Yang Jisheng is a famed chronicler and critic of the Mao era. (Photo : New York Times)
Chinese officials have warned Yang Jisheng against publishing new material on the history of the Cultural Revolution, according to a report by The New York Times. The new book, entitled "The World Turned Upside Down" is a sequel to his previous work, "Tombstone."
The author is a famed chronicler and critic of the Mao era. He began his claim to fame when he published "Tombstone," his landmark study of the famine started by Mao's policies in the late 1950s.
Since rising to power in 2012, President Xi and the Communist Party have been ruthless in denouncing historians who paint a grim picture of the party's past. The government has prevented Yang from traveling to the United states as well.
"I wrote this book to expose lies and restore the truth. This is an area that is extremely complicated and risky, but as soon as I entered it, I was filled with passion," says Yang.
Pressure to Discredit History
Aside from government officials, party journals have attacked Yang's findings that 36 million people died in a famine from 1958 caused by Mao's Great Leap Forward.
"Yang Jisheng is not a historian. He leaves the impression that he's not interested in history, and virtually all his later works display strong political tendencies," according to an editorial in the Global Times.
This is not the first time Yang has encountered such detractors. Last year, Yanhuang Chunqiu, a liberal-leaning magazine, was taken over by editors loyal to the Communist Party.
Following the incident, a court in Beijing compelled a historian to apologize for questioning the party's account of the 1941 battle in the war against Japan.
"There's quite a lot of pressure," says Yang. " I just want to restore this big story and the real facts behind it in order to resurface the history."
