Elizabeth J. Perry

Elizabeth J. Perry is Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government and director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. She is coeditor of Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China (2007) and author of Patrolling the Revolution: Worker Militias, Citizenship and the Modern Chinese State (2006).

July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3

China Since Tiananmen: A New Rights Consciousness?

Despite the suppression of the Tiananmen Uprising of 1989, popular protest in China has by all accounts escalated steadily over the ensuing two decades. These protests have spread to virtually every sector of Chinese society, prompting more than a few observers to proclaim the emergence of a “rising rights consciousness” that poses a protodemocratic challenge…