The NYRB China Archive
01.13.21

Seeing the CCP Clearly

Perry Link
from New York Review of Books

The split between the two friends is a small example of a wider disagreement between “Trump boosters” and “Trump critics” in the Chinese dissident community. The rift is plainly visible both inside and outside China and is likely to persist in...

The NYRB China Archive
07.14.17

Liu Xiaobo: The Man Who Stayed

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

In 1898, some of China’s most brilliant minds allied themselves with the Emperor Guangxu, a young ruler who was trying to assert himself by forcing through reforms to open up China’s political, economic, and educational systems. But opponents...

The NYRB China Archive
07.13.17

The Passion of Liu Xiaobo

Perry Link
from New York Review of Books

In the late 1960s Mao Zedong, China’s Great Helmsman, encouraged children and adolescents to confront their teachers and parents, root out “cow ghosts and snake spirits,” and otherwise “make revolution.” In practice, this meant...

The NYRB China Archive
09.29.16

‘The Songs of Birds’

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

Day and night,
I copy the Diamond Sutra
of Prajnaparamita.
My writing looks more and more square.
It proves that I have not gone entirely
insane, but the tree I drew
hasn’t grown a
...

The NYRB China Archive
01.09.12

Banned in China

Jonathan Mirsky
from New York Review of Books

In late December, a foreign correspondent in Beijing emailed me to say that a four-page article on China I’d written for a special New Year’s edition of Newsweek had been carefully torn from each of the 731 copies of the magazine on sale...

The NYRB China Archive
01.27.10

What Beijing Fears Most

Perry Link
from New York Review of Books

On December 29, four days after being sentenced to eleven years in prison for “subversion of state power,” the Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo filed an appeal to a higher court. For many familiar with the Chinese regime, the decision seemed quixotic:...

The NYRB China Archive
12.21.09

The Trial of Liu Xiaobo: A Citizens’ Manifesto and a Chinese Crackdown

Perry Link
from New York Review of Books

One year ago, the Chinese literary critic and political commentator Liu Xiaobo was taken away from his home in Beijing by the Chinese police, who held him without charge for six months, then placed him under formal arrest for six more months, on...

The NYRB China Archive
01.15.09

China’s Charter 08

Liu Xiaobo & Perry Link
from New York Review of Books

The document below, signed by more than two thousand Chinese citizens, was conceived and written in conscious admiration of the founding of Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, where, in January 1977, more than two hundred Czech and Slovak...