Redefining China

For decades, Perry Link has been the dean of foreign scholars writing about independent Chinese thinkers, so it’s a real honor to be reviewed by him in The New York Review of Books. In this review of Sparks, he points out that one of my goals is to redefine what we mean by China:

The word “China,” as used by Western journalists and government officials, almost always refers to the thoughts, values, positions, and plans of high-ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party. This is the case when one reads of “China’s” position on Ukraine, “China’s” effort to stimulate domestic consumption, and so on.

In Ian Johnson’s bracing book Sparks, “China” means something else. Johnson writes of Chinese people who uncover momentous truths about their country’s modern history and risk their careers, indeed their lives, to do it. Their values and actions are continuous with ancient moral traditions as well as with the daily life that lies beyond official reach today. They, too, are China.

Over the years, the NYRB has been something like my spiritual home. It was at the urging of its former editor, Bob Silvers, that I began my Q&A series with public intellectuals (still up on the Review’s site here) that gave me the impetus to begin researching Sparks in 2010.  And so it’s especially meaningful to be reviewed in its pages, even if the book came out a year and a half ago! But I think people read the Review for the long-term and its influence isn’t measured in book sales or blurbs that you can extract from a review. Instead, it’s the engagement with the book, which this review does beautifully. 

For people not familiar with the Review, you’ll note that the essay is paywalled but please do sign up and you’ll get a few free articles–and perhaps you’ll also subscribe. In an era of diminishing book review sections in newspapers, supporting family-run publications like the Review is especially important.