On July 28, 1976, the city of Tangshan was obliterated by the worst natural disaster in modern Chinese history, killing at least 250,000 people. In Beijing, the dying Mao, whose long illness had politically paralyzed the country, was wheeled into a shelter as buildings shook around him. But the quake was only one in a long series of calamities for China in the 1960s and 1970s. Politics and nature interacted to rock the foundations of the country, expose the gulf between the Chinese people and their leaders, and eventually end 30 years of Maoism.
This talk will discuss the events around the disaster and how the power struggle of the 1970s still echoes in Chinese politics today.
James Palmer is the author of Heaven Cracks, Earth Shakes: the Tangshan Earthquake and the Death of Mao's China. His previous book, shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys prize, was The Bloody White Baron. In 2003, he won the Spectator's Shiva Naipaul prize for travel writing. He lives and works in Beijing.
N.B. RAS Members will have priority booking until the 10th May 2012