Out of Mao’s Shadow

Philip P. Pan, who reported from China for The Washington Post for seven years, portrays a country where capitalism has brought prosperity and global respect while the Communist government goes on resisting demands for political freedom. Evading the police, Pan went to rusting factories in the northeast, a tabloid newsroom in the fast-growing south, a small-town courtroom and the offices of the richest tycoons. His subjects include an elderly surgeon who revealed how the government hid the SARS epidemic, a filmmaker looking into an execution during the Cultural Revolution and a blind man jailed for campaigning against forced abortions under the one-child policy. Pan finds that many who filled Tiananmen Square in 1989 still push for justice in other ways.

Patrick Collison lists it among the books on his Bookshelf page.