Yang Jisheng (journalist)

Yang Jisheng (born November 1940[1][2]) is a Chinese journalist and author of Tombstone (墓碑; Mubei), a comprehensive account of the Great Chinese Famine during the Great Leap Forward. Yang joined the Communist Party in 1964 and graduated from Tsinghua University in 1966. He promptly joined Xinhua News Agency, where he worked until his retirement in 2001. His loyalty to the party was destroyed by the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.[3] Although he continued working for the Xinhua News Agency, he spent much of his time researching for Tombstone. As of 2008, he was the deputy editor of the journal Yanhuang Chunqiu in Beijing.[1][4] Yang Jisheng is also listed as a Fellow of China Media Project, a department under Hong Kong University.[4]

Yang Jisheng
Yang Jisheng in 2010
Traditional Chinese楊繼繩
Simplified Chinese杨继绳
In this Chinese name, the family name is Yang.

Tombstone: The Great Famine

Beginning in the early 1990s, Yang began interviewing people and collecting records of The Great Famine of 1959–1961, in which his own foster father had died, eventually accumulating ten million words of records. He published a two-volume 1,208-page account of the period, in which he meticulously cited his sources to prevent the Chinese government from dismissing it. It was widely acclaimed as being the definitive account of the Great Famine.[1][5] He begins the book,

I call this book Tombstone. It is a tombstone for my [foster] father who died of hunger in 1959, for the 36 million Chinese who also died of hunger, for the system that caused their death, and perhaps for myself for writing this book.[1]

The book was published in Hong Kong and is banned in mainland China.[5][6] In 2012 translations into French, German, and English[7] (which has been condensed almost by 50%)[8] have been published.[9][10]

Yang was awarded The Stieg Larsson prize 2015 for his 'stubborn and courageous work in mapping and describing the consequences' of The Great Leap Forward.[11]

Yang was awarded the 2016 Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism, selected by the Nieman Fellows at Harvard University. In the award citation, the fellows stated: "Through the determination and commitment required for this project, Mr. Yang clearly demonstrates the qualities of conscience and integrity. He provides inspiration to all who seek to document the truth in the face of influences, forces and regimes that may push against such transparency".[12] He was reported to be banned from leaving China to receive the award in a ceremony in Harvard University to be held in March 2016.[13]

Awards
"for his stubborn and courageous work in mapping and describing the consequences of The Three Years of Great Chinese Famine"
  • 2015 Award from the Independent Chinese PEN Center (for the Chinese language version)[12]
  • 2016 Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism[12]

Published works
  • 墓碑 －－中國六十年代大饑荒紀實 (Mubei – - Zhongguo Liushi Niandai Da Jihuang Jishi) ("Tombstone: An Account of Chinese Famine in the 1960s"), Hong Kong: Cosmos Books (Tiandi Tushu), 2008, ISBN 978-988-211-909-3 (in Chinese). By 2010, it was appearing under the title: 墓碑: 一九五八-一九六二年中國大饑荒紀實 (Mubei: Yi Jiu Wu Ba – Yi Jiu Liu Er Nian Zhongguo Da Jihuang Shiji) ("Tombstone: An Account of Chinese Famine From 1958–1962").
  • Tombstone: The Untold Story of Mao's Great Famine, trans. Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian, Publisher: Allen Lane (2012), ISBN 978-184-614-518-6 (English Translation of the above work)
  • The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, trans. and ed. by Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2021), ISBN 9780374293130.
  • "Renverser ciel et terre - La tragédie de la Révolution culturelle, 1966–1976, French translation of 天地翻覆 by Louis Vincenolles, Éditions du Seuil, 2020年, ISBN 978-2-02-133118-9

See also

References
  1. "A hunger for the truth: A new book, banned on the mainland, is becoming the definitive account of the Great Famine." Archived 27 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine, chinaelections.org, 7 July 2008
  2. "Chinese author of book on famine braves risks to inform new generations" by Verna Yu, International Herald Tribune, 18 December 2008
  3. Johnson, Ian (22 November 2012). "China: Worse Than You Ever Imagined". ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved 16 September 2020.
  4. "Yang Jisheng" Archived 27 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine at the China Media Project, Hong Kong University, October 2007 (accessed 9 March 2008)
  5. "When China Starved" by Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post, 12 August 2008
  6. Yang, Jisheng (2010). "The Fatal Politics of the PRC's Great Leap Famine: The Preface to Tombstone". Journal of Contemporary China. 19 (66): 755–776. doi:10.1080/10670564.2010.485408.
  7. Mirsky, Jonathan (9 December 2012). "Unnatural Disaster: 'Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962,' by Yang Jisheng". The New York Times Sunday Book Review. pp. BR22. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  8. "Millennial madness". The Economist. 27 October 2012.
  9. "Stèles, Jisheng Yang, Documents - Seuil". seuil.com (in French). Retrieved 16 September 2020.
  10. value, active. "Grabstein - Mùbei". S. Fischer Verlage (in German). Retrieved 16 September 2020.
  11. Stieg Larsson Foundation. "Stieg Larsson prize 2015". Stieg Larsson Foundation. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
  12. Nieman Foundation News (7 December 2015). "Chinese author Yang Jisheng wins Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism". Harvard University. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
  13. Phillips, Tom (15 February 2016). "Chinese journalist banned from flying to US to accept a prize for his work". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
  14. Reading Hayek in Beijing, Wall Street Journal.
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