Contents
The book, which is modelled on The Japan That Can Say No, argues that many "fourth-generation" Chinese embraced Western values too strongly in the 1980s and disregarded their heritage and background. Surprisingly, all of the authors were strong critics of Chinese government, and at least two of the authors participated in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Another author was sentenced to seven years in jail by the Chinese government in the 1980s for his pro-democracy activities, though he was released after only serving three years. The book specifically criticizes a number of activists such as physicist Fang Lizhi and journalist Liu Binyan.
Describing a disenchantment among Chinese with the US starting in the 1990s, especially after it adopted a China containment strategy, rejected China's bid for the World Trade Organization, and worked against China's bid for the 2000 Summer Olympics, the authors criticize US foreign policy (in particular, support for Taiwan) and American individualism. It claims that China is used as a scapegoat for American problems and voices support for such governments as that of Fidel Castro's Cuba which openly declare their opposition to the US. The book also focuses on Japan. It accuses Japan of being a client state of the US, argues that Japan should not get a seat on the United Nations Security Council, and supports a renewed call for war reparations to China from Japan for its actions in the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Read more about this topic: China Can Say No
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“Yet to speak of the whole world as metaphor
Is still to stick to the contents of the mind
And the desire to believe in a metaphor.
It is to stick to the nicer knowledge of
Belief, that what it believes in is not true.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Such as boxed
Their feelings properly, complete to tags
A box for dark men and a box for Other
Would often find the contents had been scrambled.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“If one reads a newspaper only for information, one does not learn the truth, not even the truth about the paper. The truth is that the newspaper is not a statement of contents but the contents themselves; and more than that, it is an instigator.”
—Karl Kraus (1874–1936)