China is completely lacking in self-awareness and as someone who has stepped outside that society, I have a responsibility to write about it as I see it.
From Ma Jian
I left Beijing in 1987, shortly before my books were banned there, but have returned continually.
In 1989, I was on Tiananmen Square with the students, living in their makeshift tents and joining their jubilant singing of the Internationale. In the two decades since, each time that I have gone back, visions from those days seem to return with increasing persistence.
In February of this year I returned to China to research my next book. The authorities know about the novels of mine that have been published in the west, including the latest one, Beijing Coma, about a student shot in Tiananmen Square, but so far have allowed me to return.
Beijing Coma took me 10 years to finish.
I believe that the power of literature is stronger than the power of tyranny.
Tyrannies not only want to control your mind and thoughts but your flesh as well.
It is vitally important for me, both personally and for my writing, to be able to return to China freely, so being barred entry has caused me deep concern and distress.
My hope is that the Chinese government will come to realise that it is futile to repress free speech, and that contrary to what they believe a regime's strength rests not its suppression of a plurality of opinions and ideas, but in its capacity and willingness to encourage them.
The Beijing Olympics represent China's grand entrance onto the world stage and confirmation of its new superpower status.
11 perspectives
10 perspectives
9 perspectives
7 perspectives
6 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives