After losing the bid for the 2000 Games by just two votes, China won the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games in a landslide. Joyful crowds flocked into Tiananmen Square, and the government celebrated a new symbol of China’s arrival on the global scene. But unrest in Tibet shook China’s preparations, and violence dogged… Read more »
In 2006, a brand of watered-down neo-Confucianism took root in China, popularized especially by Beijing Normal University Professor Yu Dan. Liu took particular exception to this “sales pitch that combines tall tales about the ancients with insights that are about as sophisticated as the lyrics of pop songs.”
Liu emerged from prison in 1999 to find a changed China, thanks to the work of Zhu Rongji. But Liu rejected the entire “miracle,” seeing the new China as a “robber baron’s paradise.” Artist Ai Weiwei echoes Liu’s sentiments on the winners and losers of China’s economic Boom: