but yes, one object -- the price is not inherent in the object. the price is in the transaction. it is a measure of the preferences of the people that are buying it reed said the cost puts the floor on what you can make a profit by selling this particular thing but the price itself that is i find that one of the highlights one of the most startling findings of economics because even though it sounds obvious and it took us a long time to get their -- >> host: it's been the case technology and distribution really enables a great variety of those. in other words 20 years ago if you get a hardback book and the price and that is it. today there are 20 different ways of getting it, 100 different retailers and eight different formats each with a different price that is a meeting or value to the consumer. >> guest: and moreover if you look at how attentive media

organizations are about putting a price on what used to be free, what is available online, you can get a sense of how little we really understand how we should price these things. so the new york time has been thinking about its payroll for ever and it's going to go up fairly soon. i don't know what it's going to look like, but apparently it's pretty sophisticated range of prices. ..

>> it is the great time to begin my honor at the asia society with a an important and difficult look like this one. we have vast professor dikotter to this day's began our discussion by giving a short reading and then will anybody writing about a subject as huge and difficult to comprehend as the great leap forward forward, inevitably needs to find a way to make it intelligible and to break it down and write about it.

professor dikotter has taken a mosaic approach to use the rich and often ghastly details that he has spent -- painstakingly unearthed across china to comment on the disaster from a number of different styles from cold war diplomacy at eight -- and diplomacy and trade on the larger scale to farmers on the small-scale and what emerges is what a country can do not just by hunger but the word famine is inadequate to describe what happened but by monumental dislocation of ideas come in nature, reason and about just about everything that held society together. to the end of the book he describes several places he

calls sites of four where the toll was especially brutal and the sources give the especially vivid picture of that brutality and he will begin with one of the the -- these. >> thank you very much for coming tonight. i discovered a lot after four years of research on the "great leap forward" i spent six months and archives collecting extraordinary material from a security bureau report to the investigations coming over the death of literally millions we knew quite well there were other great mass

murders in the 20th century just a stolid comes to mind and hitler as well and of course, it is often said that poor plot:1.7 million 32 point* 4 million people and in a country of about 80 million and that constitutes the greatest mass murder in the 20th century although said nothing similar ever happened in china because it is such a large country by will read you about one place about two and a half pages on this place to find that numbers correspond to cambodia 1.7 or 2.4 million people died in the country.

>> i have to look over my glasses. >> nothing was as bad run by one of mao's most devoted followers divided into regions over one dozen. one of those regions had a population of 8 million in 1950 a. to lead three years later more than 2.4 million people had died. one of the reasons was the landscape itself flat and generally barren as if you place to hide many of those who wanted to flee the area where the famine was even worse it was a web of death and in 1957 and became the focus of a huge irrigation and project that commanded up to 80% of the labor force

and every sector would have adopt and also a large waterway the would be as smooth as a mirror to make the soil as pliable and set town of fuyung would catch up with the future in a year or two. in daytime and we fight the sun at night we battle the stars from behind the ceaseless exploitation among the river and many succumb to disease and exhaustion and death but to prevent workers from returning home the mulish -- militia fueled looking at dikes and channels everything in the way trees, graves even large bridges torn down forcing farmers to walk several kilometers each day and entire villages were

required to relocate. hundreds simply vanished from the map. other giant schemes took away the best workers from the selling or reaping was even completed. so abundant was the crop crop, that grain should be turned into alcohol building more than 3,200 factories january 1959 of less than half and many tens of grain went to waste clunky wheels added that was so heavy that doubles could no longer pull them and then there were banned and farmers seem to use them were denounced their grain output plunged but then it was doubled on paper requisitions followed

carried out with routine violence extracted close at 19% of the actual crop and to compensate first in two households carried weight tables and chairs and farmers were forced to turn in a set amount up to several kilos and failure to fulfil the quota were banned from the canteen. having to hand over the cotton jackets of the 17 at year-old mother and child. in the freezing cold they had to bury themselves under straw to keep warm. by 1960 there was so little left to collect that the biggest consisted of 100 coffins. torture was rampant and wire was used to pierce from bad elements while women were stripped and suspended by

their hair the use it of violence which summarized and here i quote people dined -- died in tragic circumstances being beaten and haying to death some were severely tortured and beaten have been there years chopped off and noses dugout and the more up -- mouth torn off which caused the death. we discover how extremely serious there was once we started investigating" one small religion alleys one the ledger had been killed the leader killed five people and in some cases the villagers were deliberately and trapped and in late 1959 at the height of the fam and one of the food-processing factories belonging to the local cream bureau who, left

been cakes in the courtyard with the gates wide open. a starving farmers tried to go for the food, the gates were suddenly locked "those were caught were forced into a sack tied at the end than they were beaten with iron bars the sacs are covered in blood for others or cut by knives and oil but into the wounds" help for the famished was withheld. 15 tons of grain in one county alone were confiscated hastening the death of thousands. people died when the local authorities tried to hide the famine from inspection teams in the militia were instructed to seal off the villages not to allow anyone with the slightest starvation onto the streets

targeted for a visit of the ministry of interior, the county had scrambled to round up and hide more than the 3,000 villagers locked up without any medical support several hundred died in a matter of-- a quick look how they were suffering from the d matt he will not live. bury him quickly as one team was under way. he was still breathing while being buried. said the local secretary. that is it. i will now sit down and continue.

>> before we start our discussion i wanted to mention this book will be on sale at the end of this event and professor dikotter will sign copies when we finish. much of the book is how the country got to a place like fuyung and to get there, you begin in beijing 1953 with the the reaction to the death of stalin. you don't call the book china's great famine but "mao's great famine" and talk a little bit about why you begin the story there and what was happening? >> there are reasons why the

great leap forward starts at the end of 19571 of the great reasons is the death of a man called joseph stalin. of the death of stalin is mao's liberation he is very much indebted to stalin and sees himself as the real leader of the socialist camp. think about it. stolid never led the bolshevik revolution, london did. mouse sees himself at to humanity as what he describes as liberation. mouth is the one of thought the americans to a standstill in the korean war. after mao's death one roach sound -- rotund and awkward man succeed him and mao has very little respect for the% when he goes to moscow 1957

and he openly proclaims that the soviet union will overtake the united states in the production of butter, milk, other dairy products, now says we will overtake england you may take united states and we will seek to takeover england still seen as a major power within the great 15 years and then make that leap forward but most of all what mao really wishes to demonstrate not the ability to overtake england but outdo the soviets. to show that mao or chris jeff has realized the bridge to communism. what is that? the people commune. seeing the real wealth of the country with hundreds of millions of farmers in the

countryside, if only they could be harnessed for every man could work like a soldier in a continuous repetition, surely the country could be catapulted past this but it is "mao's great famine" because he initiated this and he is someone who very much makes sure number two and three and four down the line will support him in that the first thing he does is purge the party as tens of thousands who were unwilling to go of with the great leap forward and are replaced by hard unscrupulous man willing to benefit from the radical wince from beijing. not so much number two that supports the "great leap

forward" but also number three and public meetings he the means them and humiliates them to make us self confession two or three times until finally falls in line and has full support for the great leap forward also fun that allows it to stop from 1961. >> host: maybe it would be helpful to walk us through the first three months or years of how mouse actions actions -- mao's actions actions, how does it begin? >> it begins in moscow how

looking at friendly competitive bidding with united states where mao starts of great leap forward past united states into england but the key point* is really the winter of 57 and 58 often rethink of the people's commune says the key moment but precisely during the winter that mao's seize the opportunity to use these hundreds of millions of farmers during that slack season to transform the face of china to have them workaday in and day out by massive irrigation projects. won that one can find in the literature about this point* is in 1958, there was a great leap forward and death and hunger only starts to

creep been delayed to 1958 or early 1940 -- 59 but tens of thousands of people mos said die of overwork and exhaustion and famine by this summer of 1958 villages are herded the lab is being taken away the livelihood, the cattle, everything is collected nothing remains to force these people to go to these irrigation projects although far away from the village not being given enough food to sleep outside but mao's doctor writes about this himself as a privilege% and pass to spend two weeks working on the irrigation project in the

back is broken after two weeks. it is a privileged time these farmers have to work for weeks. they are exhausted given insufficient food, literally driven into overworked themselves to death. the hardest part very much in the beginning is the key dates but one year later in the summer of 1958 of the key influential paper station employed people actually speak out on the "great leap forward" creating a backlash meaning fact fuyung pushes even harder with yet to with more who were unwilling to go along with the addition of solely padilla and the end of it his by a 1960 finally

reaching october 1960 so many tens of millions of people have died unnecessarily often violent conditions as the two pages show. the transportation system has come to a halt 1 ton of grain literally rotted by the roadside collected because there is no fuel while the farmers eat the plaster from the wall sometimes even mud even to get by. october 1968 leadership for the first time it is willing to look at the catastrophe in its full scope and third 1961 it now allows -- mao allows us some of his key

players to have the measure of liberty through the free market through 1962 it is pretty much abandoned 47 to get back to the earlier period, one of the things that surprised me in reading this is the famine actually begins with a bizarre point* of the steam, politically mandated gluttony when the state is claiming there is such the intense surplus people should be consuming that if larger and larger quantities. why? why did that happen? >> guest: underground party officials are trying to outdo each other to

overfilling the latest demand to produce quote this letter out of our relationship with what is being produced under ground. if there is so much grain as mao believes the summer of 58 what will we do with it? this seems like the absurd question but one khrushchev visits in the summer of 19508 and taken to the swimming pool for eight chitchats 16 via the side of the pool, he is told that china's real problem is that there is so much grain, what should we do with it? and khrushchev does not say anything says quietly, how could you produce so much

grain? we all work hard never quite enough to feed everybody how can you claim there is too much grain? that was the official slogan. why not feed? this is mao's command five meals per day. on the other hand, the villagers have already seen the so much of their labor of their homes and tools confiscated by the party, they see the opportunity to get back what is their own because these public dormitories and kindergartens were set up with their furniture, there bricks so the food is their labor so what do they do? they eat and feast and try to eat as much as they can to get something back with the full knowledge what day

it will all be gone. >> host: there is a parallel story that you tell of the state's own appetite some for industrial machinery and four other things that china is purchasing internationally and paying for in the grain. can you talk about china's trade at this moment? >> 1958, china bias so much equipment, and tire factory is -- factories when the bills come and in december, they have to be paid but by december 1958 the leadership's stars to realize of the targets and numbers and digits on paper do not correspond to the

reality and the grain output is much lower those who were so reluctant to go along has become absolutely crucial in fulfilling and employment gains that vision that mao has and the first wad to say he would rather not eat them not honor a foreign contract. so if every man and woman could eat less meat and grain, then we could repay our debt to the soviet union in no time and then visits the country where meets would be banned all of it. there is a mess somehow by the end of 1958 the leadership steps back it is

not all what you see march 25th, a few months later mao go so far to say it may top secret meeting last half of them died provided the other half guinea to their felt. procurements should increase up 30% of all of the agreement to meet the commitments to repay the debt and makes available trucks to make sure they can be carried out. >> host: why is that the priority? >> guest: it is more important for the other top leaders to save face than it is to save lives. there is a slow been which

mao comes up and 1959 and he who strikes first, prevails. when i read that slogan in these minutes which i found in a very remote archive, i did not quite understand what he meant until later on i came across another document dated a few months later and here we have a man who is responsible for agriculture explain that saying to the subordinates that he who strikes first means that the part -- the party, the state should get the grain before the farmers get their hands on it and that this particular saying should not be used below the

level of county heads because it could lead to misunderstanding. also the man taken to task those who are somehow to bed who are beating their grain out of farmers. what does he say? if you are afraid of waging war on the farmers and there something ideologically wrong with you. what i am trying to say even before the summer of 1959 with the of backlash ada before then and 1959, they are very much aware the fact they're taking far too much grain although it has to be done by forced coercion.

>> host: so do you paint a picture of a party leadership that is all powerful to compel people to be paid in these unthinkable ways 21 another to rip whole communities apart? on a very hand you have intriguing details about the extent to which the chaos and famine spread into the leadership compound and describing the building of the great hall of the people difficult to get workers to show up to the job they were engaging the same kinds of tax how do explain the

all-powerful hand and the inability to control so close to the center? >> guest: chairman mao sets the tone at the top and then the public ritual of humiliation of leaders who do not quite follow the command that comes from him he sets the tone to make sure the right people get into the right key positions. so adopting the very same strategy, it is not a party where you apply for membership but where you are purge constantly changing numbers and digits but being replaced by a people who were quite willing to go

along with whatever command comes along ordinary people outside of the party know very well that this is a dysfunctional system and in order to survive in order to get through of the violence of procurement in the misery of starvation in order to you get by somehow they have to rely on their witness two steel and silver and smuggle and outwit the representative is. everybody to the top tries to manipulate the system in order to get by so there is

that image on paper of the economy where everything is determined at has the top showing how much of beach a particular when and where but seems everybody tries to bend the rules and that environment in which the rule of survival emanates the ability to bend the rules for ordinary people is linked to the ability to survive. >> you take issue was the recent scholarship on the great leap that to looks that's why the tax of

trickery to be two the quota or shoddy railroad ties but to have considered the heroic action of righteous resistance of the people against the state it is not so black and white that the food was finite if you put sand in the grain, led by down the line will have to eat that and it is a much more murky moral universe. >> about one-third of the book is ways of surviving i eighth read a few pages of the horror but throughout the country, many more people manage to survive by

not working, farmers, as soon as party officials walks through drop the tools sit-down to wait for the day to be over and to preserve energy go to the fields to fifth find despite some grain before even reaches maturity they will eat the great rock, a green, shippers will find bamboo tubes going straight into grain sacks at every level people try to somehow get bye-bye stealing a potato to go for something or walk away the only way to survive is to bend the rules but in some cases the local

leadership might actually side with the villagers very powerful forms of resistance to keep to books. there is one for the grain inspector also for the eyes of the villagers although the grain is hidden behind the walls and in floorboards and in a coffin and when the state goes out in 1959 and tries to get to the grain, that is what happens if people try to hide as much as they can as individuals or families or entire villages. these forms of resistance are extremely interesting to show the full scope of human behavior in times of pain or

loss on a massive scale but it is not quite right to describe the access says heroic acts of resistance it reminds me of those who manage to survive of what it means to survive and was very much the first one to say he was not a hero for having survived. also because of the routine degradation to make moral compromises by not sharing a handful of food that he might have discovered. that is very much the same picture here.

it seems like a good strategy but somebody down the line will be two laing on -- that will die as a consequence and bit by bit to starvation becomes extensive those that read against each other will steal from neighbors families turn themselves systematically taking the grain from the eight year-old daughter at some point* when it gets cold he takes the cotton jacket and a trouble. she is dying of pain and cold in the middle of the winter. i would say 58 through 62

was one giant -- . >> host: i want to get your questions but first i want to talk a little how you did your research and uncovered stories like that. will use of archives national provincial with something that was politically sensitive as this power they received by the arkansas best? what was that like? >> i moved to hong kong four or five years ago and one

can do wonderful things from hong kong. one thing i started to do was take up a little train, a little taxi to the railway station and a clear customs after you buy your coffee at starbucks. [laughter] you get on the train and two hours later you're there and 9:50 a.m. i would be in the provincial archives. of course, i spent 20 years working with the archives in china but pretty much most of that before 1949, that was the cutting edge of research i always kept my eye on the other so i was playing around with an idea with the project on everyday life and it was a very

simple question. we have a people's republic but what happened to the people or what do we know about people how they died in particular during the mao era? i quickly discovered it point* of the "great leap forward" was actually very rich one of the reasons for that is one of those sound particularly negative. 1966, there was very metal there. look at the earlier years, a lot kerry office and negative connotation a lot of the women are called many names.

it is material that is more sensitive to the arc of best. so that point* seemed extremely interesting. on top of that once i started it was the start of a four year project that took me to all parts of china and i think i benefited as others did it from a sense of openness and willingness to in the years that ran up to the olympics. somehow that that was a great location and things ought to be easier and opened up so there was a great window of opportunity. not to say i would just walk into an archive of to show me how in the county. >> host: how did you

explain what you were doing? >> guest: honest. straight forward. i do economic history. economic history is what it boils down to. how much grain is being produced, exported, hard economic history. but then of course, want to start reading the material from economic history then you do find very interesting documents. that is how i started off. some places was great willingness to show material and other places i was asked to wait and drink tea for a couple of hours and was told very politely that there simply wasn't anything on my topic maybe i should go somewhere else. which i did. >> host: one of the main themes in your book and of

the whole event is the extent of information going on and during the period. when you see something like 67,000 people were clubbed to to death with sticks are and what a commune 22,000 floorboards were torn out of people's homes overnight to mechanize the commune they were so ramshackle they fell to pieces the moment anybody tried to use one. how do you begin to verify? a story or a statistic like that? >> the saying is when we hear the term archive, it sounds rather boring except as a historian we become a

very exciting. archive is anything that is written down in the official capacity but like most one-party states whether under stalin, hitler or mao the leaders are very well aware of the fact that the propaganda it is essential and next to got it has to find out what is really happening so on the one hand this massive amount of literature for propaganda purposes but there is inspectors come a team's and sent by anybody said done to investigate what is happening underground and from 1958 through 62 of what happens including a number

of purges every time with the wind turns there is some sort of secret investigation carried out by the homeland security bureau. you get a sense of what is written up for propaganda purposes and what is investigated down to see what is happening on the ground but to get a good feel for that the bureau in general is not there to produce the quota they may kill by quota but what they investigate with massacre or somebody has to write his own confession, you will see they tend to coagulate at some point* but of course, a lot of it is questionable but in general is very

little incentive if the team was investigating to increase the number of deaths of are exaggerated the amount of torture and very little incentive to do that. it is the other way around. >> host: what is the most surprising thing that you found with your research? >> pretty much day #1 was the extent of the violence. the extent of the violence. i expected to read about famine and to read about starvation. naively i did not collectivization means collective violence when you take away everything and strip every incentive to work you literally have to

beat them to get them to do things. the ways in which the villagers became so brutalized to have the mounting spiral of violence i was very much taken aback and the arsenal of horror and ways in which people weren't demeaned to inflict pain and anguish on the many rarely took me aback and it was report after report and surprise me tremendously. and then i guess once in

awhile one gets the feeling on one or two locations that for some reason the minutes of top leadership meetings were right there in front of me that had not been read, to my knowledge by other historians if you read the book carefully will know which one it is extraordinary and very detailed minutes who said what and when and where and how to $0.10 the agenda and that really allowed me to link up not just the stories of ordinary people but how they leak into a much broader framework with the lives of the people in the

country. >> host: interestingly, one link you do not make as often is any connection too historical forces prior to the 1950's. you are a historian of earlier periods. do you see anything happening at the chinese society that created the conditions that people could be paid like this? lowered too you see it primarily coming from the top down? >> i wrote the book very short call the age of openness that describes the era as a period of great openness ideas come the people institutions help people move freely the realm

was then subsequently closed down after 1949. the key point* is 1949 through 57 those 10 years. >> i am working on that right now. [laughter] >> host: one last question anybody who has read about the point* knows the issue major contention among scholars of said death toll of the "great leap forward" and your numbers are about 50% higher some recent studies that have come out of the mainland and can you talk about how you came and why and how these numbers are important and the numbers aren't so huge?

>> guest: an important question but first this is a regime that very much reduces people to digits on a balance sheet treat human beings like livestock to be closed and fed sell in many cases people were too weak for vulnerable deliberately being starved to death. this is a regime that reduces people to nothing. i am not the one who wanted to do the same thing again. but to discover the stories but there is one chapter where one tries to look at the scope of the catastrophe

because it is unavoidable. it just happened in over the course i came across again and again it's jim a detailed investigation sometimes by a county party committees immediately in the aftermath trying to find out how many people had died unnecessarily. here is the head and a prophet at -- of the province who writes confidentially and telling them in a whole list of statistics he has presided over the death between eight and 10 million people in a secret document.

so i took those documents and i compared them to whatever statistics had been produced on the basis of official population numbers. pretty much all of the estimates that we have from extrapolation we compare them and discover 30 or 40 or 50 percent sometimes 100% and on the basis i estimate the number between 3,432,000,000 has been produced several times would have to be increased by at least by 50% i say at least 45 million have died unnecessarily but it could

be more. but let me add mainly before 1989 in. >> host: square, people were into the i.r.a. at -- archives to find out what happened and subsequently coming to a united states thomas said during that investigation they had concluded at least 45 million had died. my estimate very much corresponds those that went to similar archives. i still don't know what it means i don't know how you get your head around 45 million it is harder to understand what that means that i cannot imagine.

>> host: the end of the buck you touch briefly that if there is a backlash in the leadership against mao and lead to him being sidelined to come back with a vengeance but how you interpret the legacy of the "great leap forward" for the rest of chinese society in the short-term or long-term? >> the legacy that there is, that this is no public memory very little thinking and retaining about this

point* which is not to say that many people in the countryside for are quite keen to share them but there is a project with a team of people who went to the countryside who collected memories of people all over the country better been transcribed and deposited in the public libraries but it seems to me you cannot really understand the embrace so to speak not the word that i particularly like but not today without understanding the extraordinary english that happened during those years not entirely dissimilar to

what happened to in europe. once you have gone through that and britain and holland where i grew up where parents had to eat it too low gold since 1945, it is a normal impulse to focus on material goods although that also has a very convenient political aspect for the current leadership to focus on the material aspects at the expense of the political. . .

so i find it very ironic that the sentries are likely. the chinese was more likely to die than at the hands of the japanese. >> you're quite right. i mentioned the part because the population in cambodia is the

same of the population in the region i read on and the number of that is higher than in cambodia said he would have to take the port and multiplied by 20 to get roughly near what happened. just short of 10 million of the total number of people who died worldwide during the second world war. just an and conceivably a large number of people. but you are quite right. certainly after 1949, the entire 20 a century, the likelihood and china to be killed starved deliberately by somebody else is much higher than being killed by a japanese. to be fair this is also quite true for europe. europeans are very good at killing each other.

>> thank you very much for an interesting talks and a compelling book. i have two questions. first question is your descriptions of getting access and getting information is very interesting and to a certain extent it seems like almost accidental research or hit and miss. as a historian and interested in what is your perception of the extent to which your book follows tombstone chinese-language edition that came out in hong kong that the party is allowing a certain amount of light to be shined in this corner, and to what extent do you think that means there will be more movement with regards to perhaps more exposure that happened during the cultural revolution period. are we seeing the beginning of a trend or is this a corner that doesn't have to do with other issues? >> i'm afraid i have bad news for you. >> my second question is -- >> the current political climate

have to be very careful about the study and the depth and intensity of that study and a wonder to what extent you feel you are vulnerable as a scholar in terms of access to these types of archives deily would be vulnerable to a potential blacklist. >> i have even more bad news for you. it was of course very tempting when i was there and the historical scholarship is a little bit hit and miss. if you already know the answer to the questions you have there is no point in carrying out the research and on the other hand if you can't really have the material that allows you to answer these questions no point in doing it either. one is always attuned to the discovery of the interesting rich material that allows one to ask interesting questions. but the key point is i, too, thought for a while that law that allows the artists to open

up the material was older than 30 years would increase the amount of material that is available. but with hindsight i think that was rather not used in the sense that my feeling now is that a lot of these places went a little bit too far in opening material. since the olympics a lot of that material has been reclassified so today i wouldn't be able to carry out the research for that book. it is not to say that everything has been reclassified but it's become must cover and interesting material out there. it's become a lot tougher. let's just hope that over the coming years the authorities and the people's republic will adopt the same attitude as elsewhere including the excellent union by

making it available more systematically. it is a question i don't believe i'm important enough to be banned from the people's republic. you yourself quoted by the interesting about work on the book of the famine. there are others who have published on it. i am not really the first. i don't think that is something that happened 50, six years ago that was sufficiently important. given the number of females i get from people in the mainland keen to read the translation the would be published by the editor of [inaudible] given the translation the would become available in a few months' time and given the number of e-mails from the reader's very interested in b. would even be welcomed.

>> is there any evidence in other countries to have food riots and non-communist countries they have food riots in response to something like this. is there any evidence, is there any evidence there were results among the people and if so, what happens to them? >> it's a wonderful question. i did talk about strategies of coping and obstructing, cheating, stealing, smuggling and at some point in these villages that passive shield that outsiders that is a mistake in submissiveness actually breaks down and farmers become

really violent and one count in the province out of 500 about 30 architect in the space of two months in 1960 and there are billions about 12 of them in 1960 just for the south and west provinces around in one case for instance 100 farmers take weapons with the support of local religious leaders and a number of high-ranking party officials and the army has to be sent in to deal with that incident. so the third you go some of them are extremely violent, others aren't relying on the sheer strength of numbers of farmers for instance in the province in january, 1961i reported 500

cases of assaults on freight trains. in one case up to 4,000 farmers just wait. by this part of the freeway here comes a freight train they assorted from the freight train. a number of them find a military uniforms and this is very cold, january, 1961. they put them on a couple of days later the approach and the doors open magically. it's a mistake them for militia. so there's all sorts of extraordinary acts of resistance that had been from single farmers who simply can't take it anymore and the officials with cleavers to the large gathering of farmers who used the numbers to get to a train coming get to

a gregory or assault and office that represents the communist party. >> united nations. one of the things more poignant about what you have raised the idea of of violence which is what i heard people discuss all that much to get can you give us an idea of roughly what percentage of the death you would say are associated with violent death as opposed to starvation? >> yes. an extremely interesting question. very glad you raised it. again, on the basis of a whole series of very different types of documentation one gets a broad sense of how many died violent conditions how many were tortured to death and buried alive? why? because some of these investigation teams want to find out for themselves so they come

up with a number of figures, and it ranges from about 68%. it could be less, it could be more, but it means about two to 3 million people were violently killed during this period and as a percentage that is actually higher as a number of children who were killed deliberately on the pull apart. most of the victims in the port by the deliberate starvation and overwork in the countryside. it's quite a high number, and even more interesting is of course the use of food as a weapon. ye beat somebody and expand energy when you can simply ban that person from the canteen? if you are too weak, too old, too sick to work or if you speak out there in a meeting or steal grain you will be banned from

the canteen and start more quickly. people consider to be unfit or undesirable is one of the key characteristics of this famine and the number of counties is estimated about 80% to buy actually die because they were banned from the food supply. >> very large number varies largely from one place to another. a good proportion of those who die deliberately starved. the food is in the canteen. they produce more steel in the furnace is to even white if i year at the scene as a revolutionary act. the food is in the hands of the party of the militia has handed

down by the spoonful. one man we interviewed had a very interesting way of looking at. even if you work hard, even if you got enough work planes to be on point to your bowl of food he is still afraid to answer the canteen. as he said it, the illegal can read people's faces. by that he meant to the man would either go very deep into the pot and give you some substantial food or skim the surface and give you some green concoction if he didn't like you >> we have time for a couple more. how about right up here in the front. >> i would like to ask you about the untold story, the unknown

story which you're probably familiar with, and many of the conclusions at least regarding this period are similar to what you concluded. it's a very difficult question. you may have noticed he endorses the book from the cover. he is very much criticized. i have a very simple attitude. i would like to see what is good in something. now andrew nathan in the review i believe for the new york review books describe that particular biography as bits of plastic and jade. i would rather focus on the jade and take that. i am not want to go and jump up and down because at has a love

plastic in that book, i would rather take that. the way i look at it is through graphically so to speak is that book has actually made it possible for others like myself for others to write about this period and about mao and much more critical manner. i still believe that this fundamental from a geographical point of view and i keep on going back to eight. now that i am working on 1949 to 1957 still the back to the chapters i read once, twice, chapter footnotes there's still a lot of jade and what else is there to read on that period, not an awful lot. >> [inaudible]

>> it seems to me my biggest reservation is as follows it portrays mao as a monster which he was it doesn't look at all the others who were there to support mao. the other key points to make sure he got it his way all of those who stood behind him and supported him for instance during the purge in the summer of 1959, people like them a year of shanghai who stood right behind him, and others like the man in charge of the search was also a gung-ho supporter so that's also what i've been trying to do in this book is move away from a narrow focus to look at how this affects not just for the in the party but

human beings at every level if you wish of social hierarchy and how it creates morrill degradations all the way through the fabric of society. >> i think we have time for one final question >> you mentioned before people were waiting for the transmission of your book. when exactly is it published and when can you be in taiwan or hong kong and would be censored in any way? >> hopefully it should be out by january, february at the latest, so quite soon within half a year. it will be of course [inaudible] but i have no doubt once it will be published in the characters somebody else will copy it in characters that will be scanned and copied and downloadable from the web.

[laughter] >> maybe we had last question. >> can you speak a little bit further about the role when they started getting reports back from the former padre in the revolution which was just ten years ago and from their relatives in the village what was happening, about the crops and one must think and think if you could mention about cannibalism. >> i will give you because there isn't much time left but i will give you a quotation. in 1962 when he was fully aware of the facts that in his home province eight to ten people have died.

the province actually delivered the goods. so he said that maybe there were some excesses'. but overall he was proud. fully aware of the type of deprivation and death caused by each in search one. he himself said again in 1962 we are not weak, we are stronger and compared to the long march we have kept the backbone of those who have died unnecessarily are actually bad elements, slackers, counterrevolutionaries, the bite as conservatives. it kept the backbone.

the duty of gaining access in a very limited way to some of those limits of the top speeches and conferences to find out there isn't just one man so to speak he got a lot of support from the crucial people of the top including in the beginning and including after a couple of months. joanne, welcome here is somebody mao really needs to implement that plan. once you decide you're going to have a date forward once you have that vision has to be somebody to do the paperwork and he was very good at it. and he goes around and will make sure that each problem

contributes the out of grain that has been mandated from above. here is a man who will harass people will pressure, the push to make sure the grain is delivered. there is a very short chapter on cannibalism. the beauty of the archives is there are a number of case where it is not just a few cases for the very systematic list of how many people committed cannibalism in one particular village. i have only one conclusion about cannibalism, mainly the most people who have seen so much violence and horror and has managed to survive through the ball which surely this was not the worst form of disrespect to

somebody who has already died. far greater horror was inflicted on human beings >> [inaudible] is their anything that we haven't asked you that you wish we had asked you? >> i would like to point out -- i would like to come back to what i said earlier about people being reduced to the mid members. this is not a book of statistics. numbers are important but it is vital i think that one should try as a historian to discover the human faces, the tragedies, the stories behind all of that and i spend a lot of time trying to make the book as engaging as possible and there is a book

that is far too important to reduce a fury, far too important to be reduced to a mere number about how many people died. it has to be part of something that people will read in order to gain the same level of knowledge about this a great crime against humanity and as they might gain from reading books for instance of holocaust or other books on the crimes committed. is please don't be recalled by the numbers because there are very few of them. >> although it wasn't intended that way it is a perfect introduction to invite you all to the back of the room where if

you would like to can purchase a copy of the book and then ask any other questions you have to the professor. thanks for being such a thoughtful audience. [applause] >> frank is pitcher professor of humanities at the university of hong kong. for more inflation, is at his website, web.mac.com/dikotter. john speed is the author of cultures of war, hiroshima, 9/11 and iraq. he's joining us now pity's a finalist for the national book award in the nonfiction category. professor dower, what is the similarity between pearl harbor and 9/11? >> that's where the book began where 9/11 happened. catlin's are all over the u.s. day of infamy, some of them quote could roosevelt's famous date which will live in infamy

and people said surprise attack to use the word kamikaze. they went back to pearl harbor to try to grasp the enormity of this but then i have written on asia and i have done a lot of thinking about the war. denney kumble complicated because then the failure of intelligence, surprise attack, then started to get into world war ii and you have a fireman picture raising the stars and stripes the iconic picture it was hiroshima. people put the two pictures up and the president began calling for a war on terror and then he began quoting roosevelt and truman, so it went from pearl harbor and 9/11 into world war ii and then the world trade

center ruins ground zero and we were in a whole different dimension of world war ii. so it began with 9/11 infamy and became much more. >> tie together hiroshima and iraq. >> well, the highest hiroshima and 9/11 the was the real time because ground zero is an atomic bomb trees. the was the original association and then that would put you into the question of terror bombing or deliberately targeting civilians and this practice in world war ii he wanted to destroy the enemy morale, the anglo american's united states and would start in germany and from japan and culminate in hiroshima. so the ground 045 granda 02001

is of late. the iraq linked is lots of choice to begin with because we go from 9/11, the war choice but the islamist terrorists to the japanese for lack of choice earlier and there is a parallel and then suddenly we have a war of choice against iraq, and then we have a terrific failure of intelligence in iraq, just disasters failure of intelligence on the part of the united states so then you've got pearl harbor which was a japanese tactically brilliant strategically idiotic thing. you have the war of choice of the islamists and america is doing a war of choice, so i'm a historian and i wanted to understand it's not all the same but ironic to see how you can think comparatively about the

war and every side is talking wholley war and always been with us in our modern times even with our new technologies and i really wanted to wrestle with it. i had to figure things out for myself things i haven't asked. the on is not the focus of your book. why? >> it's not the focus of my book because there was simply not space to do it. the vietnam figures and as one of the major cultures of war it's mentioned in passing a number number of ways. the imam figures in both as a place where you deliberately target but targeted noncombatants. if economic figures in a different way and the failures of intelligence and i write about this in some length the subtitle could only be so long.

if it wasn't i was going back to vietnam but the striking thing in the failure of intelligence was in vietnam with at basically the united states had lost in an insurgency and after vietnam we ceased to study the counterinsurgency in the u.s. government. it was dropped from the military academy. it was dropped off. we were not going to get involved in that and there was no preparation for what we encountered in iraq and afghanistan. afghanistan figures and of course also, but i focus mostly on iraq and there is a failure of intelligence on our part, on the u.s. part was extraordinary. why? i was trying to think of this overtime and one thing it does is takes you to think comparatively about the u.s. in ways that sometimes a bit taboo

and make people uncomfortable. it's not saying it's all the same, but also it lifts it out of the bush at maceration when you step back in history and you looked at the bigger picture and you are going back to world war ii, going back to other things that one point in the book i end up at the turn of the century when the u.s. concord the philippines in 1898 and early 1900's and all the rhetoric was there. i have a line in the book that you want to find the ghost behind the ghostwriters for george bush you go back to the philippines. the rhetoric, the language is all there. so to think about the war of culture is very painful. it's painful because it is asking hard things about us as human beings, not just americans, it's about us as

human beings in the modern age where we have war all the time, the technology may change but somehow we are caught in the squeal and it seems hard to get out and i do it at levels of both the individual and the institutions. so i began talking about the concept of pathology of individual pathologies and institutional. bureaucratic dysfunctions. a very, very hard things to wrestle with. it took a long time but that's where it ended up. >> speaking of george bush, have you or will you be reading decision point particularly the chapters on afghanistan and iraq >> i read very extensively memoirs by everyone, investigative journalist reports