Yang Jisheng

Yang Jisheng
Yang Jisheng in 2010
Traditional Chinese	楊繼繩
Simplified Chinese	杨继绳
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Yáng Jìshéng

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] and, although he continued working for the Xinhua News Agency, he, in fact, 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]

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

• 2013 Hayek Book Prize and Lecture by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.^[14]
• 2015 Stieg Larsson Prize ^[11]

"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 (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, Yang Jisheng, Translators: Stacy Mosher, Guo Jian, Publisher: Allen Lane (30 Oct 2012), ISBN 978-184-614-518-6 (English Translation of the above work)

See also

• Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62
• Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine

References

External links

• Richard McGregor. The man who exposed Mao’s secret famine. The Financial Times. 12 June 2010.
• Ian Johnson. Finding the Facts About Mao’s Victims. The New York Review of Books (Blog), 20 December 2010