Du Bin | The Battle of Changchun’s Starving Ghosts: The Most Tragic Siege of the Chinese Civil War, November 4, 1947 – October 19, 1948

After 10 years, in a difficult political environment, collecting various precious historical materials, interviewing survivors and related memoirs, the first complete record in the world of the beginning and end of the “Changchun Siege” in the Chinese Civil War.
◎Includes photos of survivors and related historical documents, in a “daily chronicle” manner, to show the corpses and the starving people outside the city and the starving people inside the city, as well as the silent no man’s land.

“‘We received orders from the military: they (the refugees) are the enemy, they must die.'”
——Andrew Jacobs, The New York Times, October 1, 2009

Mao Zedong wanted to seize Changchun as the capital of the CCP’s confrontation with the Republic of China government. Lin Biao used the starvation tactic of prohibiting people from leaving and food from entering, besieging the city for 350 days. A city of at least 630,000 people was left with only 170,000 people.

“The CCP troops participating in the siege of Changchun were mixed with the Northeast CCP International Troops. In the northwest of Changchun… were Mongolian cavalry, and these Mongolian cavalry troops had a primitive animalistic killing nature… In the south of Changchun… was the Korean Communist Independent Division… After a period of political training of ethnic alienation by the CCP, they held biased and jealous views towards the Chinese people. … These foreign troops were particularly strict and thorough in implementing the policy of starving the Chinese people to death, no matter how you pleaded, they would not show any sympathy.”
——Fan Shuhan, Tianjin Yishi Daily, September 16, 1948

“Balipu was at the forefront of our army’s position. Our army’s firepower controlled most of the village, and at the other end of the village was full of enemy bunkers… I walked into this hell on earth. … The price of a catty of human flesh was 2.5 million yuan, which was the cheapest of all edible foods. Many parents ate their own children.”
——Guan Jichen, CCP’s Northeast Daily, September 21, 1948

“There was a man silently gnawing on a human bone, his eyes fixed on the fallen woman, concentrating on gnawing on the bone, a long and large bone.”
——Japanese survivor Endo Homare

“The day after the liberation of Changchun, I took a jeep and drove around Changchun. My car couldn’t start. After a while, my communicator had to jump out and drag the dead body to the side. After a while, jump again, and drag the dead body to the side.”
——Zou Yan, Political Commissar of the 8th Independent Division of the CCP’s Northeast Field Army, a senior commander of the siege

“My father and my younger brother starved to death a few months ago, and the dogs took away their bodies. My mother enjoyed the best treatment, she was buried by the Kuomintang army, and after the liberation, she was dug out by the People’s Liberation Army and burned.”
——Changchun survivor Fan Chuanhua