The Black Hands of Beijing: Lives of Defiance in China's Democracy Movement by GeorgeBlack; Robin MunroReview by: Donald ZagoriaForeign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Sep. - Oct., 1993), p. 177Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20045788 .

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Recent Books

CHANG AND MARTIN L. LASATER.

New York: University Press of Ameri

ca, 1993, 200 pp. $46.50 (paper, $18.50).

Beijing has never ruled out the use of

force against Taiwan. When the United

States normalized relations with China

in 1979, Congress passed the Taiwan

Relations Act (tra), which said that the U.S. decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of

China rested upon "the expectation that

the future of Taiwan will be determined

by peaceful means."

But what if China at some point decides to use force against Taiwan in

order to bring about reunification?

What would be the U.S. and interna

tional reaction?

A group of experts were assembled at

Penn State University in 1991 to consider

this and related issues. One of the most

thoughtful contributions is by Mark S.

Pratt, a retired U.S. foreign service offi

cer who headed the Taiwan desk and was

American consul general in Canton. He

makes two important points. First,

Taipei cannot be complacent about being able to call on the United States in case

of an attack from the mainland. But Bei

jing cannot conclude that there will be no

U.S. military response. The purpose of

the strong statements in the tra was to

keep force a U.S. option that any Chi

nese government would have to consider.

Second, precisely because the tra

places the United States in the middle of

any efforts to deal with Taiwan's future, it

does not make sense to cut off regular

high-level dialogue with Chinese leaders. The United States, says Pratt, needs to

continue to indicate to Beijing that it is

prepared for China to play an increasingly

important role in the world, and it should

adopt a

strictly neutral position on the

Taiwan question, apart from sticking with

its interest in a peaceful settlement.

The Black Hands of Beijing: Lives of Defi ance in China's Democracy Movement.

BY GEORGE BLACK AND ROBIN

MUNRO. New York: John Wiley &

Sons, 1993,390 pp. $24.95. This is a largely descriptive account of the lives of three of the leaders of the

Chinese democracy movement who were

jailed for their participation in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The

authors provide some limited new

sources of understanding of the origins and course of the democracy movement

and help to place it in a meaningful ana

lytical context.

"China in Transformation." Spring 1993 issue o? D dalus: Journal of the Ameri

can Academy of Arts and Sciences. Vol.

122, No. 2. Cambridge (MA): Ameri

can Academy of Arts and Sciences,

1993, 232 pp. $7.95. This is an occasionally provocative, if

uneven, collection of essays on a fascinat

ing topic?the likely future ideological direction of China now that commu

nism, the national glue for more than 40

years, is gradually losing its grip. The

post-communist ideologies sprouting beneath the surface, as Edward Friedman

points out, are not all open or tolerant, let alone liberal and democratic. As in

the former Soviet Union, some are proto fascist and chauvinistic. Friedman, a dis

tinguished American sinologist, also

To order books reviewed or advertised in Foreign Affairs, call 1-800-255-2665.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS-September/October 1993 [^7]

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