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Dark Side of the Chinese Moon

Yang Lian on Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao, Zhongguo nongmin diaocha. A catalogue of the iniquities visited on rural China as the CCP safeguards the ‘investment environment’ of the coastal cities, at the cost of the countryside. Impoverishment and extortion of 40 per cent of the world’s peasants, in a survey suppressed by the PRC authorities.

Return to Beijing

A Chinese poet rediscovers his native city, learning how much a favourable book review costs. Vignettes of China’s new ‘literary merchants’ drawing water from Mao’s well, with a faux slice of the Great Wall in the garden; and of its older industrial workers, destined for the scrapheap.