Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing

Who speaks for China? Is it the old men of the politbureau or an activist like Wei Jingshsheng, who spent eighteen years in prison for writing a democratic manifesto? Is China’s future to be found amid the boisterous sleaze of an electoral campaign in Taiwan or in the maneuvers by which ordinary residents of Beijing quietly resist the authority of the state?

These are among the questions that Ian Buruma poses in this enlightening and often moving tour of Chinese dissidence. Moving from …