Sparks cover art

Sparks

China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future

Preview

Get this deal Try for £0.00
Offer ends January 21, 2025 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pay £0.99/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Sparks

By: Ian Johnson
Narrated by: Ian Johnson
Get this deal Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £15.99

Buy Now for £15.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

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.

©2023 Ian Johnson (P)2023 Tantor
20th Century China Freedom & Security Politics & Government

Listeners also enjoyed...

Postcards from Absurdistan cover art

What listeners say about Sparks

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.