On a snowy winter day in 1991, Lu Gang, a slightly built Chinese scholar who had recently received his Ph.D. in plasma physics, walked into a seminar room at the University of Iowa’s Van Allen Hall, raised a snub-nose .38-caliber…
Tag: The New York Review of Books
Baghdad: The Besieged Press The New York Review of Books
The small Royal Jordanian Fokker F-28-4000, which makes daily trips to Baghdad, sits out on the tarmac away from the jetways as if some airport official feared it might prove to be an airborne IED (improvised explosive device, a US…
The Jiang Zemin Mystery The New York Review of Books
Since the Chinese Communist Party leaders will not allow themselves to be criticized in the press or on television, critics have had to find other means to express their political grievances. Historically speaking, one of the most telling ways to…
China’s Spring The New York Review of Books
To stand, in early May, atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace, which guards the entrance to the Forbidden City, and look across the vast crowd of people jammed into Tiananmen Square was to have a historically new sense of what…
Human Rights in China The New York Review of Books
On the anniversary of the “June 4” incident, we again express our gravest concern for the fates of those who have been persecuted for their support of democratic progress in China. We hope that the Chinese government can abide by…
Keeping the Faith by Fang Lizhi The New York Review of Books
On June 4, the day after the People’s Liberation Army opened fire on the citizens of Beijing, the distinguished Chinese astrophysicist and dissident intellectual, Fang Lizhi, reluctantly sought refuge in the American embassy in Beijing with his physicist wife, Li…
Letters from the Other China The New York Review of Books
During the student demonstrations that swept China toward the end of 1986, the brilliant astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, who was then vice-president of the University of Science and Technology, emerged, through his speeches to student groups, as the country’s most forceful…
Free the Czechs The New York Review of Books
In the spring of 1979 these eleven men and women, all professionals and leaders in the human rights movement in Czechoslovakia, were arrested: Otta Bednarova—journalist, television editor; Jarmila Belikova—psychologist; Dr. Vaclav Benda—philosopher, mathematician, Charter ‘77 spokesman; Albert Cerny—actor; Jiri Dienstbier—journalist,…