Fettering the Press

Liu Binyan served as a special correspondent for the Chinese Communist party newspaper Renmin ribao from 1979 to 1987. While at the paper he became well known for his investigative reporting on corruption in the party. Liu was expelled from the party in 1987. In 1988-1989, he held a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. A collection of his essays has been published as China’s Crisis, China’s Hope (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). This article was translated from the Chinese by David M. Kamen.