Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution
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- 2011 (English, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom)
- 2017 (Chinese, CUHK Press, Hong Kong)
 | |
| Author | Su Yang (苏阳) |
|---|---|
| Language | English, Chinese |
| Subject | Cultural Revolution |
| Published |
|
| Pages | 300 |
| ISBN | 9780511762574 |
Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution is a book by Chinese historian Su Yang (苏阳).[1] The book presents detailed analysis on the massive killings in the rural areas in mainland China during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).[1][2][3] Originally published by the Cambridge University Press in 2011, the book received the 2012 Barrington Moore Book Award by the American Sociological Association.[1][4] The book was later translated into Chinese by Song Xi (宋熙), and the Chinese edition was published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong Press in 2017.[5]
The book, Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution, was originally published in 2011 by the Cambridge University Press.[1] By studying over 1,500 official county gazetteers as well as other unpublished investigative reports and his own interviews with villagers, Su Yang (based in UC Irvine[6]) systematically recorded and analyzed in his book the collective killings in rural area of China during the Cultural Revolution.[2][3][7]
In the book, Su focuses on Guangxi and Guangdong provinces, where the largest number of killings took place during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Guangxi Massacre and Guangdong Massacre[8]), and the first four years of the Revolution (1966–1969).[2][3][7] Su further proposed the "community model" to explain the occurrence of these collective killings, and challenged the applicability of the mainstream "state policy model" in conventional genocide studies.[2][3][7] The two models differ in a number of ways; for instance, even though Su recognizes the state as an essential actor, he argues that the state played a reduced role of indirect impetus for the collective killings, and that the whole community was responsible for the collective killings instead of just the individual leaders and perpetrators.[2][3]