Synopses & Reviews
The principal force in awakening the people and setting them on the road to struggle, Liu Binyan argues, has been the repeated mistakes of the Chinese Communist Party and the outrageous bureaucratic corruption it has allowed to flourish. Even as he describes the runaway inflation that inflicts unfathomable hardship on all but the elite party officials, the increasing isolation and hypocrisy of the Communist leadership, or the political persecution of intellectuals and the press, Liu's message is one of hope. This book--written in one man's eloquent voice--is testimony to his belief that the need for democratic reform has taken root among the Chinese people and that they will ultimately take steps to transform their nation.
Review
Liu Binyan offers a special perspectiveon contemporary China. He has been aprominent player in that country's tumultuous political–social–literary history eversince the mid–1950s. His long experience asan investigative reporter for China YouthNews and People’s Daily has afforded him agrasp of the details of Chinese social historythat few can approach. -- Daniel J. Harrington - Theological Studies
About the Author
Liu Binyan, born in Changchun, Manchuria, on January 15, 1925, exemplifies in his words and actions the tradition of the courageous literati of independent conscience. A party member since the beginning of China's 1949 revolution and a firm believer in Marxism, Liu has pointed out how the Chinese Communist Party has come to abuse its power and does not respond to the demands of ordinary people. In 1957 he was expelled from the party and sent down to the countryside to do hard physical labor. Forbidden from publishing, he was barely able to support his family. With the establishment of the Deng Xiaoping regime in late 1978 and the rehabilitation of political prisoners by Deng's protégé, Hu Yaobang, Liu was made "special correspondent" for the party's official newspaper People's Daily. By 1979, he had begun to publish a series of investigative essays that exposed the party's corrupt practices and suppression of the people's rights. His exposés electrified the nation, and in 1987 Liu was purged from the party once again, along with his political ally Hu Yaobang. It was Hu's death that precipitated the massive pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. As a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1988-89, Liu was able to predict in his lectures, only a month prior to the Beijing uprising in the spring of 1989, the impending turmoil. He cannot be compared with any writer in western countries; his position in China resembles that of the dissident East European intellectuals. Currently Liu is Writer in Residence at Trinity College, Hartford. Excoriated by China's present leaders, he is unable to return to his homeland.
Table of Contents
- Foreword by Merle Goldman
- Preface
- China’s Crisis, China’s Hope
- The Fate of Intellectuals
- The Bureaucratic Paradise
- Freedom of the Press
- Why There Is Hope for China
- Deng’s Pyrrhic Victory
- Afterword: The Romanian Example