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Title details for Sparks by Ian Johnson - Available

Sparks

by Ian Johnson
Ian Johnson
Audiobook
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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. One of Xi Jinping's signature policies is the control of history, which he equates with the party's survival. But in recent years, 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 accounts that have underpinned recent protests in China against Xi Jinping's strongman rule. Based on years of 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 China in the mid-21st century.
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Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc. Edition: Unabridged

OverDrive Listen audiobook

  • ISBN: 9798855502732
  • File size: 351193 KB
  • Release date: October 31, 2023
  • Duration: 12:11:39

MP3 audiobook

  • ISBN: 9798855502732
  • File size: 351243 KB
  • Release date: October 31, 2023
  • Duration: 12:17:31
  • Number of parts: 13
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Formats

OverDrive Listen audiobook
MP3 audiobook

subjects

History Politics Nonfiction

Languages

English

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. One of Xi Jinping's signature policies is the control of history, which he equates with the party's survival. But in recent years, 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 accounts that have underpinned recent protests in China against Xi Jinping's strongman rule. Based on years of 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 China in the mid-21st century.
Expand title description text
History Politics Nonfiction
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