The battle for memory in China – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

Journalist and author Ian Johnson discusses his latest book, Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, on why and how he came to write his book. Questions are asked by Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York and Glenn Tiffert a distinguished research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a historian of modern China.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers request form.

Are you looking for more stories by Ian Johnson? Do check this list.

Why I don’t miss the premier’s annual press conference – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

In a surprise move, China canceled the annual press conference of the country’s premier. But long-term correspondent and author Ian Johnson explains in the VOA why he thinks the foreign correspondents stopped looking forward to the event.

VOA:

Starting in 1993, Chinese premiers have typically used the annual event as an opportunity to field wide-ranging questions from Chinese and foreign journalists. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, when China was opening its economy to the rest of the world, it had actively sought to elucidate its politics and policies in a bid to attract foreign investment and boost trade.

Ian Johnson, a senior fellow for Chinese studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, who worked in China as a journalist from 1994 to 2001, said that foreign journalists at that time could use the press conferences to ask questions freely.

Later, “it went from being a potential source of information to becoming an empty exercise in propaganda,” he said. “By the end of the 2010s, it had become useless in terms of getting information. It’s just scripted.”

More in the VOA.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers request form.

Are you looking for more media experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

P

Why Chinese enter the US through the Mexican border – Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

A large number of the illegal immigrants entering the US from Mexico are Chinese, and not only poor Chinese, says China scholar Ian Johnson in DW. They mostly rely on dubious information on TikTok and have no clue what kind of adventure they get into, he adds.

DW:

The phenomenon of Chinese people entering the United States via the southern border has come to be described by the term “Zouxian,” which can roughly be translated as “take the risk” — and the term’s broad dissemination on social media platforms has led many young Chinese to do just that.

“They rely on social media more in China for getting their information,” said Ian Johnson, a China expert at the US Council on Foreign Relations. “In the Western countries, you would say: ‘What does the mainstream media say about it?’ But, in China, there is no way to fact- check.” Johnson said it concerned him that so many of those young people have no idea what they are getting themselves into.

Johnson said the situation would not just hit the very poor.

“The economic slowdown is affecting broader ranges of the population, including the lower middle class,” Johnson said. He added that increased political persecution under President Xi Jinping has also fueled a desire to leave China behind.

More in DW.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more stories by Ian Johnson? Do check out this list.

Sparks of hope from China – Ian Johnson

 

Book reviews of Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future by China veteran and Pulitzer prize winner Ian Johnson start to come in, rightfully, like this overview in Public Discourse by Robert Carle. “In Sparks, Ian Johnson tells the stories of people such as Lin Zhao and Hu Jie—Chinese journalists and filmmakers who explore the darkest episodes of Chinese communism, often at great risk to themselves.”

Public Discourse

A poet named Lin Zhao, who contributed to Spark, was the subject of Hu’s 2004 film Searching for Lin Zhao’s Soul. When Lin wasn’t handcuffed to chairs and beaten by guards, she wrote poems and essays on scraps of paper by piercing her finger with a hairpin and using her blood as ink. When she ran out of paper, she wrote on her clothing.

With her blood, Lin drew images on prison walls of an incense burner and flowers. From 9:30 to noon each Sunday, she held what she called grand church worship, singing hymns and saying prayers that she learned in her Methodist girls’ school. The prison guards put a tight-fitting hood on Lin that made it difficult for her to breathe and impossible for her to speak.

Lin was executed on April 29, 1968. On May 1, a Communist Party official visited Lin’s mother to demand that she pay a fee for the bullet used to kill her daughter.

Prison guards meticulously saved Lin’s writings to document her counter-revolutionary spirit. After Mao’s death, Lin’s files were declassified and sent to her family.

In Sparks, Ian Johnson tells the stories of people such as Lin Zhao and Hu Jie—Chinese journalists and filmmakers who explore the darkest episodes of Chinese communism, often at great risk to themselves. In Sparks, we meet Ai Xiaoming, who interviewed dozens of survivors of the Jiabiangou forced labor camp and their families to make her seven-hour documentary film, Jiabiangou Elegy (夹边沟祭事). We also meet Journalist Tan Hecheng, who uncovered the story of a 1967 Communist Party–led massacre of nine thousand innocent men, women, and children in Hunan Province. Tan devoted forty years of his life to researching the story of the systematic murders, finally publishing the book The Killing Wind in 2010. “Documenting this wasn’t quixotic,” Johnson writes. “It was a hard-nosed calculation that it would pay off—not for Tan personally but for his country.”

More in Public Discourse.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers request form.

Are you looking for more political experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Who are my ‘underground’ historians – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

China veteran and Pulitzer prize winner Ian Johnson discusses his newest book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future with Bao Pu at City Lights Live. First question: who are the underground historians? And how do they survive in China’s system and challenge the state’s efforts to whitewash its history.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more stories by Ian Johnson? Do check out this list.

The mixed legacy of ‘old friend’ Kissinger – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

The death of US diplomat Henry Kissinger has triggered different qualifications, varying from an old China friend to a war criminal. Kissenger does have a mixed legacy when it comes to China-US relations, says China veteran Ian Johnson at NBC.

NBC:

In more than 100 visits to China over more than 50 years, Kissinger met all of its modern leaders: Mao, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi. He recounted his experiences in his 2011 book “On China.”

“I would say he had a somewhat mixed legacy,” said Ian Johnson, a senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“On the one hand, he represented a nowadays useful realpolitik way of looking at China, which is to not get caught up in ideology but to look at China as a potentially useful partner in solving global challenges facing the United States,” he told NBC News.

“On the other hand, at times he let himself be used as a prop for Chinese leaders to show their public that they had good relations with the United States, while at the same time earning handsomely for trips to China.”

More at NBC

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more geopolitical experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

How the Communist Party stifled China’s history – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

In an in-depth account of his book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, author Ian Johnson explains how China’s rulers have been changing the country’s history to solidify their position. He quotes extensively the current generation of so-called underground historians, who use new technologies to reinstate their views on their history, for a talk at USC China Institute.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more political experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

How does the Communist Party justifies its rule by controlling history – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

History called the communist party to save China, that is the way history is used by the party, says author Ian Johnson in a speech about his newly published book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future in WorldOregon.  But the official history doesn’t remain unchallenged. “Ian Johnson explores how some of China’s best-known writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to forge a nationwide movement that challenges the Communist Party on its most hallowed ground: its control of history,” says the website.

“Based on years of first-hand 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 the China that emerges in the mid-21st century.”

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more stories by Ian Johnson? Do check out this list.

What to watch at the Biden-Xi Summit? – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

While the expectations for next week’s meeting between the presidents Biden and Xi are not high, there are four points to watch, writes China analyst Ian Johnson at the website of the Council on Foreign Relations. Those are Taiwan, fentanyl, the Israel-Hamas war, and Climate actions.

Ian Johnson:

In short, don’t expect huge breakthroughs. Gone are the days when presidents and premiers met Chinese leaders and came back with a briefcase full of business deals or other “deliverables.” And that’s not a bad thing. Those meetings were often empty, and many of the deals didn’t pan out—letters of intent to invest often languished, and China sometimes promised market access without delivering. Even though it’s easy to reject “empty talk,” it’s important that top leaders keep the channels of communication open.

Isn’t that true for all countries?

No, it matters more in dealing with China. The reason is that Beijing makes it hard for U.S. officials to understand who is advising Xi or what the decision-making channels are. Last year, Xi was appointed to an unprecedented third term as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, a position that essentially allows him to run China indefinitely. (Earlier this year, he got a third term as president, but this is an honorific title in the Chinese political system.) Now that he’s ended term limits and has this new third term, Xi is surrounded by people who owe their allegiance to him almost exclusively. Meanwhile, people of Xi’s age—he turned seventy earlier this year— have all retired. Also worrying is that China’s foreign and defense ministers both appear to have been sacked, and the heads of the military’s prestigious Rocket Force were also purged earlier this year, two rare examples of trouble at the top. The changes make it even harder to fathom who is running the show beyond Xi and his immediate circle of loyalists.

So there’s a real possibility that Xi is surrounded by yes-men, who might not want to tell him bad news. In this context, it matters that the president of the United States can talk to him directly to explain why American perceptions of China are so negative and what the direct risks this could bring.

It’s not clear, for example, if Xi is directly aware of risky maneuvers by the Chinese military in recent weeks—notably, the buzzing of a U.S. bomber flying in international airspace. Decisions about such exercises are probably made by commanders on the ground, but they are based on guidelines issued by Beijing. Letting Xi know directly that these events are dangerous and potentially catastrophic could be useful.

More at the website of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more strategic experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Why women dominate China’s underground history telling – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

Author Ian Johnson recently published Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, and discusses the dominance of women as underground historians with Jeffrey Wasserstrom at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. Women are relative outsiders in China’s power structures which puts them in a good position to document the country’s history, he says.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers request form.

Are you looking for more political experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

More on the same subject: ChinaFile Presents: China Reporting in Exile

Why the passing of a colorless premier might matter to Xi Jinping – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

During his life, former Prime Minister Li Keqiang was mainly remembered for being side-lined by Xi Jinping. But after his sudden death he might become a problem for his former boss, writes author Ian Johnson at the Council on Foreign Relations, as it might be used as a way for the hidden criticizing of Xi.

Ian Johnson:

The sudden death of former Chinese premier Li Keqiang is the latest in a steady series of crises, mishaps, and blunders to afflict top leader Xi Jinping over the past two years.

The official Xinhua news agency said in a terse report that Mr. Li, 68, died of a heart attack early Friday morning in Shanghai. The death clearly caught Chinese officialdom off guard because an obituary had not been prepared, with the agency saying one would be issued later.

Mr. Li’s death is unlikely to alter the power dynamic at the top of China’s leadership. He had already retired from all posts and was not part of Xi’s inner circle. Although often seen as a pro-reformist moderate in contrast to the more authoritarian-minded Mr. Xi–he held a PhD in economics, and was seen as quick-witted–he never appeared to challenge his boss’s hardline policies. Compared to his more dynamic predecessors, especially the hard-charging Zhu Rongji in the 1990s and the reform-oriented (if tainted by family corruption) Wen Jiabao in the 2000s, Mr. Li was easily one of the most colorless premiers in the nearly 75-year history of the People’s Republic.

More at the website of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more political experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Working as a journalist in China – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

China journalist, senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, and Pulitzer prize winner Ian Johnson discusses his time as a foreign correspondent in China since 1994. He was expelled in 2020 but returned to finish his latest book, Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, in 2023. At the Asia Society for the China Books Review Launch, he is interviewed by his former colleague Dave Barboza.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you interested in more stories by Ian Johnson? Do check out this list.

An expelled journalist returns to China – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

China veteran Ian Johnson tells how he got expelled from China and what he found when he returned in 2023 to Foreign Affairs—and discovered what had changed over the past three years with COVID-19 hitting the country. He found a country is in stagnation, he tells in a gloomy diagnosis, although he also discovered dissent was not wholly stifled.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meet or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more stories by Ian Johnson? Do check out this list.

In September 2023, he published his latest book, Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future

How Xi Jinping rewrites China’s history – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

Xi Jinping has put much effort into rewriting China’s history. China expert Ian Johnson, author of Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, looks at underground historians, and how they oppose that trend. He discusses his discoveries at NPR. “There are still people who are keeping alive the idea of a more decent, humane China that confronts its problems of the past and thereby lays the groundwork for a better China of tomorrow,” Ian Johnson says.

NPR:

One of the first things Xi Jinping did after being named general secretary of China’s ruling Communist Party was tour an exhibition at the National Museum on the eastern edge of Tiananmen Square.

It was called “the Road to Rejuvenation.” News photos showed Xi and other top leaders standing reverently before photos and artifacts that traced the long arc of China’s modern history. The symbolism was hard to miss.

In his new book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ian Johnson says Xi unveiled the concept of the “China Dream” at the museum on that fall day in 2012. “That goal was closer at hand than at any time in recent history, Xi said, because the nation had learned from its history,” Johnson writes.

In the following years, Xi would put on display a dogged obsession with controlling the historical narrative — shuttering independent journals, muzzling outspoken scholars, jailing critics he accused of “historical nihilism,” and re-drawing the boundaries around school curricula.

Yet through it all, a handful of people chronicling China’s “grassroots history” has been fighting back. Johnson calls it a movement, and his book tells their stories.

They are people like the filmmaker Ai Xiaoming, who made a documentary about an all but forgotten forced labor camp in the desert. And the journalist Jiang Xue, who has protected the history of an underground journal from the late 1950s that attempted to record the privations, and desperation, experienced during the famine resulting from the Great Leap Forward.

Click here to read the NPR interview with Ian Johnson.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more stories by Ian Johnson? Do check out this list.

A Counterhistory of China – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson (left) at the CFR

Ian Johnson discusses at the Council on Foreign Relations his new book, Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future, which describes how some of China’s best-known writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to forge a nationwide movement that challenges the Communist Party on its most hallowed ground: its control of history.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more political experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

China’s underground historians – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

In his latest book, Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, the Stephen A. Schwarzman senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, describes a movement of underground historians, trying to safeguard the country’s history from eradication by the communist party, in a discussion at Politico.

Politico:

What is the most important takeaway from this book?

The conventional wisdom about China is that the Communist Party has won. Dissent is crushed. The surveillance state rules. This book shows that this view is too simplistic. These are dark times but there are still people actively challenging the party by documenting its biggest failings, from famines of the past to its Covid policies of the present. These people make underground documentary films and videos, or produce samizdat magazines and books. They have not been crushed.

What was the most surprising thing you learned while compiling this book?

I thought that history would mainly matter to older Chinese people. But young people face soaring unemployment and a bleak social landscape. Some talk of dropping out or trying to emigrate. But as we saw in last year’s “white paper” protests, many others can become much more active. And they do so by drawing on the works of the public intellectuals that I profile.

How might a more accurate rendering of Chinese contemporary history by “underground historians” – rather than the CCP-sanitized version –  impact Chinese public perceptions and attitudes toward the U.S?

The U.S is portrayed in the Chinese media as the country’s bogeyman. Many people swallow this nationalistic line, but China’s growing economic problems and social stagnation are causing many others to look for more credible explanations. The underground historians document how China’s problems are homegrown. If these ideas spread – and I think they will, as the economy enters a period of stasis, in part because of demographic problems and a rigid political system – then more people will see that it is not the U.S that is at fault for China’s problems. Instead, they may realize that it is the Communist Party’s policies that have led China away from growth and stability. But this is a long-term process. China isn’t facing an imminent upheaval. Instead, we’re seeing something akin to what happened in the 1960’s and 1970s in Eastern Europe, when the regimes there seemed unbeatable, but were developing grave problems that home-grown critics began to document.

More at Politico.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ form.

Are you looking for more experts on cultural change at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.