February 1999		INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITY: China Promotes Book that Takes a Critical View of its Political System Media Contact: Marci Janas
	Oberlin College Professor, Author and China Expert Marc Blecher Available to Discuss the Shift in Chinese Attitudes that Makes Room for Scholarly Critique of Government		Casting a critical eye on China's government, China Against the Tides portrays an American scholar's understanding and analysis of the process of China's development. Pinter Publishers of London and Washington, D.C. published the book in 1997. Author and Oberlin College Professor of Politics and East Asian Studies Marc Blecher found it somewhat surprising, then, given the rising social protest and renewed crackdown against dissidents over the past two months, that a book referring to the present government as "market Stalinists" should survive the scrutiny of top-level ideological censors, Chinese social scientists and a Chinese publishing house linked to the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party. China Against the Tides--unabridged and uncensored--came out in China last month. Perhaps even more surprising is the marketing surrounding the book's publication. It has been widely advertised along with the latest publications of the Publishing House of the Central Communist Party School Press--an affiliate of the élite university at which the Chinese Communist Party trains its top officials. All of this, says Blecher, reveals a China that is opening up, despite recent evidence to the contrary. Not long ago, he says, the Worker's Daily, the largest Communist-run newspaper for workers in China, carried a debate on the question Is unemployment a good thing? "It even included angry denunciations of the government by the unemployed," says Blecher. "There is a lot of room for debate now. And most intellectuals are not dissidents but people who are working in the system--because they believe that is the best way for China to open up more." Blecher, who updated the material and wrote a new preface to the Chinese edition, is an able reader and writer of Chinese; he worked with the translator for the Chinese publication. At the beginning of the project, the publishers told him that they might have to make some changes in passages dealing with the Cultural Revolution or the 1989 Tiananmen protests, both of which are taboo for serious analysis in China. No alterations were requested and none were made.