The (Bad) Company You Keep: China-GDR Relations during the Cold War
Seminar
Date: Wednesday 29 March 2023
Time: 15.00 – 17.00
Location: Gula villan, Svante Arrhenius väg 33
Axel Berkofsky, Professor at the University of Pavia and Co-Director of the Asia Centre at the Milan-based Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI), presents his research.
Axel Berkofsky’s talk examines the GDR’s perception and interpretation of Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Probably the most disastrous and ill-fated man-made economic campaign in reported human history. That however, as it turned out, did not keep the regime in East Berlin from initially liking everything about it, including Mao’s infamous People’s Communes which disowned and dehumanized millions of Chinese peasants and their families in the late 1950s and early 1960s. East Berlin and its mouthpiece state-controlled newspapers, including their correspondents on the ground in China, believed and repeated Chinese propaganda on the leap’s alleged results in parrot-fashion when it in reality resulted in a nationwide famine, 40 million casualties, violence and the near-collapse of the Chinese economy. The leap’s disaster was there for all to see from the very beginning. ‘All’ as in minus the SED Politburo in East Berlin, as it turned out.
HBC Berkofsky 2023 03 29 (436 Kb)
If you plan to participate, please register via the following link: https://forms.gle/32hU82is1BzuSLhBA
Last updated: March 29, 2023
Source: Hans Blix Centre