CHILDREN OF THE DRAGON: The Story of Tiananmen Square

One of the most affecting reports yet on the 1989 student rebellion in China. Introduced by John K. Fairbank and Orville Schell, and presented by a New York-based organization of ""Chinese scientists, scholars and students concerned about restrictions on civil liberties in China,"" this is a carefully selected and edited collation of first-person reports, speeches, clippings, and commentaries on the events leading up to, during, and after Tiananmen Square. No comparable report so far conveys as vividly, accessibly, and economically the story of this movement from the students' point of view. It is brilliant in its selection and logical in sequence. The editors present reactions--ranging from a few lines to several pages in length--of a broad cross-section of witnesses, including novelists, intellectuals, politicos, students, insiders, and outsiders. Fairbank's brief preface sets the scene clearly, summarizing the role of students and intellectuals in China--whom Mao tried to tame and whose support Deng tried to cultivate; and Schell offers a more extended commentary on the significance of the uprising: "". . .the accomplishment of the Tiananmen protest was not only that it changed the existing relationship between the Chinese people and their government, but that it altered the chemistry of the way they, particularly the younger generation of Chinese, looked at themselves."" A powerful human document presaging inevitable change in China.