Evening Chats in Beijing Probing China's Predicament

by Link, E. Perry

• ISBN13: 9780393310658
• ISBN10: 0393310655
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-09-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

Chinese intellectuals have a traditional duty, for which there is no equivalent in the West: to worry, to 'take responsibility for all under heaven, ' to argue the question 'What can we do with China?' In this 'utterly absorbing gem of a book' (Library Journal), Perry Link conveys the worries besetting China's most prominent writers, journalists, scientists, professors, and dissident officials. Link creates 'an invaluable opening onto China's best and brightest hearts and minds' (Kirkus Reviews), allowing the Chinese themselves to tell us why Beijing took to the streets in Spring 1989.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Introduction	p. 3
Social World	p. 51
Corruption	p. 52
The Work-Unit System	p. 61
Money First, Education Last	p. 70
Repression	p. 79
Livelihood	p. 90
Daily Life	p. 91
Financial Squeeze	p. 94
Housing Pinch	p. 97
Morale	p. 107
Public Incivility	p. 112
No Way Out	p. 118
History	p. 123
May Fourth	p. 128
"Peasant Consciousness"	p. 135
The Campaigns of the 1950s	p. 139
The Revelations of Dai Qing	p. 144
The Cultural Revolution	p. 149
The Reforms of the 1980s	p. 155
The Course of Twentieth-Century Chinese History	p. 159
Historical Parallels	p. 163
The Problem of Pessimism	p. 167
Identity: Language and Ideology	p. 173
Living with the Official Language	p. 175
The Search for an Ideology	p. 191
Patriotism	p. 201
Identity Within Groups	p. 213
Identity with the State	p. 214
Identity with Other Groups	p. 229
Individualism	p. 235
Four Generations	p. 237
The Returned Student	p. 244
Responsibility	p. 249
The Worrying Mentality	p. 249
The Responsibility of Expression: Two Traps	p. 255
The Problem of "Knowledge for Use"	p. 266
New Definitions of Responsibility	p. 273
Advancing Democracy	p. 278
The Debate over New Authoritarianism	p. 283
Afterword	p. 291
Index	p. 309
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