From the Back Cover:
"Ian Buruma - at his best! Witty, insightful, revealing. The author adds a new, broader dimension to the China subject showing that the struggle for this country transcends far beyond its borders. Very refreshing and fascinating."
-Ryszard Kapuscinski
"Bad Elements is a marvelous guided tour of the many worlds of Chinese free-thinking. We visit frustrated refugees in New Jersey, rebels turned evangelist in California, gadflies in the authoritarian duchy of Singapore, long-suffering campaigners for Taiwan independence, punctilious Hong Kong democrats, stubborn Tibetans, and many more. We meet mayors and cooks, professors and streetwalkers. We go from city to town to tiny village to cyberspace. Two common threads hold the resplendent variety together. One is the reliable presence of the tour guide, Mr. Buruma, whose sharp eye, arch irony, and underlying moral seriousness provide a consistent vantage point; the other is the character of the bad elements themselves, who, despite all the differences in their contexts and concerns, display a common orneryness. After this book it will no longer work to argue that 'Chinese people like to be told what to do.'"
-Perry Link, professor of East Asian Studies, Princeton University
"In this sharply observed and finely written book, Ian Buruma takes the reader with him on a deeply personal quest: why is it that, in the face of overwhelming state power, some Chinese consistently refuse to 'Live in the Lie'? What does their cussedness tell us about the meaning of being Chinese? And can the roots of their individual acts of courage be traced either to their religious faith, or their belief in science?"
- Jonathan Spence, professor of history, Yale University
About the Author:
Ian Buruma was educated in Holland and Japan. He has spent many years in Asia, which he has written about in God's Dust, A Japanese Mirror, and Behind the Mask. He has also written Playing the Game, The Wages of Guilt, and Anglomania. Buruma is currently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Institute for the Humanities in Washington, D.C.
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