Looking for Great Leap "smoking gun" document

Thank Covell for your introduction.
I replied a twitter of 叶柯铭@crkraus about Mao's saying of "不如死一半" and posted screenshots of the document in the twitter rather than my blog of communistchinadoc. As far as I know, the original document was first shown in the 2012 documentary "Mao's Great Famine" from 32'08'' to 32'30'' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-woaDniFQc
As to the post on WENXUECITY, I only agree with the part that Frank Dikotter's understanding of Mao's "不如死一半" is questionable, but I think the number of starvation being 45 millions is acceptable. 

The full transcript of Mao's remark on 03/25/1959 Shanghai Conference is included in SONG Yongyi's "Database on the Great Leap Forward and the Great Famine (1958-1962)".
According to the database, there are two parts of Mao's records, his main talk and his interpose. The "不如死一半" quote is in second part of interpose, as this:
"当讲到“安排第二季度的生产和建设有两种方法”时说：
这算是得到一条经验，这个分析好。
对工业，这三个月要确实的抓一下，要抓紧，抓狠，抓实。工业方面的领导上要出秦始皇。
要完成计划，就要大减项目。1078个项目中还应该坚决地再多削减，削到500个。
平均使用力量是破坏大跃进的办法。
大家吃不饱，大家死，不如死一半，给一半人吃饱。"

Is it possible that the document JIANG Huajie saw in Hebei archive only has first part of Mao's remark?

Jiang Huajie and Chen Chuangchuang's replies just remind me of my experience about archive. Several years before I got some information from Song Yongyi's database of China's Anti-RightIst Campaign about Deng Xiaoping's speech at Tsinghua University on Jan.12th 1957. Some documents mentioned in the speech Deng had said words like “谁爱真干，那就真干，不信可以试试，咱们有几百万解放军，看看谁厉害。”

However, I could not find those words in the archive when coming back to Beijing Municipal Archives to search it. Meanwhile, I got to know there was another version of Deng’s speech at Tsinghua from the footnotes of one Taiwan’s historians’ paper. The name of that version is ”鄧小平在清華大學的講演，首都紅代會中國人民大學三紅揪鄧兵團編印，鄧小平反革命修正主義言論文章匯編（文革時期揭批材料），第2集（1967 年），頁 4~19”

Unfortunately, I can not get access to this source. I guess such words may exist in that document. Therefore, I doubt some archive we view from the Archives is not original one. It had been edited by the people in the Archives.

As for the case of Hei bei Provincial archives, this document may be purified by someone.

To All participants.
I made a mistake, My apology firstly. I ignored the fact that Shanghai meeting of 1959 continued for several days! The meeting discussed three issue as planned: industry , people's commune and adjustment of leadership. Since lack of data regarding industry ,they had to discuss the people's commune on the first day. The whole record of Hei bei I mentioned above and the first part of Gan su file just dealing with the people's commune issue ,in other words ,both of them are records of the meeting on 25 March, and Hei bei’s version is more in detail.
Yesterday,I got the original doc of Gansu from my friends. at the end of the first part of Gan su version, Mao said “(we)will discuss the industry tomorrow”(明日讨论工业),so I search all the docs of 26 March that I hold, what really surprised me is the doc did exist in my personal collection!
The title of the doc is “主席三月廿六日在薄一波同志汇报工业生产时的插话“，and it is more in detailed than the second part of Gan su version.
I had copied what Mao Said out :
汇报到要削掉一些项目时，小平同志插话：下马要血淋淋，今年计划才有保证，削少了，要研究这个问题。
主席接着讲：搞工业不狠，搞那么多仁义道德，主要削地方，根本不要决心，砍掉就完了，根本不干，你搞不出来么，搞多了不行嘛！明年来个马鞍型，无马鞍型，怎么骑马？分散力量是破坏大跃进的方法，大家吃不饱，大家都死，还是死一半？人类年轻得很，只有150万年，何必那么忙？1078项搞得成，我赞成，搞不成，何必多搞？
It is clear that Frank Dikötter is wrong indeed.

Thanks to everyone for a very interesting discussion so far. I have a colleague (who I prodded to chime in here, but no luck there) who also went to the archives in Gansu and found the document in question. This person confirmed as much as Jiang Huajie--Dikotter misread or misappropriated Mao's quote.

A bigger question is whether this is an isolated incident, or if there are other critical misreadings in Dikotter's book. Robert Cliver's comments, which I sympathize with, suggest that this probably is not the only example of a quote being taken out of context.

I haven't seen the file under discussion in Harry Young's comment, but I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion that an archive edited a document. I am not aware of any cases of an archive doctoring a file. If there are examples of this, that’s pretty alarming.

In my experience, if an archive thinks a file is too sensitive, they will not declassify it (or, if it's already available, they will reclassify it and remove it from the archive). The Foreign Ministry Archive used to partially redact sensitive areas of documents, but I have not seen this technique used at any other archive in China (although it's possible given ongoing digitization projects).

What I think is a more likely explanation: with Cultural Revolution era documents and publications, it is quite common to find many different versions of what is ostensibly the same file. Even on Song Yongyi's databases, you can find the same derivative material cut up and rearranged several ways and released as different documents. This also applies to files created in the 1950s and early 1960s which were released during the Cultural Revolution. Which version is “more right”? It’s hard to say. Everyone had an agenda.

That's very true. Mao said stuff like this all the time: that by "unleashing white terror" Chiang Kai-shek only caused people to be more revolutionary. I hadn't noticed that about Mao's Last Revolution, thanks for self-criticism, Michael. I am currently working on an article that compares various published biographies (传) and chronologies (年谱) with their "pre-censored" versions (送审稿). The sad conclusion - and in response to Chuck's comments - we can't really take any of this stuff for granted. Things get omitted and (more ominously) things get added to the record. But not the archival record, thanks god. Chuck, given the interest in the above document, I suggest you post the original Gansu document in the DA and provide the link here.

As one of the "younger historians" referred to by Michael above, I'd like to chime in here to say that this thread is extremely heartening and valuable. Yes, it's disconcerting that well-read works can be built upon less than astute scholarship, but having noticed similar mistranslations in famous works before I used to privately wonder if the whole field was infected.

Jiang Huajie's comment above hits at something I wanted to mention when I first saw this thread. I've been wrestling with Mao texts for a little while now, and one thing I've noticed is that he is (a little like a certain Mr Trump) an expert at leaving room for interpretation. I study Mao's figurative language (資格考 this Friday, please wish me luck) and its impact on public discourse, but even when he was speaking explicitly Mao often left open multiple interpretations. His ambiguity coupled with his pivotal role in CCP politics makes Mao one of the trickiest puzzles for historians - maybe we could start a thread on here entitled "What Mao meant when he said (x)"?

Thanks again for everyone's comments above - truly valuable.

Many aspects have to be considered:

1) Many of Mao's speeches were not intended for publication.
2) Many speeches were not based on detailed manuscripts.
3) Many listeners were not from Hunan and were not familiar with his pronounciation.
4) Notes were handwritten and not always legible.
5) The speeches sometimes lasted for several hours (people may have been exhausted).
6) Ambiguity was not always intended; participants were aware of the speeches by other
leaders or RMRB/Hong Qi editorials of the time.

Yours
Thomas Kampen

Chuck, thank you for posting these documents in the Digital Archive. I should perhaps mention how I came across the Gansu document. Some years ago I and an (American-Japanese) colleague flew out to Lanzhou for a few days of research at the municipal archives. I got the idea to visit the archives from reading Frank Dikotter’s book and in fact while I was there I had the book in my backpack. The first question I heard from the archive’s director was whether I was in any way connected to the “Dutchman” (荷兰人). Needless to say, I disclaimed any knowledge of such a person. I more or less followed Frank’s endnotes, entering one document after another (of course I also looked for other documents, using the archive’s digital 目录). The document in question appeared exactly where it was supposed to appear, and I printed it out along with many other documents. I recently sent the document to Chuck, but Frank Dikotter later sent me a better copy, which is the one that can now be viewed in the Digital Archive under http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/123036. I would like to thank Frank Dikotter for supplying his copy of the document, and also Chuck for uploading it to the Digital Archive so that now other scholars can read it without going as far as Lanzhou (not to discourage anyone from visiting this exotic destination).

There was a long exchange about this particular document a few years back, between Frank Dikotter and Warren Sun. The exchange was on a closed list-serv, which is too bad, because it is not easily accessible. To summarize, there was a number of disagreements both about the date of the document, whether or not it reflected Mao’s verbatim comments or whether it was something that was subsequently written up, and, most importantly, whether the passage about people dying was quoted out of context. Frank Dikotter defended his interpretation of the passage by citing similar passages, including Mao’s infamous remarks at the 1957 Moscow Conference concerning the consequences of a nuclear war. He also argued that it was a strange thing to say in the middle of a famine, and also in the middle of a conference in which the Chairman urged his underlings to get at the grain before the villagers could. This was a useful debate, though one thing I regret was that it was somewhat acrimonious and contained allegations about Frank Dikotter’s work, which I personally found unfortunate. Irrespective of how we look at the document (and my reading of the passage leads me to think that Mao was referring to industrial projects as “people”), it is important to keep things in perspective. Interpretations are constantly challenged and errors are corrected – this is the whole point of academic work. The key thing is to provide references, so that other scholars can follow in one’s footsteps. And if you feel really generous, donate your documents to the Digital Archive: http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org after your books and articles are published.

Thanks, Glenn,

That's a very pertinent point and I wonder what other people think. The usual three-pronged defense would be:

1) documents that are in the state archives are deemed to be in the public domain, so IP law do not apply or does not apply in the same way as with private archives (this is of course generally the case in the U.S., and in the Chinese case, there is a sweeping exemption to this effect under article 5(1) of the 2010 Chinese Copyright Law)
2) posting select documents or portions thereof does not amount to copyright infringement (google books, as we know fought an uphill battle over this).
and 3) public interest may vastly outweigh any archival prerogative. Of course, interpretation of "public interest" is a tricky business, especially when we deal with different jurisdictions.

I'd like to mention though that in cases where doubts exist the appropriateness of posting something, the practice at the Digital Archive is to post the English-language translation (rather than the document itself), for which the DA then holds copyright.

But that's just my two yuan's worth. Maybe we can have a discussion about this in a different thread.

Happy New Year!

Sergey