Bad Elements Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing

Who speaks for China? Is it the old men of the politbureau or an activist like Wei Jingshsheng, who spent eighteen years in prison for writing a democratic manifesto? Is China's future to be found amid the boisterous sleaze of an electoral campaign in Taiwan or in the maneuvers by which ordinary residents of Beijing quietly resist the authority of the state? These are among the questions that Ian Buruma poses in this enlightening and often moving tour of Chinese dissidence. Moving from the quarrelsome exile communities of the U. S. to Singapore and Hong Kong and from persecuted Christians to Internet "hacktivists," Buruma captures an entire spectrum of opposition to the orthodoxies of the Communist Party. He explores its historical antecedents its conflicting notions of freedom and the paradoxical mix of courage and cussedness that inspires its members. Panoramic and intimate, disturbing and inspiring,Bad Elementsis a profound meditation on the themes of national identity and political struggle.

Ian Buruma studied Chinese in the Netherlands and cinema in Japan. He has spent many years in Asia, which he has written about in God's Dust, Behind the Mask, and The Missonary and the Libertine.  He has also written Playing the Game, The Wages of Guilt, and Anglomania. Buruma lives in London and writes for The New York Review of Books and The New York Times Magazine, as well as other publications.