Making sense of the Chinese.(book on Chinese rebels)

Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing By Ian Buruma Random House, 432 pages, $27.95

There is an idea, mostly propagated by Chinese authoritarian leaders, that China is unfit for democracy. Supposedly, the poor, uneducated Chinese masses simply aren't ready to be free. As Chinese president Jiang Zemin told the New York Times last July, democratization in China would lead to chaos.

The rulers of the repressive regime in Beijing also fan the sentiment that China --right or wrong--must be defended by Chinese everywhere, at all times. As a member of the National People's Congress once explained, "If you're Chinese, you should always stand with the Chinese people, not with the foreigners who attempt to weaken China."

This idea and this sentiment often join to project a powerful myth of an orderly, strong, and unified China. Which is very convenient for the Chinese government. When it arrests democracy activists, tortures peaceful religious protestors, purges reform-minded officials, or threatens overseas Chinese academic scholars, it invokes the myth: China needs to be ruled strongly, and must not be criticized. Even to ordinary Chinese people, the myth is often an intoxicating and irresistible concept. Chinese yuppies in Beijing and Shanghai who embrace economic reform turn their backs on persecuted religious believers and political dissidents, justifying their callousness with the "need for social stability." Overseas Chinese brand exiled dissidents "traitors" for shining a spotlight on China's human rights abuses.

"China," summarizes Ian Buruma in Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing, "is an orthodoxy, a dogma, which disguises politics as culture and nation as race." Buruma tells the stories of Chinese dissidents who challenged this orthodoxy. The tales reveal "the mesmerizing force of the Chinese myth, as well as the reasons why some people are brave or mad enough to challenge it." Through sacrifices in prison, hiding, or exile, these few men and women prove that freedom is not wholly alien to the Chinese soul.

Buruma talked to political and religious dissidents all across the Chinese-speaking world. ...