On Socialist Democracy and the Chinese Legal System: Li Yizhe Debates

The Chinese political system has not been hospitable to political dissidence. From the end of the Cultural Revolution fighting in 1968 up to 1976, the year of Mao's death -- an eight year period marked by radical policy-making and political infighting -- only a single significant piece of dissident writing obtained wide circulation in China. This dissident manifesto, On Socialist Democracy and the Legal System, an angrily sardonic essay written in 1974 by a small group of young intellectuals in · Canton, probed into the country's political ailments and sought answers to the breakdown of due process of law. The two major authors of that essay subsequently emerged during the 'democracy movement' of 1979-81 as nationally influential writers on questions of bureaucracy, Party dominance, and democratic reform. This book examines their writings, from the famous On Socialist Democracy and the Legal System through their arrests and release, down to the lengthy 1980 essay Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution, an unconventional history of modern Chinese politics whose author soon thereafter was re­ sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment.