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'''Yang Jisheng''' is a Chinese liberal [[journalist]] who moved to America to publish a spurious book ''Tombstone'' on [[Mao Zedong]]'s [[Great Leap Forward]]. He claimed the famine killed 36 million.

While working for Xinhua news agency, Yang turned against the CCP after the [[1989 Tiananmen Square protests]].

==Debunking==

Yang claims, 36 million starved from 1958 to 1962, and 40 million "failed to be born", therefore blaming Mao for a "population loss" of "76 million".<ref>[[New York Times]] on Yang Jisheng. https://web.archive.org/web/20170124011617/http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/books/review/tombstone-the-great-chinese-famine-1958-1962-by-yang-jisheng.html</ref>

Chinese mathematician Sun Jingxian argued Yang had distorted history to attack the CCP. He criticized Yang's "extremely deceptive" and absurd assumption that starvation deaths could be calculated by looking at the difference between the average number of deaths for a given period and the actual number of deaths for that same year.

<blockquote>
As a professional mathematician [...] we must seriously point out that from an academic point of view, [Yang's methodology] completely violates the basic principles that modern mathematics must follow when dealing with such problems.<ref>Blanchette, Jude (2 May 2019). China's New Red Guards: The Return of Radicalism and the Rebirth of Mao Zedong. Oxford University Press. p. 138.</ref>

</blockquote>

Political scientist and historian Yang Songlin disputes several of Yang Jisheng's claims, such as that the Chinese government under-reported deaths or manipulated data.<ref>Yang, Songlin (2021). Telling the Truth: China's Great Leap Forward, Household Registration and the Famine Death Tally. Springer Nature. pp. 51–54.</ref>

Yang Jisheng was criticized even by Western academics for his methodology.

Professor Emeritus Cormac O Grada at University College Dublin said the results of a retrospective fertility study<ref>Zhao Zhongwei and Anna Reimondos, 2012. The demography of China's 1958-61 famine. Via O Grada</ref> "make the case for a total much lower—perhaps ten million lower [26 million]—than that proposed by Yang".<ref name="OGrada">O Grada, Review: Great Leap, Great Famine. https://www-jstor-org.lmu.idm.oclc.org/stable/41857599 Death toll on p. 8</ref>

O Grada criticized, "Yang tends to neglect the famine historical context and China's economic vulnerability". He notes that China was the "land of famine" because it was extremely poor and, in the 1950s, China was still extremely poor.<ref name="OGrada" />

==Praise==

Yang Jisheng was praised by notorious liar [[Anne Applebaum]].<ref>Applebaum in the [[Washington Post]]. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102015.html</ref>

==References==

[[Category: Imperialist historians]]