Review | Democracy movement in China in 1978-1979 recalled in memoir of a foreign student in Shanghai who witnessed it
- Anne E. McLaren’s book about her time as a student in Shanghai in 1978 and 1979 stands out because it takes place in a time of huge transition in China
- Slow Train to Democracy recalls the city’s protest poster movement, and encounters with Chinese students who spoke about politics and changes in the country
Slow Train to Democracy: Memoirs of Life in Shanghai, 1978 to 1979, by Anne E. McLaren, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 4 stars
Amid the plethora of China memoirs by Western writers over the years, Anne E. McLaren’s book set in Shanghai from 1978 to 1979 stands out because it takes place during a time of transition in China.
But Slow Train to Democracy is more than just a record of McLaren’s time in China or the transition. It’s an account of a little-known democracy movement in Shanghai – around the time the government coined the term “socialism with Chinese characteristics” – that was eclipsed by the student-led movement in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square a decade later.
McLaren witnessed and recorded the Shanghai poster movement while a student at Fudan University at a time when only 21 other foreign students lived in the city and months before the first American students were allowed to study in China. For the most part, she was the only Australian.
As a PhD research student in China, McLaren met Chinese students who spoke about politics and the recent changes in China. The Gang of Four had been arrested just a of couple years earlier and Deng Xiaoping was wrestling for power with Hua Guofeng.
