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

Journalist Johnson (The Souls of China) delivers a striking account of people who have defied authority to document negative aspects of life under the Chinese Communist Party. According to Johnson, as each iteration of the party tries to erase the past, each new generation produces its own “underground historians” (a shorthand for “university professors, independent filmmakers, underground magazine publishers, novelists, artists, and journalists”) who are “ready to spring into action when the state’s guard is down.” For example, he recounts the saga of Spark, a short-lived underground journal published in the northwest city of Tianshi in 1960 by a group of young people exiled to the countryside to do farm work. Before it was shut down, Spark challenged Mao’s cult of personality and blamed party mismanagement for the famine and starvation of the Great Leap Forward. After the rise of the internet, online communities brought together more dissident voices. It was online citizen journalists, Johnson notes, who told the world what was going on in Wuhan at the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020. He highlights the story of Li Wenliang, a young ophthalmologist who was punished by the state for spreading rumors after he warned his colleagues about the new disease. This immersive survey combines interviews, firsthand reportage, and historical research to paint a moving group portrait of China’s political dissidents. (Sept.)