Except for Soviet citizens, no people in this century have endured
so much mass killing as have the Chinese. They have been murdered
by rebels conniving with their own rulers, and then, after the
defeat in war of the imperial dynasty, by soldiers of other lands.
They have been killed by warlords who ruled one part of China or
another. They have been executed by Nationalists or Communists
because they had the wrong beliefs or attitudes or were simply in
the wrong place at the wrong time. In China's Bloody Century, R.J.
Rummel's careful estimate of the total number of killings exceeds 5
million. How do we explain such killings, crossing ideological
bounds and political conditions? According to Rummel, the one
constant factor in all the Chinese mass murder, as it was in the
Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, is arbitrary power. It was the
factor that united warlords, Nationalists, Communists, and foreign
armies. The author argues that whenever such undisciplined power is
centralized and unchecked, the possibility exists that it will be
used at the whim of dictators to kill for their own ends, whether
the aim is ethnic-racial purity, national unity, development, or
utopia. The book presents successive periods in modern Chinese
history, with each chapter divided into three parts. Rummel first
relates the history of the period within which the nature and the
amount of killings are presented. He then provides a detailed
statistical table giving the basic estimates with their sources and
qualifications. The final part offers an appendix that explains and
elaborates the statistical computations and estimates. While
estimates are available in the literature on the number of Chinese
killed in Communist land reform, or in Tibet, or by the
Nationalists in one military campaign or another, until this book
no one has tried to systematically accumulate, organize, add up,
and analyze these diverse killings for all of China's governments
in this century. For the first time in one place, hundreds of
published estimates of Chinese genocide and mass murder are listed
with sources, analyzed, and their historical context presented.
This book will be of central interest to Sinologists,
Sovietologists, and those interested in comparative politics and
society.
General
Imprint: |
Routledge
|
Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
Release date: |
October 2017 |
First published: |
1991 |
Authors: |
R. J Rummel
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152mm (L x W) |
Format: |
Hardcover
|
Pages: |
348 |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-138-52042-4 |
Categories: |
Books >
Social sciences >
Politics & government >
General
|
LSN: |
1-138-52042-X |
Barcode: |
9781138520424 |
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