one per thousand of
42
00:02:03,270 --> 00:02:05,240
the population to be publicly executed
43
00:02:05,240 --> 00:02:08,369
as nationalist remnants or spies
44
00:02:08,369 --> 00:02:10,348
counter-revolutionaries and that
45
00:02:10,348 --> 00:02:13,590
campaign too produces about two
46
00:02:13,590 --> 00:02:16,800
million victims if we are to trust Bo Yibo (薄一波)
47
00:02:16,800 --> 00:02:19,680
In total those very first years of
48
00:02:19,680 --> 00:02:23,250
the regime claimed five million civilian
49
00:02:23,250 --> 00:02:27,030
lives. Mao and the communist party came
50
00:02:27,030 --> 00:02:29,340
to power very much like Lenin and the
51
00:02:29,340 --> 00:02:32,220
Bolsheviks by promising every
52
00:02:32,220 --> 00:02:34,260
disaffected group what they wanted most
53
00:02:34,260 --> 00:02:37,290
the land for farmers, better working
54
00:02:37,290 --> 00:02:40,260
conditions for workers, freedom of speech
55
00:02:40,260 --> 00:02:42,200
for intellectuals, and of course
56
00:02:42,200 --> 00:02:45,829
protection of private property for
57
00:02:45,829 --> 00:02:48,599
entrepreneurs and shopkeepers, not to
58
00:02:48,599 --> 00:02:50,190
mention independence for minorities.
59
00:02:50,190 --> 00:02:54,060
Every one of these promises by 1957 had
60
00:02:54,060 --> 00:02:57,630
been broken. One of the reasons why the
61
00:02:57,630 --> 00:03:00,530
myth of a golden age is so powerful is that
62
00:03:00,530 --> 00:03:04,079
we all know that the Cultural Revolution
63
00:03:04,079 --> 00:03:07,709
was a cataclysm, a catastrophe, not to
64
00:03:07,709 --> 00:03:09,540
mention of course the Great Leap Forward
65
00:03:09,540 --> 00:03:11,600
and Mao's Great Famine
66
00:03:11,600 --> 00:03:14,500
between 1958 and 1962
67
00:03:14,500 --> 00:03:17,310
so all the party really has is the first
68
00:03:17,310 --> 00:03:19,470
years of the regime which it portrays as
69
00:03:19,470 --> 00:03:21,690
a golden age and of course many
70
00:03:21,690 --> 00:03:25,139
abroad, some of them true believers, still
71
00:03:25,139 --> 00:03:28,139
have this faith that communism somehow
72
00:03:28,139 --> 00:03:31,139
worked in some way in China from
73
00:03:31,139 --> 00:03:34,200
1949 till 1957 but the
74
00:03:34,200 --> 00:03:37,109
party archives abundantly show that this
75
00:03:37,109 --> 00:03:39,630
was not the case one of the things I
76
00:03:39,630 --> 00:03:43,069
hope the book will do is to pretty much
77
00:03:43,069 --> 00:03:45,450
pull the rug from underneath the
78
00:03:45,450 --> 00:03:47,430
legitimacy of the Communist Party itself
79
00:03:47,430 --> 00:03:49,410
by showing that the early years of the
80
00:03:49,410 --> 00:03:52,079
regime weren't that Golden Age but
81
00:03:52,079 --> 00:03:53,880
according to the documents compiled by the
82
00:03:53,880 --> 00:03:56,790
party itself were a period of broken
83
00:03:56,790 --> 00:04:00,090
promises and systematic violence and the
84
00:04:00,090 --> 00:04:02,160
party itself in particular under
85
00:04:02,160 --> 00:04:04,019
Xi Jinping is now increasingly going back
86
00:04:04,019 --> 00:04:08,180
to the 1950s to find, so to speak, "tools"
87
00:04:08,180 --> 00:04:13,620
to govern that country. As in 1952 today
88
00:04:13,620 --> 00:04:16,260
we have an anti-corruption drive and as
89
00:04:16,260 --> 00:04:19,649
in 1952 private enterprises are
90
00:04:19,649 --> 00:04:21,988
increasingly scrutinized by the party
91
00:04:21,988 --> 00:04:24,000
not to mention these self-criticism
92
00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:26,760
sessions set up by Xi Jinping also directly
93
00:04:27,030 --> 00:04:30,210
inspired from the 1950s. So here's a
94
00:04:30,210 --> 00:04:33,000
question: if Xi Jinping and the party
95
00:04:33,000 --> 00:04:36,120
are studying the 1950s why shouldn't we
96
00:04:36,120 --> 00:04:39,560
be paying much closer attention?
