Tiananmen Papers

THE TIANANMEN PAPERS, which contains documents unearthed from the guarded core of the Chinese Politburo, is the most important book on China published in decades. It reveals the highest-level processes of decision-making during the tumultuous events surrounding the terrible massacre in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989.Drawn from about 2,000 documents, THE TIANANMEN PAPERS have been compiled and edited as part of an extraordinary collaboration between America's most prominent China scholars and a handful of Chinese people who have risked their lives to obtain them.The Chinese pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989 were the longest lasting and most influential in the world. THE TIANANMEN PAPERS exposes the desperate conflict during the period among a few strong leaders, whose personalities emerge with unprecedented vividness. Its revelations of the most important event in modern Chinese history will have a profound impact not only in China, but in every country in the world that deals with China.

Thanks to these documents, we can read the words of the Party bosses, angry and baffled... Today many Chinese officials blandly deny that there was a massacre at all. These documents, however, prove it all., Fascinating., The significance and rarity of the book and its potential value to researchers can hardly be overstated., The most valuable political book I read was THE TIANANMEN PAPERS, which gives an extraordinary insight into the old regime's ruthless stand against the freedom campaigners in Beijing in 1989.

Andrew Nathan is Professor of Politics at Columbia University and the author of numerous books including CHINA'S TRANSITION. Perry Link is Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Princeton University.