Year of the Rooster

Contents: Foreword by Gurcharan Das. Prologue The Myth of China. 1. The dissenters. 2. Wild grass. 3. The mystics. 4. The dispossessed. 5. The downtrodden. 6. Skewed development. 7. Shadows of democracy. 8. The savage state. 9. The end of the party. 10. The republicans. 11. A moral. Acknowledgments. Bibliography. Index of places. Index of names.

"All through 2005, the year of the Rooster in the Chinese Calendar, China was rocked by a series of rebellions: peasant revolts, religious uprisings, workers' strikes, petitions by democratic activists and environmental movements. As China opens up to the world, her people are becoming more aware, especially with the internet, and they are rebelling against the tyranny of the Communist Party. More and more Chinese are getting disenchanted with the growing injustice, corrupt officials, censorship, permanent surveillance, propaganda and repression of the system. Both the educated classes and the one billion peasants who have been bypassed by party driven industrialization are protesting loudly.

Who, in the west, is listening to the voices of these Chinese up in arms? Statesman and businessmen, as if mesmerized by the party and its supposed successes, prefer dealing with it, choosing to ignore the advocates of democracy. Such an approach is dangerously shortsighted, as it fails to take into account the reality of the country and makes a mockery of its future.

The author spent the year of the Rooster in China listening to these rebels in their quest for freedom; he let them speak during his journey into the inner most depths of China, its villages and provinces, far removed from the usual circuit." (jacket)