Culture | Writing the wrongs of history

Some people in China are bravely trying to document the past

“Sparks”, a new book by Ian Johnson, looks at China’s censored history

The first hours of daylight after the massacre on Tiananmen Square, June 4th 1989. — Wiped from official memoryImage: Koichi Imaeda/Magnum Photos

Sep 27th 2023

Amid the global calamity of covid-19 in 2021, the Chinese Communist Party’s elite had much to discuss at their secretive, annual conclave. But in the communique issued at the end, there were eight times as many mentions of the word “history” as of the word “pandemic”. To China’s leader, Xi Jinping, getting the party to agree to his version of the party’s century-long past was a no less pressing matter.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Writing the wrongs of history”