Political Rights in Post-Mao China

Political Rights in Post-Mao China provides an engaging overview of political changes in China in the later decades of the twentieth century and early years of the twenty-first century, highlighting the growing rights consciousness movement among China’s citizens. Professor Goldman explains how demands for Party reform and the increasingly organized struggle for democracy and political rights have spread from their beginnings among China’s urban intellectuals to mass demonstrations held by workers, farmers, and the growing middle class. China’s moves toward a free market economy have provided these various groups with access to new technologies―including the Internet and cell phones―that help organize their political protests. This book is invaluable to anyone wishing to understand the political dynamics of reform-era China and will appeal to teachers and students of many disciplines―including anthropology, Asian studies, geography, government, history, philosophy, political science, religion, and sociology.

MERLE GOLDMAN is Professor Emerita, Boston University (1971–2003) and Associate, Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University. Professor Goldman is a leading scholar of China’s modern political development and has authored numerous books, including China’s Intellectuals: Advise and Dissent (Harvard University Press), Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China: Political Reform in the Deng Xiaoping Decade (Harvard University Press), China: A New History, co-authored with John K. Fairbank (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), From Comrade to Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in China (Harvard University Press), and Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China, co-edited with Elizabeth Perry (Harvard University Press).