Bad Elements

Who speaks for China? Is it the old men of the politburo or activists like Wei Jingshsheng, who spent eighteen years in prison for writing a emocratic manifesto? Is China's future to be fund amid the boisterous sleaze of an electoral cmpaign in Taiwan, or in the manoeuvres by which ordinary residents of Beijing quietly resist the authority of the state?





These are among the questions that Ian Buruma poses in this enlightening and often moving tour of Chinese dissidence. Travelling through the U.S., Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the People's Republic, Ian Buruma tells the stories of Chinese rebels who dare to stand up to their rulers, exploring their chances of success in the face of the most powerful dictatorship on earth. From the exiles of Tiananmen to the hidden Christians of rural China, he brings alive the human dimension to their struggles and reveals the world's most secretive superpower through the eyes of its dissidents.



Ian Buruma is the Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College, New York. His books include Year Zero: A History of 1945, The China Lover: A Novel, Murder in Amsterdam, Occidentalism, God's Dust, Behind the Mask, The Wages of Guilt,Bad Elements,and Taming the Gods. He writes frequently for The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and the Financial Times.



A judicious, sparklingly readable book



The tales of courage, sacrifice and integrity in Buruma's book are inspiring



This wise and imaginative work - at once so sympathetic and so critically alert - could scarcely have been attempted by anyone but Buruma