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The Struggle for the Soul of a New China
Simon & Schuster
June 2008
On Sale: June 17, 2008
368 pages ISBN: 1416537058 EAN: 9781416537052 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
From an award-winning journalist for The Washington Post
and one of the leading China correspondents of his
generation comes an eloquent and vivid chronicle of the
world's most successful authoritarian state -- a nation
undergoing a remarkable transformation. Philip P. Pan's groundbreaking book takes us inside the
dramatic battle for China's soul and into the lives of
individuals struggling to come to terms with their nation's
past -- the turmoil and trauma of Mao's rule -- and to take
control of its future. Capitalism has brought prosperity and
global respect to China, but the Communist government
continues to resist the demands of its people for political
freedom. Pan, who reported in China for the Post for seven years and
speaks fluent Chinese, eluded the police and succeeded in
going where few Western journalists have dared. From the rusting factories in the industrial northeast to a
tabloid newsroom in the booming south, from a small-town
courtroom to the plush offices of the nation's wealthiest
tycoons, he tells the gripping stories of ordinary men and
women fighting for political change. An elderly surgeon
exposes the government's cover-up of the SARS epidemic. A
filmmaker investigates the execution of a young woman during
the Cultural Revolution. A blind man is jailed for leading a
crusade against forced abortions carried out under the
one-child policy. The young people who filled Tiananmen Square in the spring
of 1989 saw their hopes for a democratic China crushed in a
massacre, but Pan reveals that as older, more pragmatic
adults, many continue to push for justice in different ways.
They are survivors whose families endured one of the world's
deadliest famines during the Great Leap Forward, whose
idealism was exploited during the madness of the Cultural
Revolution, and whose values have been tested by the booming
economy and the rush to get rich.
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