IB DP History Class: Truth and daring in retelling Mao’s China

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Specification: 

• Historical method

Connections with the DP: DP History Concept: Historical method. World History Topic 10 — Authoritarian states (20th century). HL option 3: History of Asia and Oceania, Unit 14: The People’s Republic of China (1949—2005) 

Key terms and ideas: Cultural Revolution, Orthodox, Revisionist

Click to read the article below and then answer the questions:

Truth and daring in retelling Mao’s China

This story explores the challenges facing the historian Yang Jisheng, who has written a revisionist history of the Cultural Revolution which pushes against official Chinese orthodoxy.

The story explores the “breathtaking courage” needed to write this book. In China, “particular aspects of the Cultural Revolution are off-limits”, and it remains mostly seen as a success story. The review describes Yang’s book as “a reply to their fantasy world” with potentially dangerous consequences for the author himself.

The story also reveals some of the practical challenges of writing such a history. Yang is only able to do so after spending “decades working for China’s official Xinhua News Agency, a position that gave him access to archives.”

• Why has Yang taken such risks to write his revisionist history of the Cultural Revolution?

• What is the responsibility of historians to write about the past in a balanced way? 

• How should historians respond to official restrictions on what they can write?

Ned Riley, historyrising.net