Yang Jisheng

Yang Jisheng (born November 1940) is a Chinese journalist and author. His work include Tombstone (墓碑), a comprehensive account of the Great Chinese Famine during the Great Leap Forward, and The World Turned Upside Down (天地翻覆), a history of the Cultural Revolution. Yang joined the Communist Party in 1964 and graduated from Tsinghua University in 1966. He promptly joined Xinhua News Agency, where he worked until his retirement in 2001. His loyalty to the party was destroyed by the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Although he continued working for the Xinhua News Agency, he spent much of his time researching for Tombstone. Yang used his role at the state-run Xinhua news agency to access provincial archives, beginning covert research on the Great Famine in the mid-1990s. Over a decade, he posed as studying grain policies, taking significant personal risks to secretly compile the first detailed account of the famine using Chinese government sources. As of 2008, he was the deputy editor of the journal Yanhuang Chunqiu in Beijing. Yang is also listed as a Fellow of China Media Project, a department under Hong Kong University. Counterfeit copies of his book, along with photocopies and electronic versions, circulate widely, but Yang is unconcerned about copyright—his only wish is for the Chinese people to know their own history. (which has been condensed almost by 50%) have been published. He was reported to be banned from leaving China to receive the award in a ceremony in Harvard University to be held in March 2016.

Reception Yang was awarded The Stieg Larsson prize 2015 for his "stubborn and courageous work in mapping and describing the consequences" of The Great Leap Forward. Yang was awarded the 2016 Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism, selected by the Nieman Fellows at Harvard University. In the award citation, the fellows stated: "Through the determination and commitment required for this project, Mr. Yang clearly demonstrates the qualities of conscience and integrity. He provides inspiration to all who seek to document the truth in the face of influences, forces and regimes that may push against such transparency."

Sun Jingxian, a Chinese mathematician, saw in the book a direct attack of China's political system asserting that Yang had done that by committing a distorted historical investigation. He argued that Yang made serious methodological errors in his assumption that starvation deaths could be calculated by looking at the difference between the average number of deaths for a given period and the actual number of deaths for that same year.

Economic historian Cormac Ó Gráda, reviewing the book, stated that: "Yang tends to neglect the famine historical context and China's economic vulnerability". He notes that China was the "land of famine" because it was extremely poor and, in the 1950s, China was still extremely poor. Ó Gráda also asserts that Yang's estimate of 40 million fewer births is excessive. Historian Anne Applebaum praised the book as being "the definitive account of the Great Famine".

Awards 2013 Hayek Book Prize and Lecture by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. 2015 Stieg Larsson Prize "for his stubborn and courageous work in mapping and describing the consequences of The Three Years of Great Chinese Famine" 2015 Award from the Independent Chinese PEN Center (for the Chinese language version) 2016 Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism

Published works 墓碑 －－中國六十年代大饑荒紀實 (Mubei – - Zhongguo Liushi Niandai Da Jihuang Jishi) ("Tombstone: An Account of Chinese Famine in the 1960s"), Hong Kong: Cosmos Books (Tiandi Tushu), 2008. By 2010, it was appearing under the title: 墓碑: 一九五八-一九六二年中國大饑荒紀實 (Mubei: Yi Jiu Wu Ba – Yi Jiu Liu Er Nian Zhongguo Da Jihuang Shiji) ("Tombstone: An Account of Chinese Famine From 1958–1962"). Tombstone: The Untold Story of Mao's Great Famine, trans. Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian, Publisher: Allen Lane (2012), (English Translation of the above work) 天地翻覆——中国文化大革命史, The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, English translation of above book, translated and edited by Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2021). "Renverser ciel et terre - La tragédie de la Révolution culturelle, 1966–1976, French translation of 天地翻覆 by Louis Vincenolles, Éditions du Seuil, 2020,