Out of Mao's Shadow
The Struggle for the Soul of a New China
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As the Olympics focus the world's attention on China, an array of books examine that burgeoning country from a variety of perspectives.Out of Mao's Shadow: Stories from the Struggle for China's SoulPhilip P. Pan. Simon & Schuster, $28 (352p) Ex-Washington Post Beijing bureau chief Pan focuses these 11 profiles on China's lonely dissidents: a filmmaker documents a Mao-era dissident who wrote a prison manifesto in her own blood; a doctor acclaimed for blowing the whistle on the SARS epidemic is arrested for writing about the Tiananmen Square massacre; an editor tests the party's tolerance for muckraking. These narratives show China's social and political tensions playing out through personal enmities, petty bribery and subtle moral compromises. Pan's stirring reportage shows that, even in China, the individual can make a difference at a price. B&w photos.