Nathan explored the roots of the Tiananmen tragedy in Deng Xiaoping's ten-year reform. How will cultural values and attitudes shape China's political development? What will be the impact of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the West? Drawing on ground-breaking empirical research, Nathan measures the expectations of individual Chinese and their attitudes toward government and democracy.
Andrew J. Nathan is professor of politics at Columbia University and is the author of numerous books, including China's Transition (Columbia). He is a frequent contributor to the The New Republic.
What brought about the student-led Chinese democracy movement of April-June 1989? What are the prospects for its revival? Interest in these questions is sharpened by the collapse of Communism in Europe, and these two books can help us understand whether China is likely to remain a Leninist holdout regime. Feigon, a China historian and frequent visitor to that county, first presents a capsule history of modern Chinese student political movements as a context for his well-informed portrait of the Chinese democracy movement in 1989. Leavened with anecdotes from Feigon's own China experience, this sometimes disjointed, sometimes unfair (criticizing the students, for example, for lacking a well-thought-out political strategy), but mostly interesting account will serve as a useful discussion of the systemic crisis that led to Tiananmen. Nathan, a professor of political science at Columbia, takes us much further in understanding both the roots of crisis and the prospects for the future. The 11 well-written and tightly argued essays collected here focus on China's capacity to move toward democracy as well as the transition to democracy in Taiwan and U.S.-China relations. Nathan suggests that Chinese-style democracy may eventually come about through a combination of elite-sponsored political reform and a resurgence of demands for change from an increasingly self-organized society that rejects outdated Leninism. These consistently thought-provoking analyses are the best available guide to contemporary Chinese politics. A very important book that deserves a wide audience. Nathan was a long-time LJ reviewer.--Ed.-- Steven I. Levine, Duke Univ., Durham, N.C.
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