The overseas Chinese democracy movement (OCDM) is one of the world’s longest-running and most difficult exile political campaigns. This unique book is a rare and comprehensive account of its trajectory since its beginnings in the early 1980s, examining its shifting operational environment and the diversification of its activities, as well as characterizing its distinctive features in comparison to other exile movements.
This book discusses the roles of civil society in the initiation stage of democratization in China. It argues that there is a semi-civil society in China and that this quasi-civil society that plays dual roles in the initial stage of democratisation in China. It makes a contribution to existing theories on democratic functions of civil society by applying, testing, revising and developing these theories in the context of Chinese democratization.
"Han Minzhu" and her assistant editor, "Hua Sheng", both writing under pseudonyms to protect their identities, present a rich collection of translations of original writings and speeches from the 1989 Chinese Democracy Movement--flyers, posters, handbills, poems, articles from underground newspapers, and transcripts of tapes. 30 illustrations.
Duke (Chinese literature, U. of British Columbia) was travelling on a grant, gathering research on contemporary Chinese writers. Recognizing the importance of events around him, he set aside his research, and with camera, cassette recorder, and diary (later supplemented by published accounts) captured these critical events of Chinese history. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.
A book of original documents, speeches, handbills, posters, manifestos and interviews. "Present[s] the sights and sounds of the cacophony of voices heard during the two-month period through the writings and recollections of the demonstrators themselves."--"Ottawa Citizen"
Presents an empirically and theoretically rich sociological study of two Chinese diaspora protest movements: Falun Gong and the Chinese democracy movement.
A highly original and convincing book by one of our best-informed China specialists, offering an entirely new perspective on the nature of democracy as the Chinese practice it—and, incidentally, as we practice it too. What do the Chinese mean by the word “democracy”? When they say that their political system is “democratic,” does this mean that they share our ideas about liberty, civil rights, and self government? With the recent improvement in relations between China and the West, such questions are no longer merely academic. They are basic to an understanding of the Chinese people and their state, both now and in the future. In Chinese Democracy, Andrew J. Nathan tackles these in issues in depth, drawing upon much fresh and unfamiliar material. He begins with a vivid history of the short-lived democracy movement of 1978-81, where groups of young people in a number of Chinese cities started issuing outspoken publications and putting up posters detailing their complaints and opinions. Apparently condoned at first by the post-Mao regime, the movement flourished; then it was crushed, its leaders tried and jailed. With quotes from many of the participants and their works, Nathan constructs—for the first time—a poignant picture of the burst of liberal activity, at the same time showing how distinctly Chinese it was and how the roots of its failure lay as much in history as in current political necessity. To demonstrate this, Nathan investigates the nature of the democratic tradition in China, tracing it back to the close of the imperial era at the end of the nineteenth century and the works of Liang Qichao, the country’s most brilliant journalist and most influential modern political thinker. We see how Liang deeply influenced Mao Zedong, and how conflicts between party dictatorship and popular participation, between bureaucratic authority and individual rights, between Mao’s harsh version of democracy and Deng Xiaoping’s more liberal one, remain to this day unresolved and potentially dangerous. For example, as Nathan shows, there was apparently a serious move toward liberalization projected on the highest government levels in the years after Mao’s death, yet the move failed. In a tour de force of scholarship, Nathan shows through an extended study of the many Chinese constitutions put force since the 1911 Revolution that individual rights have always been forced to give away to the needs and ambitions of the state. Democracy in China has traditionally been admired mainly for what it can help accomplish, not for any human rights it may embody. Finally, making use of scores of interviews with émigrés from the mainland, the author analyzes the extraordinary role played by the press in forming public attitudes in China, and then goes on to show what happened in 1980 when the authorities for the first time conducted direct elections to the county-level people’s congresses. It was a splendid shambles. Much of this story has never been told before.
Chen Pokong (aka Chen Jinsong), born December 20, 1963, is a Chinese author and political commentator. He played a key role of leadership in 1989 China Democracy Movement (a nationwide Tiananmen Square Protests). He was imprisoned for several years by the Chinese government, and subsequently exiled to the United States. As a prolific writer, Chen has published a number of books. He currently provides commentary for Radio Free Asia and is one of the most frequent guests on Voice of America's weekly "Pros and Cons" show, as well as other Chinese-language TV programs. Chen is also one of the most popular overseas Chinese YouTubers. As an author of many books and numerous articles, in print and online, Chen Pokong has gained an extensive worldwide readership. His books include Machiavelli in Beijing (Thick and Black in Zhongnanhai), One Hundred Basic Facts about China, If the US and China Were To Go to War, and Trump vs. Xi: Duel or Deal, among others.
Within a framework of analysis and background by the four editors, this book presents a view from the grassroots of the 1989 student and mass movement in China and its tragic consequences. Here are the core eyewitness and participant accounts expressed through wall posters, students speeches, movement declarations, handbills, and other documents. In their introductions to the material, the editors address the political economy of the democracy movement, the evolving concept of democracy during the movement, the movement's contribution to China becoming a civil society, and the changing view of the Chinese Communist Party by students, intellectuals, workers and others, as the crisis unfolded.