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This book is a collection of diary entries written in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic by Fang Fang, a Chinese writer and advocate of the working poor in China. In these diary entries, Fang Fang documents the various daily difficulties faced by her and other Wuhan residents from January to March 2020. In this book, she also ponders the implications of official policies with regard to the pandemic and the way in which the public and the government have responded to the outbreak of COVID-19. These entries tell us about the hopes and fears of the people of Wuhan during the early stage of COVID-19, and adds to our understanding of public opinion and government policies in China in the 2020s. The diaries were published in Chinese, and have also been translated by Michael Berry into English and published by Harper Collins Publishers. You can purchase the English version of the book using <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/wuhan-diary-fang-fangmichael-berry?variant=40153409749026">this link</a> .

In March 1989, the book Yangtze Yangtze was published by the Guizhou People's Publishing House just as the Tiananmen student protests were about to begin in Beijing. The book fed into this intellectual ferment, challenging the technocratic reasons for the Three Gorges Dam, which eventually would dam the Yangtze River in the name of flood control and electrical power generation. The book was edited by the journalist Dai Qing, the daughter of a well-known Communist Party activist and leader. The book challenged the project's decision-making process, with a broad array of scientists, journalists, and intellectuals arguing that it was not democratic and did not take into account all viewpoints. It was widely read in China and translated into foreign languages. After the Tiananmen protests were violently suppressed, Dai Qing was arrested and imprisoned for ten months in Qincheng Prison as an organizer of the uprising. Yangtze Yangtze was criticized  as “promoting bourgeois liberalization, opposing the Four Fundamental Principles (of party control), and creating public opinion for turmoil and riots.” The book was taken off the shelves and destroyed, with some copies  burned. It became the first banned book resulting from the decision-making process of the Three Gorges Project. The book is banned in China. The English-language edition can be read online at Probe International: https://journal.probeinternational.org/three-gorges-probe/yangtze-yangtze/.