China Law Blog

China does have much better economic prospects overall than it did in the 19th and early 20th century, but humans are human and men are men.

There are more and more confrontations between local younger men and foreigners in the presence of a local girl and it isn't some nationalist thing. Chinese girls, or any girls for that matter will turn down the lowest common denominator of man.

And these bare branches aren't just poor laborers, they are typically the least educated, the least physically and mentally capable and they probably don't come off as "good looking" either.

That being said, even in SH and BJ all you know what any group of migrant laborers are saying to local girls in the presence of foreign men and it isn't the typical "hey baby" cat calls.

The shortage is magnified by the fact that so many Chinese girls are marrying foreign men (even thoooose Japanese) and tens of thousands of baby girls being adopted by foreigners every year.

The Chinese gov't is aware of this problem and you can some attempts to defuse the situation by sending legions of Chinese laborers to the work sites of Chinese companies around the world.

There are also diplomatic problems as SE Asian girls working in China are being kidnapped for marriage to the sons of local bosses.

There may not be a united uprising, but sporadic attacks against foreign men or Chinese girls known to associate with foreign men.

An increase in homosexuality is a reality as well. Men gotta have sex, and just like prison if there are no women they will go after each other for companionship and satisfaction.

The Mutant Palm article you link to is indeed well worth reading, in that it convincingly deconstructs and destroys what was always very obviously a sensationalist and reductionist claim. Perhaps the Mutant might like to turn his attention to the equally ridiculous claim that it was CCP policy to promote cannibalism during the Cultural Revolution. Written by a dissident named Zheng Yi, now living in the United States, "Scarlet Memorial" is just as silly a book as Hudson and DenBoer's. Zheng claims that there were tens of thousands of cannibals in Guanxi Province, all eating their way to revolutionary fame! This work of "scholarship" (first published in 1998) has been retold at least twice a year every year ever since on the pages of the Falun Gong funded global newspaper, The Epoch Times - each time as if it were breaking news! It's quite laughable.

And just exactly on basis does Zheng rest his entire book, his entire claim? Well, during the time of the Cultural Revolution, when he was a member of the Party, he was apparently sent to Guangxi on an official mission to investigate "certain ultra-leftist deviations", and in the course of his investigations came across documents showing that the "right-wing" in Beijing were preparing a purge of the local party leadership in Guangxi, as the local party boss was apparently responsible for all this wiedespread politically-motivated cannibalism. In other words, the documents are forgeries in an intra-Stalinist type purge.

Such a conclusion is too obvious for Zheng though, who prefers to imagine that the documents were in fact real, that they were authentic, and so he treats them as empirically-verifiable evidence, even though he cannot even produce any evidence to support his claim that such documents ever even existed in the first place!

What amazes me is the way that such a silly claim is often reported in the Western media - the story told and retold ad nauseum as if it was a well established fact. Truth is, to date at least, there is not a single scrap of evidence to support even one single case of cannibalism in China during the Cultural Revolution years.

There is so much nonsense "reported" about China, both in the mainstream press and on the pages of English-language China-related blogs, that it truly is refreshing to come across sober pieces of writing like the Mutant Palm's deconstruction of the Hudson-DenBoer line. This blog (the China Law Blog), together with Shenzhen Fieldnotes, is among the few China-related blogs that are worth reading - both are useful resources that offer thoughtful insights and commentary on what truly is a fascinating country.

Correction: sorry, I quite carelessly made one small factual error in my above comment. The Falun Gong newspaper, The Epoch Times, has run the cannibalism story at least twice a year every year since 2000, not since 1998 (as I initially said above). The Epoch Times, incidently, is also the paper responsible for producing the overblown hyperbolic claims of Chinese state-sponsored organ harvesting - another of the poorly researched and grossly exaggerated claims that have been widely picked up and reported on uncritically by the world's mainstream press.

@MAJ:

So how do you dispute the online advertisements to go to China organ transplants across Japan, SK, Canada, US, EU, etc.? Are there really that many people dying in China?

Maybe you should refer to a journalist named Chen Pei Jin instead of yammering on with your pro-CCP agenda.

Nanheyangrouchan,

I did not claim that in China no prisoners had ever had their organs removed for the transplant market. I did, however, say that the Falun Gong expose in their propaganda rag, The Epoch Times, grossly exaggerated the extent to which this happens. Even dissident Harry Wu (who lives in the United States, and who has himself been exposed for having greatly exaggerated the number of prioners in China), questioned the feasibility of the Falun Gong claims. In 2006 he noted that the Falun Gong's claim that the particular prison for which they supposedly had evidence for, Sujiatun, could not possibly steal organs in the numbers claimed - 1,500 victims per year. To have done so, he said, would mean at least 120 persons per month would have had to have had their organs removed. "This would be impossible to accomplish in an environment such as Sujiatun," he said. "China takes organs from many executed prisoners every year, but to kill 4,000 or 5,000 people, I don't think so. Professional doctors would not do this." He also cast doubt on claims that a doctor removed corneas from 2,000 followers in less than two years. Of course, the doctor who made this claim was a dissident with an axe to grind, and couldn't, not surprisingly, provide any empirically-verifiable evidence.

nh/MAJ,

I feel like a judge here. All I will say is that in making accusations like this it is absolutely crucial to be accurate. Credibility in such things is everything and, once lost, takes a very long time to regain. The US had tremendous credibility (deserved) and then lost it by emphatically claiming Iraq was going nuclear, based on inssuficient evidence. To this day, I am not absolutely convinced US information was entirely wrong, but I am convinced we grossly overplayed our hand to our extreme detriment.

MAJ;

Sujiatun alone may not have the facilities to process so many numbers, but even you acknowledge these procedures and sales do take place. Is it inconceivable that there are multiple sites like Sujiatun? There are certainly lots of labor camps around China with the potential to harbor political prisoners.

MAJ:

I just saw your comment. As usual, you have gotten the facts wrong. As far as I know, Zheng Yi never claimed that tens of thousands of people were cannibalized and that it was official CCP policy. Perhaps you can supply us with a quotation directly from Zheng Yi?

It is generally accepted that about seventy people were killed and eaten under ritualistic cemernoies during the Cultural Recolution. Zheng Yi's book was generally among academics well received when it came out, although more research remains to be done and that Zheng's book has some shortcomings. This is what one reviewer said in the China Journal in 1997:

The bloodshed in Guangxi comprised only a portion of the crimes against
humanity committed in the name of ideology during the Maoist era.
Immediately after Mao passed away, the government urged people to 'look
forward' and to forget their sufferings. Books such as Scarlet Memorial serve
instead to preserve the collective memory of the Chinese people. For this,
Zheng Yi is owed a debt of thanks.

I can give you more sources, if you are interested.

Amban - I stand by what I said about Zhang's book and his discourse. He is another Harry Wu, who plucks figures out of his head at random. Zhang is quoted by Jonathan Mirsky in an article he wrote back in October 1999, titled "Media Perception of the PRC", published by the The Sigur Center for Asian Studies, as saying that:

"For the first time in our long history Chinese ate people, not because there was a famine and they were starving to death, but for political reasons. I think thousands participated in the cannibalism and at least many hundreds were eaten. The Party knows all about it."

In his book, Scarlet Memorial, he also claims that mass cannibalism occured, with ordinary citizens participating in the killing of thousands, which he blurs into his figure of actual numbers eaten, estimating that at around a hundred people were eaten in Wuxuan County alone. In other words, Zhang tries t give the impression that cannibalism was widespread, and politically motivated.

I will quote from the Scarlet Memorial for you later - I need to re-read it in order to find the exact quote, but my copy is at my parent's place in Newcastle. Give me a few days.

I am looking forward to your analysis. But you surely agree that political cannibalism did occur in Guangxi during the Cultural revolution and that the current regime in China suppresses any publicity about it? It may very well be the case that there are some misperceptions about the event, but isn't Beijing complicit in this ignorance? I think you should direct your ire against Beijing rather than Zheng Yi.

Amban - this is an interesting topic. I did not, however get my facts wrong - he clearly argued that up to ten thousand people participated in acts of cannibalism, suggesting that up to twenty people feasted on each victim at a time! He claims that his evidence shows that at least 137 people were eaten.

If you go back to my original comment on this post, I DID NOT CLAIM that Zheng argued that tens of thousands of people had been cannibalised. Go back and have a look. What I said was this: "Zheng claims that there were tens of thousands of cannibals in Guangxi Province, all eating their way to revolutionary fame!" Notice I said tens of thousand of cannibals, not ten thousand victims of cannibalism. This is how Zheng hyperbolises his ridiculous claims.

This is NOT another example of me "once again" getting my facts wrong (show me where I have gotten my facts wrong to date during our discussions) - this is just another example of where you, "as usual", have misread me!

You always accuse me of getting my facts wrong - like trying to tell me that Melvyn Goldstein is not a historian, but an anthropologist, when he is in fact both.

There is no real evidence that cannibalism occured during the Cultural Revolution - none! Especially no evidence that any politically motivated cannibalism took place.

The vast majority of academic reviewers dismissed Zheng's book as rubbish - and I will quote some for you later. The Falun Gong's Epoch Times, the Taiwan Review, Time Magazine, a few such publications lapped it up favourably, but most academic reviewers dismissed it as a work of fiction, which it is.

More later.....

"Show me where I have gotten my facts wrong to date during our discussions"

OK:

"It soon developed into a re-creation of the May 4th protests of 1929, when students demonstrated against the corruption and inefficiency of the former regime."

What former regime? And the protest were directed at the way China treated at the Versailles Peace conference. In 1919.

MAJ:

During WW2 in Sichuan, the Flying Tigers and missionaries noted that minority/tribal villagers were often seen carrying buckets with the heads of Han they had killed as trophies, cannabalism in rural areas during the CR is not impossible. There are parts of China that have been forgotten for hundreds of years, highway construction crews far out in the provinces bring cultural anthropologists with them full time because they have run into numerous communities that have had no recorded contact with the rest of China and no one can understand their spoken or written language.

Amban, the former regime that I was referring to is that of the Beiyang government - that series of military regimes that ruled from Beijing between the years 1912 to 1928. This series of regimes generally suppressed internal affairs, and did little to counter the influence exerted by imperialist foreign powers - a source of much anger among the general populace, who were also greatly dissatisfied with the continuing warfare among warlords, which all the Beiyang regimes were tightly tangled up with, and which of course had to led to great suffering among the population.

When the three thousand students of Peking University and other schools gathered together in front of Tiananmen to hold their demonstration of May 4, they shouted out such slogans as "Struggle for the sovereignty externally, get rid of the national traitors at home". They were angery over the treaty of Versailles, true, and demanded that some of the key figures in the government be punished - peopel such as Cao Rulin, Zhang Zongxiang, and Lu Zongyu, who held important posts as diplomats.

The protests were directed against the regime for the way they pampered to foreign interest, and for their corruption and inefficiency, as I said. The terms meted out to China under the Treaty of Versailles was the straw that broke the camel's back, the catalyst, if you like. As the historian, Peter Gue Zarrow writes, May Fourth "concentrated the despair that had been growing for decades over the impotence of the Chinese government...to provide honest, efficient, legitimate administration, capable of resisting imperialist pressures." (see his book, "China in War and Revolution 1895-1945", p.150)

In 1919, Lu Xun had his "Diaries of a Madman" published, in which he used the idea of cannibalism, used not literally but metaphorically, to explore the idea that the Chinese were destroying themselves, through corruption and inefficiency, by siding with imperialist powers, and by fighting among themselves. It was this environment, as you no doubt know, that fuelled the growth of Chinese Communist Party.

Once again Amban, I don't see how you can charge me with having gotten my facts wrong! We may have diverging readings of Chinese history (at least in some areas we seem to differ considerably) but doesn't mean I'm wrong and that you're right, or vise versa, does it?

All the best,
Mark Anthony Jones

Nanheyangrouchuan - where is your evidence to support this claim? The Wa ethnic minority were know to be headhunters (they live in the border regions between Yunnan and Burma), but this practice they ended no later than 1955. And the Zuang ethnic minority in Guangxi were known to occasionally practice cannibalism, long ago - something which I will discuss in a little more detail when I type up my response to Zheng Yi's ridiculous book, since the evidence he draws upon he derives from Wuxuan County, in thye heart of what is now a Zuang Ethnic Autonomous County.

More later....

Best regards,
Mark Anthony Jones

Sorry for all of the typing errors in my previous comments - I knock these out in a hurry, but I'll try to take more care in the future.

The school library has served me well again, as it has a copy of Zheng's book, which I now have sitting in front of me. So I can provide you with the quote and page reference. Here is what Zheng Yi actually argues:

"The exact number of cannibals in Wuxuan County remains a mystery. But we can still come up with a rough estimate: eighteen victims were xompletely cannibalised. If on average age there was 50 jin (25 kilograms) of flesh per victim, and each cannibal consumed one-half jin (one-quarter kilogram) of flesh, at least 2,000 people must have joined the cannibalism. And if the flesh was spread around, then perhaps 5,000 people might have participated. the other sixty victims, although their flesh was not completely consumed, would have provided for 5,000 cannibals, who must have participated in the cannibalism. This obscene arithmetic is based on the officially recognised list of seventy-six victims. But if Wang Zujian's estimation of over 100 is correct, then 10,000-20,000 people from the county must have engaged in cannibalism." (p.116)

Now, let us deconstruct this rubbish.

First of all, Zheng's only real evidence that 76 people in Wuxuan County was cannibalised, is based on a dodgy document, which may or may not even exist. He claims that this document lists the names of 76 victims, and that the secret document was included in a compilation of documents that were all bound together under the title of "The Annals of the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution in Wuxuan County", compiled by the CCP Wuxuan County Party Committee. The document dates back to the late 1960s, but the compilation wasn't published and made public until 1986.

This document, as I have already explained, is hardly credible. It was produced during the Cultural Revolution by a local government faction, who at the time was out to purge those of the opposing faction. The faction fighting broke out in 1967, when this outburst of cannibalism supposedly took place, between the supporters and opponents of Wei Guoqing, who was the top leader in Guangxi. Since this is in the hearyt of Zhuang territory, an ethnic group that are thought to have once practised the occasional (but rare) act of cannibalism, it is not too surprising that such scaremongering took place only in Guangxi.

This dodgy document is the ONLY document Zheng Yi has to support his claim that the cannibalism was government sanctioned. Hardly very convincing.

He relies almost entirely on hearsay, in stories and rumours of cannibalism - stories of how "livers" were "popped out" and eaten, brains "broiled" etc.

His hyperbolic sensationalist crap reaches a peak when he goes so far as to claim, on page 83, that "feats of human flesh were also held at Wuxuan Middle School" and on page 116 he says that Wuxuan experienced a "mass cannibalism movement" and on page 115 he claims that cannibalism didn't only occur in Wuxuan County, but "throughout all of Guangxi."

Notice how he takes a list of 76 cannibalised victims from a dodgy document which can easily be explained and accounted for, and then based on that one figure, stretch the imagination to the extent that the number of cannibals in that county alone could be as high as 10,000-2000 people.

Now look Amban - are you seriously trying to tell me that this kind of silliness is going to be taken seruiously in the academic world? Of course it wasn't taken seriously.

The Falun Gong Epoch Times loved it though, as did Time magazine, Asiaweek, and even the New York Times - all the usual culprits, that not surprisingly, turned Zheng's fiction into front page stories in the form of reports and exposes, as though it were all well-established fact.

As for the review that you referred to in the China Journal, that was written by Gong Xiaoxia, a dissident with an axe to grind, an employee of the US government funded propaganda Radio Free Asia.

Professional historian like Donald Sutton dismissed the claims. See his "Consuming Counterrevolution: The Ritual and Culture of Cannibalism in Wuxuan, Guangxi (May-July, 1968)," Comparative Studies in Society and History 7,1 (January 1995).

As for Zheng Yi - he is a novelist, and his silly claims have absolutely no basis of truth in them whatsoever. He is quite clearly motivated by a desire to embarrass the CCP. His book, is best seen for what it is: a work of politically-motivated fiction, the product of one man's spiteful quest for revenge.

Wuxuan's cannibalism was not an isolated act of spontaneous vengeance but
a custom that briefly flourished and had its own political and cultural logic.
Clearly, there was no breakdown of social order, no outbreak of chaos. The
incidents of cannibalism spread all over the county over a six-week period (see
Figure 1). Those who took the lead were not the crazed nor idealistic teenagers
well known from accounts of the Cultural Revolution (Bennett and Montaperto
1972; Ling 1972; Liang and Shapiro 1983; Gao 1987; Thurston 1987), but
Communist Party members and other cadres trained to be moral exemplars as
well as followers of central authority. The forces of law and order, not the
revolutionary rebels, were the killers and eaters. Moreover, the forms of
cannibalistic consumption varied within a narrow range. People agreed on the
best body parts and insisted on them being cooked; and the selection, killing,
and consuming of victims were relatively systematized. Cannibalism evidently
made sense to and had its own meanings for the participants. It was in fact
ritualized. Besides being rich in symbolic meaning, it was carried out by people
as a group, demarcated from ordinary life, in a fully predictable sequence of
events. The human flesh banquets (renrou yanxi), as they were called, were
integrated with the ritual of struggle (pidou) (see Table 1) and suggest a fresh
interpretation of that well-known feature of Maoist China.

Sutton, Donald S. "Consuming Counterrevolution: The Ritual and Culture of Cannibalism in Wuxuan, Guangxi, China, May to July 1968." Comparative Studies in Society and History 37, no. 1 (1995), p. 142.

Amban - have a look at Sutton's sources - it is Zheng Yi's account that Sutton is re-telling here, and I have already pointed out Zheng's serious flaws and absence of any real credible evidence. Have you actually read Zheng's book? If you have, then you will know that he uses one document (the one I discussed above) and the rest of his sources that he lists as evidence are interviews, oral recounts by "witnesses", or people who at the time had heard about the cannibalism.

It seems as though I confused the Donald Sutton article for someone else's. My mistake. Gang Yue has written a good critique though, in his book titled "The Mouth That Begs". I will find the critical journal reviews I meant to cite, and will actually quote from them for you later.

Thanks for pointing out my error - this time I really did get a fact wrong!

All the best,
Mark!

MAJ:

Well, you have been caught with a little bit more than just a factual error. The quote demolishes your claim that Zheng Yi's book "of course wasn't taken seriously" in academic circles.

And if you read the article closely, you will discover that Sutton reads Zheng critically and explains why he regards Zheng Yi's account as credible, despite the fact that the book is problematic. He also supplies an additional source, which has verified Zheng's claims independently.

You also forgot to mention that Gong Xiaoxia also holds a Ph.D. from Harvard and that she wrote the review of Zheng Yi's book before she joined Radio Free Asia. And interesting case of retroactive, reductive, reasoning.

Well, I'm sure that none of this matters to you, but whatever.

I don't have Zheng's book in front of me, but this is how Sutton paraphrases his argument:

People are eating each other, came the message from southern Guangxi to
Peking in the early summer of 1968, as the violent phase of the Cultural
Revolution was drawing to a close. When militia reinforcements arrived in
Wuxuan, parts of decomposing corpses still festooned the town center (Zheng
1993:2-3). No proper investigation was conducted, however, for this was a
county in which order had already been imposed and the rebels had been
crushed. Only in 1981-83, long after the Gang of Four had collapsed, was an
investigation team sent into the county. It compiled a list of those eaten and a
number of the ringleaders in cannibalism. Fifteen were jailed, and 130 Party
members and cadres were disciplined. The Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous
Region announced the expulsion from the Party of all who had eaten human
flesh.' But the regulations were withdrawn quickly for fear that the document
would be slipped out to Hong Kong and reveal this episode of cannibalism to
the world (Zheng 1993:32).

Sutton (1995), p. 136.

This account hardly tallies with your "deconstruction" of the party report.

I have another article that you might want to read for context on what was going on in Guangxi in the 1960s:

Yang, Su. "Mass Killings in the Cultural Revolution: A Study of Three Provinces." In The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History, edited by Joseph Esherick, Paul Pickowicz and Andrew G. Walder, 96-123. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.

You can find another version here:

http://repositories.cdlib.org/csd/03-06/

"Nanheyangrouchuan - where is your evidence to support this claim? The "

Living missionaries from that time.

Amban, the passage you quote from Zheng amounts to very little, as far as I am concerned. How does that constitute evidence? What is his source for this information, regarding the list and the fifteen jailed: "The Annals" document that I mentioned earlier, published in the early 80s. So some Party officials sent to investigate years after the "event" endorsed the initial allegations of cannibalism. Hardly surprising, especially since the faction purged was the faction accused of commiting the acts of cannibalism. The rebels, as Zheng himself says, had "already been crushed".

And just what exactly is this new evidence that Sutton introduces in support of Zheng's claims?

I agree that I was wrong to claim that Zheng's book wasn't taken seriously by academics. A few did accept his claims. You must be happy! :) Not all accept his claims and his use of "evidence" though: see Richard King's review in Pacific Affairs, Volume 7, No.3, Fall 1997 for example. This is the review that I confused Sutton's with (I think). I will read Sutton's article more carefully when I get the chance, and King's.

Actually, I have so far been able to locate very few academic reviews of Zheng's book - which is surprising. Plenty of mention in the mainstream press though. I am pressed for time too, by the way, but yes, I should exercise more care and caution when making statements.

You too, for that matter - don't you agree?

All the best,
Mark!

Amban - one more thing: even if it does turn out to be true, that some people were cannibalised in Wuxuan County, say the 76 people whose names appear on this list, surely you would at least agree with me that Zheng's claim that 20 people feasted on each person, and that the number of cannibals could have been as high as 10,000-20,000 in that county alone, is silly, and greatly exaggerated?

Sorry, one more quick thing: Gong Xiaoxia is a dissident with an axe to grind. The fact that she didn't begin working for Radio Free Asia until after she had written her review doesn't diminish my point. She is, nevertheless, an academic reviewer - but then I took that as given, since her review was published in an academic journal.

I have altered my position slightly in light of our discussion here Amban: I now accept that there is a possibility that some instances of cannibalism may have occured during the Cultural Revolution years(though I still strongly doubt it). I don't beleive for one second that "mass" cannibalism occured, or that "group feasts" occured.

Time now for dinner....

Mark!

It is good that you have altered your position, because your case against Zheng Yi has largely collapsed. I did misread one of your comments and I do agree that some of

Yue Gang and Richard King do not dispute the fact that incidents of cannibalism have occurred. What the object to is Zheng's sensationalist style and some of his claims about Chinese culture. As for the case of cannibalism itself, taken together the evidence appears to be solid. More information is needed, but as Sutton noted in his article, in contrast to stories of acts of cannibalism that have been committed by "others", Zheng has found people that admit that they did kill and eat opponents, some of whom remain unrepentant. The testimonies thus fall into a completely different category of stories of cannibalism that anthropologists are very skeptical of. So you are wrong when you say that the book is based on rumor and hearsay.

Well, I would say, having read his book and looking at all of the sources he cites, that his Zheng's are based largely on hearsay and rumour. I do not consider any of his evidence to be solid. Far from it.

And the fact that Zheng claims to have found a few people who admit to acts of cannibalism is problematic too, as far as evidence goes. I remain, as I said, highly skeptical.

Amban, I have altered my position only slightly. All I'm saying is that I was clearly wrong to assert that "no" serious academic has ever taken his book seriously, and that I am now prepared to accept the possibility that some instances of cannibalism "may" have occured (with the emphasis on the words "possibility" and "may").

I reject Zheng's suggestion that a "mass cannibalism movement" occured. That to me is just too silly for words.

I have enjoyed having this discussion with you Amban. The fact that you have forced me to alter my position slightly, has for me been beneficial. I thank you for that. This is one topic that I shall research in considerably more depth once the long school summer vacation begins, which is now only slightly less than five weeks away. At present I simply don't have the time - too many end of year reports to write.

Best regards,
Mark Anthony Jones

The Chinese have always been a race of cannibals, for thousands of yeras they have eaten one another. They still practice cannibalism, even today. It is common for the Chinese to eat infant corpses and fetuses. Chinese women worry about their health and beauty, and think that the placenta and aborted fetuses will hep. This goes on now, right now as we speak.

@MAJ

Always happy to serve the community.