Using history to challenge Communist Party rule.

Sparks: China's Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future describes how some of China's best-known writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to forge a nationwide movement that challenges the Communist Party on its most hallowed ground: its control of history.

The past is a battleground in many countries, but in China it is crucial to political power. In traditional China, dynasties rewrote history to justify their rule by proving that their predecessors were unworthy of holding power. Marxism gave this a modern gloss, describing history as an unstoppable force heading toward Communism's triumph. The Chinese Communist Party builds on these ideas to whitewash its misdeeds and glorify its rule. Indeed, one of Xi Jinping's signature policies is the control of history, which he equates with the party's survival.

But in recent years, a network of independent writers, artists, and filmmakers have begun challenging this state-led disremembering. Using digital technologies to bypass China's legendary surveillance state, their samizdat journals, guerilla media posts, and underground films document a regular pattern of disasters: from famines and purges of years past to ethnic clashes and virus outbreaks of the present--powerful and inspiring accounts that have underpinned recent protests in China against Xi Jinping's strongman rule.

Based on years of first-hand research in Xi Jinping's China, Sparks challenges stereotypes of a China where the state has quashed all free thought, revealing instead a country engaged in one of humanity's great struggles of memory against forgetting -- a battle that will shape the China that emerges in the mid-21st century.

• We started tracking this book on November 6, 2023.
• This book was $14.49 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 23 times in the past 454 days.
• The current price of this book is $7.87 last checked 16 hours ago.
• The lowest price to date was $7.87 last reached on January 30, 2025.
• This book has been $7.87 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $14.49 last reached on November 28, 2024.
• This book has been $14.49 2 times since we started tracking it.
• This book is currently at its lowest price since we started tracking it.

• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• File Size: 11,253 KB