"The Gate of Heavenly Peace" by Jonathan Spence

A thorough understanding of twentieth-century China and its revolutions can only be attained by studying the ideas that inspired them. Unfortunately, much more is known about Chinese political leaders like Sun Yatsen and Mao Zedong than the intellectuals whose writings inspired these men. Jonathan T. Spence's book, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, however, studies China's twentieth century from their perspective.

In doing so, the book provides an interesting discussion of the role that ideas played in shaping twentieth century Chinese society, using the poetry, novels, written history, newspaper editorials, and other media of the time. The main people in Spence's narrative are Kang Youwei, an academic who rose to prominence at the turn of the century and wrote a controversal book about how to create a utopian society; Lu Xun, the great satirist who preferred to write about the ways things were over writing about how he believed they should be; and Ding Ling, one of the first major voices of Chinese communism, who would later be imprisoned by its leaders after the party rose to power in the late 1940s.

Guaging the role that these individuals played in shaping modern China is difficult, as the effect of the country's scientific and technological evolution is more immediately apparent therein. However, both the nationalists and the communists took a tremendous interest in what China's intellectuals were saying during the revolutions, and worked very hard to censor writers whose works they perceived to go against the government and the way it operated. In the end, the outpouring of philosophical, social, and political ideas that took place at this time may have had a huge role in shaping China as it is today, or none at all.

Either way, though, The Gate of Heavenly Peace is worth reading. The people it discusses were undeniably brilliant, and Spence's study of them provides an invaluable insight into their ideas and the astute observations they made and recorded about their home country during one of its most turbulent and dynamic centuries. A person who seeks dates and events should probably consult a different book, but for those who want to examine China in a slightly more intimate, spiritual way, this one is a very satifactory read.