1st Edition
On Socialist Democracy and the Chinese Legal System Li Yizhe Debates
The Chinese political system has not been hospitable to political dissidence. From the end of the Cultural Revolution fighting in 1968 up to 1976, the year of Mao's death -- an eight year period marked by radical policy-making and political infighting -- only a single significant piece of dissident writing obtained wide circulation in China. This dissident manifesto, On Socialist Democracy and the Legal System, an angrily sardonic essay written in 1974 by a small group of young intellectuals in · Canton, probed into the country's political ailments and sought answers to the breakdown of due process of law. The two major authors of that essay subsequently emerged during the 'democracy movement' of 1979-81 as nationally influential writers on questions of bureaucracy, Party dominance, and democratic reform. This book examines their writings, from the famous On Socialist Democracy and the Legal System through their arrests and release, down to the lengthy 1980 essay Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution, an unconventional history of modern Chinese politics whose author soon thereafter was re sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment.
Biography
Anita Chan, a sociologist, is Research Associate at the Center for East Asian Studies of the University of Kansas. She is the author of Children of Mao: Personality Development and Political Activism in the Red Guard Generation (1985) and coauthor of Chen Village: The Recent History of a Peasant Community in Mao's China (1984). Stanley Rosen is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Red Guard Factionalism and the Cultural Revolution in Guangzhou (1982) and The Role of Sent-down Youth in the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1981), the co-editor of Policy Conflicts in Post-Mao China (forthcoming), and the editor of the journal Chinese Education. Jonathan Unger is Associate Professor of East Asian Cultures and Sociology at the University of Kansas. He is the author of Education Under Mao: Class and Competition in Canton Schools, 1960-1980 (1982) and co-author of Chen Village (1984).
