From this month's editor

New Internationalist, Sept, 2004 by Chris Richards

No doubt about it. China gets bad press. Mostly, it's about the Chinese Communist Party's appalling human rights record. But during my first visit to China, as I read the China Daily over a breakfast bowl of steaming dumplings (Beijing produces very chompable dumplings), I was struck by what newspapers in Western countries weren't telling us about this country and the misconceptions that can form as a result.

I thought I would find here a closed and restrictive society whose people--fearing punishment or scrutiny from the Chinese authorities--would be reticent to speak. I imagined an embryonic civil society movement in which any NGO that wanted to advocate against Chinese Communist Party policies would be crushed before it could even begin. And I thought that China's long march towards capitalism was relatively recent, and that the excesses of globalization would be some years from irretrievably infecting the welfare of its people. In some ways, I was right. But in so many ways, I was wrong, wrong, wrong!

During that visit--and on another, two months ago--a collection of wonderfully warm and welcoming Chinese activists told me what they thought the international media should be publishing about China. The following pages are inspired by them and their work.

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Chris Richards

for the New Internationalist Co-operative.

chrisr@newint.com.au