The field of contemporary China studies has never been short on punditry, but recent years have witnessed an out-pouring of essays and books on the current Chinese condition. The Beijing massacre of 1989 alone produced over 30 books on the 50 days that shook the world. Most of the grow- ing Tiananmen bookshelf consists either of descriptive accounts by foreign eyewitnesses or of emotional autobiographies by Chinese dissidents now exiled abroad. The best analy- sis of the origins and events of...