Bad Elements

Strange things happen when Chinese dynasties near their end. Dams break, earthquakes hit, clouds appear in the shape of weird beasts, rain falls in odd colors, and insects infest the countryside. These are the ill omens of moral turpitude and political collapse. While greed and cynicism poison the society from within, barbarians stir restlessly at the gates. Corrupt officials, whose authority can no longer rely on the assumption of superior virtue, exercise their power with anxious and arbitrary brutality. When people, even those who live far from the centers of power, begin to sense that the Mandate of Heaven is slipping away from their corrupted rulers, rebellious spirits press their claims as the saviors of China, with promises of moral restoration and national unity. Millenarian cults and secret societies proliferate and sometimes explode in massive violence.
What does it mean to be Chinese? Few questions in history have been as fateful. Bad Elements is the result of Ian Buruma's five years of travels throughout the Chinese-speaking world observing the varying groups competing for a right to define its answer. From the diaspora of exiles in the West, to Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, to factions within the People's Republic itself, Buruma comes to terms with the range of dissident communities competing to shape China's future in their own image.
A brave and illuminating reckoning with the groups fighting for the Mandate of Heaven, Bad Elements is also a profound meditation on the universal themes of national identity and political struggle. From the Hardcover edition.

Review :
"Ian Buruma - at his best! Witty, insightful, revealing. The author adds a new, broader dimension to the China subject showing that the struggle for this country transcends far beyond its borders. Very refreshing and fascinating."
-Ryszard Kapuscinski
""Bad Elements" is a marvelous guided tour of the many worlds of Chinese free-thinking. We visit frustrated refugees in New Jersey, rebels turned evangelist in California, gadflies in the authoritarian duchy of Singapore, long-suffering campaigners for Taiwan independence, punctilious Hong Kong democrats, stubborn Tibetans, and many more. We meet mayors and cooks, professors and streetwalkers. We go from city to town to tiny village to cyberspace. Two common threads hold the resplendent variety together. One is the reliable presence of the tour guide, Mr. Buruma, whose sharp eye, arch irony, and underlying moral seriousness provide a consistent vantage point; the other is the character of the bad elements themselves, who, despite all the differences in their contexts and concerns, display a common orneryness. After this book it will no longer work to argue that 'Chinese people like to be told what to do.'"
-Perry Link, professor of East Asian Studies, Princeton University
"In this sharply observed and finely written book, Ian Buruma takes the reader with him on a deeply personal quest: why is it that, in the face of overwhelming state power, some Chinese consistently refuse to 'Live in the Lie'? What does their cussedness tell us about the meaning of being Chinese? And can the roots of their individual acts of courage be traced either to their religious faith, or their belief in science?"
- Jonathan Spence, professor ofhistory, Yale University

"From the Hardcover edition."