Book ReviewFrom Comrade to Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in China

This book is a detailed narrative of the democratic movement in China from the death of Mao Zedong 毛澤東 in 1976 to the turn of this century. The fight for political rights has been a feature of Chinese development over the past twenty-five years or so, yet it has not hitherto been chronicled in Western scholarship. Merle Goldman’s new book fills this gap by challenging the conventional wisdom that there have been few political reforms accompanying the extraordinary economic reforms of the post-Mao period. A leading scholar of contemporary China’s political development, Goldman has always had a particular interest in the role of intellectuals, especially dissidents, who sought to bring about political change. The title of the book is telling － it reveals the gradual and progressive metamorphosis of educated Chinese, or intellectuals in a loose sense, from loyalty to the Communist leadership to disaffection with the Leninist party-state and its underpinning ideology. After the trauma of the Cultural Revolution, dissidents refused to be comrades any more, but instead wanted to be citizens, with rights to be defended and asserted that were stipulated in the Chinese constitution. They defied the party-state by articulating their demands both within and without the establishment and through organized activities.