A remarkable look into the complex psychological world of intellectuals banished to labour camps by Mao.

Following Mao Zedong’s Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957–58, Chinese intellectuals were subjected to “re-education” by the state. In Banished to the Great Northern Wilderness, Ning Wang draws on labour farm archives, interviews, and memoirs to provide a remarkable look at the suffering and complex psychological world of banished Beijing intellectuals. Wang’s use of these newly uncovered Chinese-language sources challenges the concept of the intellectual as renegade martyr – showing how exiles often declared allegiance to the state for self-preservation. While Mao’s campaign victimized the banished, many of those same people also turned against their comrades. Wang describes the ways in which the state sought to remould the intellectuals, and he illuminates the strategies the exiles used to deal with camp officials and improve their chances of survival.

"Wang Ning has presented us with an extremely rich study of beidahuang, and the transparency of his deployment of sources, as well as his acknowledgement of their limits... ensures this book will remain relevant and valuable in the long term." - PRC History Review, No. 3

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Wang’s exploration of political exiles in Mao’s China incorporates his exhaustive research into a truly beautiful narrative, full of individual voices… raw and moving … Banished to the Great Northern Wilderness [is] indispensable reading for anyone who wants to understand the history of the People’s Republic of China

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Seen through a wider lens, Ning Wang’s work inspires us to rethink thought and labour reform in China as part of a larger global history that continues to evolve.