CHINA’S GREAT LEAP
The Beijing Games and Olympian Human Rights Challenges
Edited by Minky Worden, Media Director at Human Rights Watch
With an introduction by Nicholas Kristof
(Seven Stories Press, May 2008)


“Improving human rights in China is indeed an Olympian challenge. This book shows why it is so important that the Chinese people gain greater freedom even as China itself plays a larger role on the world stage.”

– Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu

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“Only Minky Worden could have persuaded so many well-informed and interesting voices to comment on China and the Olympics. China will help shape the century to come. China’s Great Leap helps to tell us how this could be for better not worse.”

– Christopher Patten, Chancellor of Oxford University, last Governor of Hong Kong

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Chinas-Great-Leap-Olympian-Challenges/dp/1583228438

As the world's spotlight shines on China in the year of the Beijing Olympics, China's Great Leap tackles the toughest issues surrounding the Games and provides deep political, social, and historical insights to help explain China’s “great leap” onto the world stage.

This book draws on the insight of 25 leading China experts who explain the challenges facing Beijing – from staging a successful Olympics and burnishing its international image to dealing with pressure for human rights reform and greater political and religious freedom. China’s Great Leap illuminates China’s recent history and outlines how domestic and international pressure in the context of the Olympics could achieve human rights change. Those who take an interest in China’s future should read this book to evaluate whether the staging of the Olympics in China could indeed be a possible springboard for a “great leap forward” in terms of openness and accountability – or whether the Olympics could instead worsen the deteriorating human rights climate in the world’s most populous country.

Leading voices of dissent in China

Wang Dan, Bao Tong, Liu Xiaobo, and Han Dongfang have all served time in China’s gulag as political prisoners. Former senior Chinese leader Bao Tong writes from under house arrest in Beijing. Hong Kong democracy leader Martin Lee, Chinese language media titan Jimmy Lai, and environmental leader Christine Loh are all based in Hong Kong.

Journalists with firsthand experience in China

Nicholas Kristof and Mei Fong, both winners of the Pulitzer Prize for their China reporting, write the introduction and a chapter on migrant workers, respectively. Author and columnist Frank Ching contributes a chapter on recent Chinese history, and Wall Street Journal editor Emily Parker shares her insights on Chinese nationalism.

Human rights experts

These include Human Rights Watch staff members Joseph Amon (on health issues), Arvind Ganesan (on corporate social responsibility), Phelim Kine (on media freedom), Sophie Richardson (on foreign policy), Kenneth Roth (on rights reform prospects), Mickey Spiegel (on religious freedom including a section on the roots of the current crisis in Tibet) and Minky Worden (on China's overall human rights situation as it relates to the Beijing Games). Sharon Hom, head of Human Rights in China, examines the secret host city contract and China’s pledges to the International Olympics Committee (IOC) when it bid for the Games. Council on Foreign Relations China expert Jerome Cohen makes the case for legal reform. World Monitors CEO R. Scott Greathead describes the “Spielberg effect” and China’s policy in Darfur. John Kamm, founder of the Dui Hua Foundation, analyzes China’s image and how it is affected by the country’s poor human rights record.

Experts on the Olympics

Leading International Olympic Committee official for 30 years Dick Pound discusses the IOC selection process and the precedent of the Seoul Games. Sports journalist Dave Zirin places the Beijing Games in the context of past Olympic history.

Prize-winning photographer

Kadir van Lohuizen’s haunting photo essay brings to light the Chinese lives behind the curtain of the Olympic extravaganza, including migrant workers who built the venues and petitioners whose settlement in Beijing was demolished in advance of the Games.

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As Media Director of Human Rights Watch, Minky Worden works with the world’s journalists to help them cover crises, wars, human rights abuses and political developments in more than 70 countries worldwide. Before joining Human Rights Watch in 1998, Ms. Worden lived and worked in Hong Kong as an adviser to Democratic Party chairman Martin Lee and worked at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. as a speechwriter for the U.S. Attorney General and in the Executive Office for US Attorneys. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Ms. Worden speaks Cantonese and German, and is an elected member of the Overseas Press Club's Board of Governors. She is the co-editor of Torture, published by the New Press in 2005.

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Book reviews:

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Selected media mentions:

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Op-eds by contributors, chapter excerpts:

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Op-eds by Minky Worden:

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Audio:

  • WNYC - Brian Lehrer Show, 5/15/08, interview with Minky Worden and Ian Buruma
  • CBC (Canada) - Inside Track, 5/18/08, podcast interview with Minky Worden
  • Council on Foreign Relations, 5/19/08, podcast interview with Minky Worden
  • WBAI - Asia Pacific Forum, 7/22/08, interview with Minky Worden
  • NPR - All Things Considered, 7/30/08, "China curbs visiting media's internet access"
  • Air America - Rachel Maddow Show, 8/1/08, interview with Minky Worden (at 18'54) 

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Video:

  • PBS - Worldfocus, 3/11/09, interview with Minky Worden on human rights in China  Video

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Book events, speeches, panel discussions:    (V) = Video

2009

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