Book Review: A Heart for Freedom
Chai Ling was one of the leaders of the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square. Since her escape to the West, she has become one of the prominent exile opponents of Chinese governmental tyranny, including most notably its brutal one child per family policy. In A Heart for Freedom, she tells her story.
The outline of Chai’s account runs as follows. She was born in a small seaside fishing village. Her parents were the local doctors, committed communists and officers in the People’s Liberation Army, dedicated to a life of public service.
Excelling at school, she won the village scholarship to attend Peking University — China’s Sorbonne — a great honor that filled all of her family — even her demanding father — with pride. At the university, her experiences and ideas expanded, ultimately leading her into participation and then leadership of student protest movement.
Named by the government as the number two “culprit” in the Tiananmen Square events, she was forced to go underground following the crackdown, and after a year on the run, made a daring escape from China to Hong Kong. She then made her way to France then to the United States, where she was embraced by allies as diverse as Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Malcolm Wallop (R-WY), and given scholarships to Princeton and Harvard. Then, overcoming Chinese government blackballing to make her way into the business world, she found both financial success and a loving husband who encouraged her conversion to Christianity. Putting her fortune to good use, she then founded the All Girls Allowed organization, committed to fighting the one-child policy and its resulting “gendercide” in China.
One of most intense parts of the book is that dealing with the Tiananmen Square protests. Chai’s recounting of those events is fragmentary, but all the more compelling for that reason, as she tells the story not as seen by historians, but as seen, felt, and understood by her at that time. (This is her style throughout the book, so that, for example, when she speaks of her youth, we see the world through the eyes of a girl from a fishing village, who believes in ghosts and spirits, rather than from the sophisticated vantage of an Ivy League graduate.)
I’m not sure that sending Chinese students to U.S. universities to major in history and political science would result in their learning an “alternative set of ideals” from those they had learned in China.
That’s a good one.
I would be sellective in what “Ivy League” university you sent the Chinese students who are interested in history and politics to. Some of the Marxist professors at Harvard/Yale/Princeton might find the truth about the real world experiences of a student raised in a communist “utopia” too much to take.
Schools not to send any Chinese students to if they want to learn about American exceptionalism and the importance of liberty and freedom in maintaining a government that allows for the protection of the rights of the individual….Wesleyan University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale University,Brandeis University, Amherst College, University of California almost all campuses, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania,….my hands are getting tired so I will allow other posters to fill in the remaining colleges and universities who have “Progressive Indoctrination” as their main focus in their Political Science and History classes. My apologies to any of you who are either currently sending your money and children to these schools and anyone who has colleges or universities who are representative of where honest American viewpoint are still paramount the that would be helpful to know as well.
@Rob
“But perhaps we can help their successors do better next time, by offering American university scholarships not just to Chinese engineers, but to political science and history students as well.”
When was the last time you set foot in an American university poli-sci or history class?
It sounds like Chai Ling understands what America stands for better than most American students do. I am so glad she is here to speak the truth about Communism and I can’t to read her book!
My daughter Miriam and I were teaching at Hebei University in Baoding, China, during the spring semester of 1989. I was amazed at both the courage and the rationality of the students and others who were protesting in Tiananmen Square. Here is the account of our last days in China:
http://www.jochnowitz.net/Essays/WeFleeChinaPol.html