※ 引述《inebriety (酩酊)》之銘言： : 楊繼繩 : google了一下作者是中國人，職業是記者、教授。 : 他po在今天紐約時報上，翻成中國的奇恥大辱好了。 : 到底大躍進是死幾人阿，怎麼死的人數都差很多？ 在3000萬人左右 共和國當年人口的1/15 當時中國既無外敵入侵 也沒有大規模天災 還是餓死了三千萬人 比抗戰死的還多的多 真不知道那些拿著槍桿子指著農民的頭 把農民最後的保命糧從手裡挖走的黨官嘴臉是如何 : http://tinyurl.com/bxpcn33 : THIRTY-SIX million people in China, including my uncle, who raised me like a : father, starved to death between 1958 and 1962, during the man-made calamity : known as the Great Famine. In thousands of cases, desperately hungry people : resorted to cannibalism. : The toll was more than twice the number of fallen in World War I, and about : six times the number of Ukrainians starved by Stalin in 1932-33 or the number : of Jews murdered by Hitler during World War II. : After 50 years, the famine still cannot be freely discussed in the place : where it happened. My book “Tombstone” could be published only in Hong : Kong, Japan and the West. It remains banned in mainland China, where : historical amnesia looms large and government control of information and : expression has tightened during the Communist Party’s 18th National : Congress, which began last week and will conclude with a once-in-a-decade : leadership transition. : Those who deny that the famine happened, as an executive at the state-run : newspaper People’s Daily recently did, enjoy freedom of speech, despite : their fatuous claims about “three years of natural disasters.” But no : plague, flood or earthquake ever wrought such horror during those years. One : might wonder why the Chinese government won’t allow the true tale to be : told, since Mao’s economic policies were abandoned in the late 1970s in : favor of liberalization, and food has been plentiful ever since. : The reason is political: a full exposure of the Great Famine could undermine : the legitimacy of a ruling party that clings to the political legacy of Mao, : even though that legacy, a totalitarian Communist system, was the root cause : of the famine. As the economist Amartya Sen has observed, no major famine has : ever occurred in a democracy. : In Mao’s China, the coercive power of the state penetrated every corner of : national life. The rural population was brought under control by a thorough : collectivization of agriculture. The state could then manage grain : production, requisitioning and distributing it by decree. Those who tilled : the earth were locked in place by a nationwide system of household : registration, and food coupons issued to city dwellers supplanted the market. : The peasants survived at the pleasure of the state. : The Great Leap Forward that Mao began in 1958 set ambitious goals without the : means to meet them. A vicious cycle ensued; exaggerated production reports : from below emboldened the higher-ups to set even loftier targets. Newspaper : headlines boasted of rice farms yielding 800,000 pounds per acre. When the : reported abundance could not actually be delivered, the government accused : peasants of hoarding grain. House-to-house searches followed, and any : resistance was put down with violence. : Meanwhile, since the Great Leap Forward mandated rapid industrialization, : even peasants’ cooking implements were melted down in the hope of making : steel in backyard furnaces, and families were forced into large communal : kitchens. They were told that they could eat their fill. But when food ran : short, no aid came from the state. Local party cadres held the rice ladles, a : power they often abused, saving themselves and their families at the expense : of others. Famished peasants had nowhere to turn. : In the first half of 1959, the suffering was so great that the central : government permitted remedial measures, like allowing peasant families to : till small private plots of land for themselves part time. Had these : accommodations persisted, they might have lessened the famine’s impact. But : when Peng Dehuai, then China’s defense minister, wrote Mao a candid letter : to say that things weren’t working, Mao felt that both his ideological : stance and his personal power were being challenged. He purged Peng and : started a campaign to root out “rightist deviation.” Remedial measures like : the private plots were rolled back, and millions of officials were : disciplined for failing to toe the radical line. : The result was starvation on an epic scale. By the end of 1960, China’s : total population was 10 million less than in the previous year. : Astonishingly, many state granaries held ample grain that was mostly reserved : for hard currency-earning exports or donated as foreign aid; these granaries : remained locked to the hungry peasants. “Our masses are so good,” one party : official said at the time. “They would rather die by the roadside than break : into the granary.” : As a journalist and a scholar of contemporary history, I felt a duty to find : out how the Great Famine happened and why. Starting in the 1990s, I visited : more than a dozen provinces, interviewed over a hundred witnesses, and : collected thousands of documents. Since the Great Famine was a forbidden : topic, I could get access to archives only under the pretext of “researching : agricultural policies” or “studying the food issue.” : Communist leaders established a vast system of slavery in the name of : liberating mankind. It was promoted as the “road to paradise,” but in fact : it was a road to perdition. : I intended my book to be a memorial to the 36 million victims, but also a : literal tombstone, anticipating the ultimate demise of the totalitarian : political system that caused the Great Famine. I was mindful of the risks in : this endeavor: if something happens to me because I tried to preserve a : truthful memory, then let the book stand as my tombstone, too. : Yang Jisheng, deputy editor of the historical journal Yanhuang Chunqiu and a : former editor at the Xinhua News Agency, is the author of “Tombstone: The : Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962.” This essay was translated by Guo Jian from : the Chinese. -- --

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