Description
For Julia Ching, the events of June 1989 mark a pivotal point in a long history of student protests in China. Basing much of her work on Chinese language sources from the People's Republic, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, as well as many personal accounts, this eminent China scholar analyzes what led to the bloody massacre of students, workers, and citizens of Beijing in Tian'anmen Square. This event-because of coverage in the international news media-overturned long-held Western stereotypes of the nature and desires of the Chinese people. Most of all, Ching argues, it demonstrated to the world that the people's most potent desire is to be free human beings as well as patriotic Chinese.
To probe the soul of China, Ching looks back across the decades. Starting with the formation of the Communist Party in Shanghai in 1921, she distinguishes clearly between the legacy of Chinese tradition and the innovations of Marxism. The author outlines the power struggles under Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, the causes and effects of the Cultural Revolution, the nature of both dis- sent and its repression in China, and the student protests of the remote and recent past, including the 1976 protests in Tian'anmen Square. She discusses the feasibility of Chinese democracy and whether communism in China is another form of Oriental despotism. Ching describes the nature of dictatorship in China and the cycle of successive power struggles and examines whether that cycle can be broken by "people power"-a fundamental question in a season of momentous change within the communist world.
