Is a translator lined up for Yang Jisheng's TOMBSTONE? I am told that a Wen Huang has undertaken a translation of Yang Xianhau's FAREWELL TO JIABIANGOU, another eye-popping account (thinly fictionalized) of the Great Leap Famine. Yang Xianhau has also written CHRONICLE OF DING XI ORPHANAGE and CHRONICLE OF JIABIANGOU, though I am not aware that a translator has been engaged for these works.

So perhaps the dam of silence is beginning to break on this epochal subject.

Here's the uncomfortable (perhaps Voltairean) question: We in the West thought that it would not be possible to have healthy dealings with post-war Germany unless its political leadership had been entirely de-nazified. How sensible is it to expect good future relations with a government that refuses to confront the Great Leap Famine?

Good question. I think perhaps the better analogy is with Post War Japan. Japan has never come to grips with its wartime crimes (outlined in lurid detail in "The Rape of Nanking" and most recently in "Retribution" by Max Hastings"). It has, instead, somewhat successfully managed to portray itself as a victim due to the manner in which the War ended (don't tell that to the Chinese though).

Anyway, we have had a great relationship with Japan since 1945 as it has been effecitively de-militarized. Although its population generally refuses to face the facts of history, that doesn't usually get in the way of Japan being generally an amenable, friendly nation. Of course, their friendliness may have something to do with the disporportion of military power and the depence of their economy on the West, and especially, the US. This doesn't look like it will change anytime soon, since the Japanese are especially skittish about the rise of China, which hasn't forgotten about Japan's WWII crimes at all.

All of which is to say that there may be a middle way between forgetting the crimes of Mao and destroying the current regime. I personally believe that Deng started the process in 1978 by turning his back on Mao and embracing open markets. Academics in China are pretty free to discuss the crimes Mao committed, and there is apparently no nationalist backlash against critics of Mao as there is in Japan with critics of the Showa regime. The difference may be that in WWII Japan declared war on other nations and its government's victims were mostly foreign; Mao effectively declared war on his own people and his Chinese victims have not forgotten.