Frank Dikötter

I'm Glenn Tiffert, a distinguished research fellow here at the Hoover Institution, where along with Elizabeth Economy, I co-chair the program on the US, China, and the world.

Today's event with Orville Schell and my Hoover colleagues, Frank Dikötter and Rowena He is entitled Inside China's Secret Prisons.

It's the first in our twenty twenty-six twenty twenty-seven speaker series, and like many prize things, you could say it has been decades in the making.

This event also bears a special connection to Hoover, not just because Orville is a deep dear friend of our program and he partners with us on some of our most impactful work, but also because Harry Wu, the former prisoner and activist, or late prisoner and activist, who did so much a generation ago to shine light on the PRC's system of labor camps and the integration of forced labor into China's export machine, was a scholar here at the Hoover Institution in the nineteen nineties and was really instrumental in the genesis of Orville's book.

He's authored countless books and articles on China, advised multiple presidential administrations, and helped catalyze the program here at Hoover that I am privileged to co-direct.

His latest book, Inside China's Secret Prisons, is the focus of this event.

Frank Dikötter is the Milies Se-Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

He's also Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong.

That's the idea, yeah

... uh, or their organs for sure, as opposed to CCP, where you, you might really, you might get Frank Dikötter.

Exactly.

Right.

But a third person needs to make that despicable list, Mao Zedong.

Some recent research by a historian named Frank Dikötter says, "The true dimensions of what happened in China are now only, only now coming to light thanks to the meticulous reports the party itself compiled during the famine.

[clears throat] What comes out of this massive and detailed dossier is a tale of horror in which Mao Zedong emerges as one of the greatest mass murderers in history, responsible for the deaths of at least 45 million people between 1958 and 1962." 45 million people.

The mind struggles to comprehend such horror, right? That's the entire populations of Mexico City plus New York City plus Paris.