Book review: The Tragedy of Liberation, by Frank Dikotter
The Tragedy of Liberation is a meticulous chronicle of the violence used by China's Communist Party to take and consolidate power over the first eight years of its rule. It puts the civilian death toll from 1949 to 1957 at more than five million.
by Frank Dikotter
Bloomsbury
5 stars
is a meticulous chronicle of the violence used by China's Communist Party to take and consolidate power over the first eight years of its rule. It puts the civilian death toll from 1949 to 1957 at more than five million.
The book is the second volume of a trilogy by Frank Dikotter, chair professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong. The first was 2010's , which has sold more than 30,000 copies. The final book will be on the Cultural Revolution.
The bibliography includes archives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, eight provinces and three cities. These corroborate eyewitness accounts, personal memoirs, letters and diaries.
The tone is set by the first chapter on the five-month siege of Changchun in 1948 by a communist army under Lin Biao, in which at least 160,000 civilians starved to death. Inside the city were 500,000 civilians and 100,000 Kuomintang troops, surrounded by 200,000 Communist soldiers. Lin placed a sentry every 50 metres and turned back those trying to leave the city.
By the end of June 1948, 30,000 were trapped in a no man's land outside the city between the Communists and the Kuomintang troops who would not allow them back into the city.
