The NYRB China Archive
10.03.24

China’s Iconoclast

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

I Have No Enemies: The Life and Legacy of Liu Xiaobo by Perry Link, the leading Western chronicler of dissent in China, and a Chinese colleague who writes anonymously as Wu Dazhi is the definitive biography of the most famous dissident in the...

Culture
06.27.19

‘What I’m Always Doing Is Escaping, Escaping, Escaping’

Perry Link

Liu Xia, widow of Liu Xiaobo, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 and died while in Chinese custody in 2017, has opened up to the public for the first time since she began a life of exile in Germany nearly a year ago. On May 4, in a dialogue...

Viewpoint
12.21.18

A Look Back at China in 2018

Kyle Hutzler

In 2018, the outlook for China regarding its politics, economy, and relationship with the United States darkened considerably. The removal of presidential term limits and Xi Jinping’s interactions with the Trump administration prompted rare...

Viewpoint
07.13.18

‘Liu Knew His Responsibility in History’

Ian Johnson

He was risking not the immediate arrival of soldiers, but the inevitable and life-threatening imprisonment that befalls all people who challenge state power in China today. This was not an active decision to die, but a willingness...

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
...

Media
04.17.14

Ai Weiwei’s Reach Draws New Yorkers’ Attention to Free Speech

Kim Wall

Ai Weiwei retweeted me!” exclaimed a young blonde woman, laughing and waving her iPhone in the air with excitement. She and some two hundred other New Yorkers had gathered on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army...

Wife Of China’s Jailed Nobel Winner: I‘m Not Free

Liu Xia was allowed to leave the Beijing apartment where she has been held for two-and-a-half years to attend the trial of her brother on fraud charges that his lawyers said are trumped up to punish the family. 

 

Ai Weiwei, China’s Useful Dissident

By enhancing his celebrity through publicity stunts, Ai has unwittingly empowered the Chinese Communist Party by outwardly conforming to its definition of a dissident: a narcissist more attuned to the whims of foreign admirers than to the...