The editor of a well-known liberal political magazine in China stepped down recently, the culmination of years of mounting pressure from political opponents.
Yang Jisheng, 75, a noted scholar and the author of a seminal history of China’s mass famine caused by Maoist policies in late 1950s, also penned two letters announcing his resignation. The notes, and Yang’s interviews with the press, show the frustrations that even those with deep ties to the Party establishment experience when attempting to operate a publication that strays from rigid Party orthodoxy. Some observers in China also see behind the bullying of the publication the hand of political struggle within the Party itself, as one group of officials attempts to twist the arm of a respected institution in order to exert pressure on central Party authorities.
Much of the detail of the pressure of the magazine, usually hidden away from the rest of the world, was revealed on the Internet on July 16 soon after Yang Jisheng quit on June 30. Yang said in an interview with Radio Free Asia, a U.S.-funded broadcaster, that he did not leak the letters himself—but together they reveal in detail the intense behind-the-scenes pressure the journal was put under.
Yanhuang Chunqiu, the journal that Yang left, is known as China Through the Ages in English. First published in 1991, it is a monthly publication known for challenging Party-approved accounts of history—particularly on the Maoist political mania that rocked China in decades past.
