Fast Change and Its Discontents

This special section offers a behind-the-headlines view of China that focuses on how some of the groups and individuals that make up the country's laobaixing (roughly, "the 99 percent") have been living through and shaping complex and challenging times. The authors, who have a deep understanding of life on the ground in today's China, steer clear of discussion of the famous figures whose views and actions often dominate daily news coverage of China. In doing so, they illustrate the flaws in two influential visions of Chinese politics that have, each in its own way, distorted American thinking about China ever since June 4, 1989, the momentous day that saw both a massacre of protesters and bystanders near Tiananmen Square and the first electoral victory in Poland of Solidarity.