MCLC: famine denial ignites fury

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Amanda Shuman <amanda.shuman at gmail.com>
Subject: famine denial ignites fury
***********************************************************

Not sure if people saw this article posted on Offbeat China or not - one
comment about the famine of 1959-1961, posted by an official on weibo,
resulted in lots of personal stories/comments about the GLF.

Amanda

==========================================================

Source: Offbeat China (5/3/12):
http://offbeatchina.com/denial-from-peoples-daily-branch-head-ignited-furio
us-discussion-of-the-great-famine

Denial from People’s Daily Branch Head Ignited Fury and Discussions of the
Great Famine 

During this past May Day holiday, Lin Zhibo
<http://www.weibo.com/linzhibo>, Head of People’s Daily Gansu Branch,
posted a few weibo posts on Sina and denied the Great Famine
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine> from 1959 to 1961 (a
direct result of the Great Leap Forward. Though he apologized after
receiving waves of criticism, he was unable to put off Chinese netizens’
anger.  In addition to criticism of Lin Zhibo, a probably unexpected
result of the incidence is that numerous weibo users started to share
their family stories during the period, which has long been a taboo topic
in China.

Lin Zhibo was born in 1963 and graduated from the Department of History at
People’s University of China (aka, Remin University of China) in 1983. He
used to do research on China’s wartime history at PLA Military Science
Institute 
<http://www.chinamil.com.cn/site1/2008a/2008-03/12/content_1160947.htm>.
Judging from his old weibo posts, he has been a firm supporter of Mao and
the “Chongqing model” lead by Bo Xilai
<http://topics.bloomberg.com/bo-xilai/>, China’s ousted Politburo member.
And of course, he opposes Western ideologies. Ironically, netiznes have
dug out that his wife drives a made-in-Germany Porshe Cayenne.

On April 29, he posted the above weibo:

“To bash Chairman Mao, some people even fabricated lies about the death of
tens of millions of people during 1960 to 1962. To confirm the number,
some visited those Henan villages which experiences the worst famine at
the time. It turned out that the truth didn’t match their lies. Many
villagers have heard of people starving to death but never personally saw
one themselves, which is direct evidence that very few people died of
starvation at the time.”

The post soon got shared thousands of times on Sina Weibo, and together
with reposts came criticism. During the next few hours, Lin tried to
defend his point of view by attacking netizens who left angry comments to
his original post, “Nowadays in China, slaves of the West are everywhere.
It’s not uncommon to see people who see the US as God."

But probably out of pressure, on April 30, he posted an apology on Weibo
<http://www.weibo.com/1864600283/yh7RNdbKO>:
 <http://offbeatchina.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/2.png>

“I haven’t done much research about the history of the Great Famine and
didn’t know much of it. In the past few days, I received a lot of messages
from netiznes describing their traumas at the time. I’m deeply shocked at
what I’ve learned. My inappropriate words have triggered many people’s
painful memories and hurt many people’s feelings. I feel very sorry and
hereby apologize to everybody! Thanks netizens for pointing out my
mistakes. I wish we can work together to prevent the tragedy from
happening again.”

Did netizens accept his apology? Absolutely not. “As a stooge, no one
cares whether you apologize or not. We people keep that piece of history
very well in our hearts. For someone at your position, telling lies is as
common as eating meals,” commented 文止戈 <http://www.weibo.com/wzhige>. 牛秀
元 
<http://weibo.com/yekki> even labeled Lin as “Pretend to be patriotic –
that’s his job. A traitor at heart – that’s his life.” Many more netizens
called for Lin’s resignation.

More interesting than the criticism are the waves of personal stories
coming out (Luckily no one seemed to report censorship over stories of the
Great Famine on Sine Weibo).

 “To People’s Daily Gansu Branch Head Lin Zhibo, my hometown is a valliage
in Anhui Province. I heard senior villagers talk about “the year of 1958”
since I was little. I’m not sure how many have died of starvation from
1958 to 1961, but in my father’s family, the only ones survived were my
father, his mom and dad and his youngest sister. All his brothers were
dead. Whenever my father talks about it, he’d cry. I also feel his pain.
Now Mr. Branch Head said something like this, I want to ask, ‘where is
your heart?’” said 丁来峰 <mailto:@%E4%B8%81%E6%9D%A5%E5%B3%B0>.

Another one from Anhui Province, “To @林治波
<http://weibo.com/n/%E6%9E%97%E6%B2%BB%E6%B3%A2> (Lin Zhibo), My father
came from Linshu County, Anhui Province. Due to his family’s extreme
poverty, my father was given a chance to study at a college in Shanghai.
To make it possible for my father to live, my grandparents had to eat tree
barks and they both starved to death.”

“During the Great Famine, not many people directly died of starvation in
my hometown. But a lot died from malnutrition. Many more households
escaped at the risk of being shot. Most of these people lost trace since,
among them were my grandma’s family,” 晓雨闻铃
<http://weibo.com/xywl1118>shared.

“The Great Famine experienced by my family. My hometown is Jingyan at
Leshan. One of my aunts married a Mr. Xiong from the same village. They
had a total of 8 members in their family, the couple, one son, two
grandparents, and three siblings. They all starved to death during the
Great Famine. None survived! The tragedy happened right to our parents’
generation. How does @林治波
<http://weibo.com/n/%E6%9E%97%E6%B2%BB%E6%B3%A2>
(Lin Zhibo) dare to deny it?” commented 再给你十年活
<http://weibo.com/u/2269708835>.

“My father told me that 1958 was actually a once-in-a-life-time plentiful
year. How big was the harvest? Ripe grains were left rotten in farmlands
for months. The whole village smelled like rotten sweet potatoes. 1959 was
OK, but people started to die of starvation from 1960. To those who hold
similar views as @林治波 <http://weibo.com/n/%E6%9E%97%E6%B2%BB%E6%B3%A2>
(Lin Zhibo), if you don’t believe there were deaths and insisted that it
was all natural disaster, I can go back to my hometown in Tai’an City,
Shandong Province with you and do interviews. All expenses on me.” 程韵秋声
<http://weibo.com/n/%E7%A8%8B%E9%9F%B5%E7%A7%8B%E5%A3%B0> said.

Such personal stories went on and on, at first, as evidence to show Lin
that there were indeed deaths, later, as part of a shared memory that
people find an urge to let out. As 木大叔-杨
<http://weibo.com/woodman1>commented, “Lin’s words have merits afterall.
He sacrificed himself and put this topic under spotlight. History needs to
be told.”