Yang Rui, man that guy is stiffer than a 5 week old McDonald's French Fry.

@Kaiser, you ever try and get Yang Rui to go out for drinks after a taping of "Dialogue"?

Jeremy nails one important point, I think: the Great Leap Forward is relatively safe for discussion, while the CR, because there are still people living and serving in government today, is considerably further out on the margins.

I remember distinctly that article on media that David Moser wrote under a (female) synonym.

And how Jeremy rebuked a friend of mine once ("the Chinese don't really care about it") for making an issue about freedom of the press.

I saw that SARS press conference, was living in Xaimen in the time. It was a defining moment in my incentive to move to Beijing. The other was just getting out of Xiamen.

Folks, Gady Epstein's piece about Richard McGregor's new book (The Party) is now online. Please check it out!

http://www.forbes.com/2010/05/21/china-communist-party-god-book-opinions-contributors-beijing-dispatch.html

sambowden:

See China Heritage Quarterly, by Geremie Barmé

http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/editorial.php?issue=012

Money quote below, between dotted lines.

The segregation referred to went on from the mid 1600s until the second half of the 1800s.

It's remarkably similar to my experience of white suburban Johannesburg in the 1970s and 80s, although in Joburg black people who has a special "pass" could stay the night in what we used to call servant's quarters attached to a white-owned house.

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With the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644 and the establishment of the Qing dynastic capital of the Manchu ruling family in Beijing, the city underwent a major transformation. In 1648, an imperial expulsion order (yi cheng ling 移城令) forced the Han-Chinese residents out of the Inner City to live in the Outer City (Wai Cheng, also known in English as the Chinese City) of the capital. Although Han were allowed into the Manchu enclave during the day, at night before the city gates were closed they were required to return to the southern suburbs. The Inner City was given over to the jurisdiction of the Manchu imperial clans and the military Eight Banners under which the Manchus organized themselves. Within these areas princes were allocated residences according to individual rank and merit, often displacing Ming-era occupants from their grand homes.

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I am also referred by wiser counsel that I (and perhaps you) need to read "basic works on the Qing by Evelyn Rawski and others".