Are the Chinese hard-wired for authoritarian government? Is there a cultural barrier to democracy? Ian Buruma spends more space than warranted in answering these questions with a resounding no.
In his view, there is far too much inclination on the part of Chinese political leaders and their Western apologists to assume that the Middle Kingdom is ill-suited to democracy and that chaos is the most likely result of representative government. In dozens of interviews with Chinese dissidents around the world, including those still residing in China, "Bad Elements" makes a persuasive case that the yearning for accountable government based on the rule of law applied equally to all is not an alien desire to many Chinese. He writes, ". . . Chinese culture is not some monolithic barrier to building democratic institutions." This is hardly a startling or original insight and thus one wonders why so much of the book sets out to prove what is a common point of view.
Fortunately, Buruma also turns his considerable talents to more challenging questions. He wants to know what makes people risk everything for their political principles. How could someone intentionally put themselves in danger of prolonged incarceration and torture, knowing they risked never seeing their children grow up and that the struggle most likely would be in vain? What did it mean to go through hell and how did they muster the ". . . courage to choose prison or torture rather than submit to the servility, the double-talk, the evasions and dishonesties of life in a dictatorship. I knew that many of these people were flawed, wrongheaded, and perhaps intolerant in their own ways, but I admired their sheer cussedness. I was haunted by the idea of tyranny . . ."