Selected Writings of Li Shenzhi

Li Shenzhi (1923-2003), a leading Chinese statesman and academic, was a premier architect of China's liberal intellectual revival in the late 1990's and an uncompromising campaigner for political reform and democracy in China. Son of merchant family, Li received a Western-style education from Benching University in Beijing, graduation with a degree in economics before joining Mao's Communist movement in 1948. In the early 1950's, Li was foreign policy advisor to Premier Zhou Enlai contributing to and promoting the moderate "Bandung Line" then being pursued. In 1957, his appeal to the government leadership for policies leading to "greater democracy" and liberalism led to his being labeled a "rightest" ( one who criticized the Chinese Communist Party). His exile from the academic and political worlds lasted until the late 1970's, when he again served as foreign policy advisor, this time to Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang, traveling to the United States with Deng on his historic 1979 trip. Long a proponent for China's engagement with the United States, Li was the founding father of American studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1981 and founding the Chinese Association for American Studies in 1988.