Ever since Chinese students began marching towards Tiananmen Square in mid-April 1989, they have been portrayed as idealistic young freedom fighters, struggling valiantly, but ultimately unsuccessfully, against a totalitarian regime made up of power-hungry octogenarians. "A Chinese Mirror" reflects a rather different picture, one that is more socially and politically complex, and morally troublesome. Against the specific background of the events of June 4th, the author (who was in Beijing at the time) proffers a more general analysis and evaluation of the economic "reforms" initiated by the Party leadership in 1978, concluding that a capitalist model of development has brought - and cannot but bring - the moral and other failures of capitalism, with few of its benefits, to China. Using China as a case study, "A Chinese Mirror" also introduces an ethical model of development for agrarian societies.
Citizens of the capitalist industrial democracies must rethink the criteria by which they evaluate the foreign policies of their governments, especially policies purportedly aimed at assisting very poor countries, whose inhabitants still live in extremely primitive conditions - but comprise more than half of the human race.