Chinese history, for the CCP

Ian Johnson's book offers a lens to view China through the eyes of its people rather than through the party

Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future

Author: Ian Johnson

Publisher: Allen Lane

Pages: 381

Price: Rs 1,299

China is a civilisational state with a long, contested and layered history. It encompasses within itself the history of the empires, kingdoms, warlords and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But the history of China to which the Chinese people and the world is exposed today is sanitised and approved by the CCP. Since 1949, the CCP has taken a lead role in writing and rewriting Chinese history with the sole aim of pushing its own narrative and agenda. This effort is also a crucial exercise through which the CCP advances its identity-building project. Thus, Chinese history has to be uniform and unilateral. No surprise that, as Ian Johnson writes in Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future, “Xi Jinping has made control of history one of his signature policies — because he recognises counter-history as an existential threat.”

But history is not unidimensional; memories cannot be erased or rewritten because every event, incident and change in China impacted the people and the Party differently. This is a major challenge for the CCP. A party that has been in power for more than seven decades is uncomfortable with criticism and alternative narratives. In China today, history is the same for everyone, because the CCP and Xi Jinping say so. The author argues that “these acts of disremembering warp the country’s collective memory and have succeeded in convincing most Chinese people that even if the Party is flawed, it is doing a good job and its opponents are at best unrealistic, and at worst traitors” Under Xi Jinping, nationalism is directly proportional to complete acceptance of the CCP’s version of history and timeline.

Sparks (the title is the same as that of a 1960s student-run journal) challenges the most common assumptions towards Chinese history. The world is fed with one-dimensional narratives on Chinese history. The CCP can do this because it has managed to hold on to power uninterrupted and to choke alternative versions from gaining popularity. The party decides what is taught in school and what is allowed to be showcased via television, films and online platforms. Every effort to challenge the mainstream narrative has been crushed by force.

As an eye-opener, the book brings to the surface the underground historians who have been braving every form of state persecution to preserve the history and memories of the common people. This common man’s history is becoming a challenge for the CCP. “The rise of China’s counter-historians is significant because it is taking place in a tightly controlled political environment and challenges Communist Party legitimacy,” the author says.

The book vividly juxtaposes outcomes of various events in Chinese history and highlights their impact on the CCP and the common people. Heart-wrenching descriptions and explanations of how people suffered under CCP rule or have been victims of party infighting are hard to forget. The violence the CCP unleashed on its own people (Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen Square massacre) all contradict its narrative of being the party of the Chinese people. Worse, the party never apologised, and the victims of its  violence were never compensated; most were just numbers, their existence wiped out.

The CCP promoted the idea that it can do no wrong, Mao could do no wrong and everyone who was the victim of the violence deserved their fate. Since it is still in power, it limits people’s space to talk about the past. They have to carry the party’s memories if they have to still survive and thrive. Xi Jinping even approved his own resolution on party history. He has argued that the resolution was, to “relive the glories of the Party and appreciate how the Party has rallied and led the Chinese people in making magnificent achievements”.

One major effort by Xi Jinping to cement control on China’s history has been the re-building of the National Museum of China. Though this was originally built in 1959, it is, according to the author “the best place to witness the party’s endless fiddling with the past”. Recently, it was renovated with an investment of $ 400 million and now seems to be the place “best known for Xi Jinping’s coming out party in 2012”. No surprise that “Xi’s supremacy can be seen on the museum’s homepage”.

The power of history and memory is beautifully laid out in the book and the major purpose that drives the underground historians is that this is a process “by people trying to understand and describe their own lives”. It clearly explains why the Chinese state has snatched people’s history and experiences and altered them with its own versions. The primary answer being to stay in power. “The government under Xi Jinping is nostalgic about the past. ... The system is rotten, the government knows it  —hence the endless, pointless campaigns to whitewash the past.”

The book offers a lens to view China through the gaze of its people and not the party. It pushes you to think about your own understanding and question what exactly history is all about. Is it what is repeated again and again or is it a sum total of what is never talked about and what is politically correct? China’s history is not just the history of the CCP, it is a sum total of everyone who was there before the party, are there today, and those who will be there in the years to come.

 The reviewer is associate professor, O P Jindal Global University