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As is often the case when things are complicated, extreme views have superficial appeal. On the one extreme, some see China as an inevitable enemy that must be contained; on the other hand, there are those who see China as a slowly developing democracy that can be embraced.

As a political current, Maoism was always weak in Britain, confined largely to students from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The difficulty in a number of Western democracies is that the playing field is being tilted. For many in the middle class, prosperity seems unattainable because a good education - today's passport to riches - is unaffordable.

The respected intellectuals are those who conform and serve power interests.

A weak people and its equally debilitated leaders are bludgeoned by history. It maims them into the cripples that they are meant to be.

Somehow I feel a little bit odd in Tiananmen Square because I was a soldier, in a uniform, watching those leaders and tanks, and I was part of them.

To Confucius, harmony was consensus, not conformity. It required loyal opposition.

Universities are some of the few places left where a struggle for the commons, for public life, if not democracy itself, can be made visible through the medium of collective voices and social movements energized by the need for a politics and way of life counter to authoritarian capitalism.