Merle Goldman has a very simple statement to make at the beginning of this book. She says the Western view that China, after two decades of economic progress, has made few political advances is "not altogether accurate." As a Chinese history professor at Boston University and an associate at Harvard University's John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Goldman is eminently placed to judge the situation in the vast mainland where people have been demanding political rights and not always obtaining them. But she says significant grass-roots political reforms have taken place, pushed by individual Chinese at their own personal risk. She cites many examples of positive changes as a result of political reforms carried out by the Communist Party, starting with competitive elections in villages and cities. Committees set up by the Party are responsible for administrative matters, while local media uncover corruption and cover-ups by officials. The National People's Congress, once considered a rubber stamp for Party officials, has become more assertive and no longer approves all legislation initiated by the State Council. One example was the construction of the Three Gorge Dam, a pet project by Party leaders. Goldman said 30 percent of Congress members voted against or abstained from voting on legislation for the project in 1992.

"Thus in the post-Mao era a number of individuals began to act as citizens," Goldman said.

One prominent case is that of a retired army doctor, Jiang Yanyong, who worked in a Beijing military hospital. When the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic struck East Asia in 2003, the Chinese health ministry and other officials declared that the disease was under control. Jiang in April 2003 sent letters to Western and Hong Kong media contradicting the government's claim that the spread of the disease had been contained. Jiang's efforts compelled Beijing authorities to acknowledge serious mistakes. As a result, the health minister and Beijing's vice mayor, both of whom declared that SARS was under control, were fired. Jiang made another bold move by revealing in February, 2004, that his hospital had received scores of people or students killed or injured by soldiers during the June 4, 1989 democracy crackdown at the Tiananmen Square. Jiang demanded that the government called the demonstrators patriots instead of counter-revolutionaries. He was arrested on June 1, 2004, but released seven weeks later under domestic and international pressure. Goldman says Jiang remains under police surveillance.

The beginning of the movement to demand political rights began in the late 1970s with an event known as the Democracy Wall. It started with the Xidan wall in Beijing, where young Chinese, many of them former Cultural Revolution supporters and Red Guards, posted their demands in writing. The movement quickly spread to Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Hangzhou, X'ian and Qingdao, giving a chance to the young generation used by Mao Tsetung during the Cultural Revolution to demand personal as well as collective political rights. One of the victims of the Cultural Revolution was Deng Xiaoping, who approved of the Democracy Wall and was helped by it to become China's paramount political leader.

Another example of grass-root political activity was that of the Tiananmen Mothers Movement, which was initiated by families of those killed in the democracy protests in June, 1989, and headed by Ding Zilin and her husband Jiang Peikun, both of them professors at People's University. The group became a fierce critic of the Communist Party's actions in the post-Tiananmen era. Some members of the group were detained, intimidated and put under surveillance. But they continued to press for their political right to know the truth about the massacre at Tiananmen. Former political prisoners who were detained for supporting the Democracy Wall and Tiananmen democracy protests also formed unofficial groups in the mid-1990's.

They were released by the Beijing authorities in order to boost China's chance to win the Summer Olympics in 2000. But China did not win the contest for 2000. Among the former prisoners is Wang Dan, one of organizers of the Tiananmen protests, who went on to file a lawsuit against the Beijing Public Security Bureau for violating his citizen's rights.

Goldman provides ample examples of citizens' demands for their political rights in an effort to rebut the notion that economic development has snuffed out individuals' desire for more freedoms. She warns that the current China's fourth generation of leaders has reinvigorated the repression of dissident intellectuals, particularly independent or "public" intellectuals. The farmers who protest inequalities produced by Beijing's economic reforms have been first suppressed, she says. Despite the movement demanding more individual liberties, Goldman warns: "Still, virtually everyone in China remained unprotected by institutions or laws."