Cover image of "Private Revolutions,"

No major country, with the possible exception of Russia, has undergone such tumultuous change over the past century as has China. The Japanese invasion and occupation (1931-45). Civil war (1927-49). The Chinese Revolution (1949). Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward (1958-60). The Cultural Revolution (1966-77). Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms (1978-2011). And now Xi Jinping’s steadily increasing autocratic centralization (2012-present). So much change, and so far-reaching, that we can become lost in the statistics that seek to encompass it all. All those big numbers can obscure what it all means for individual Chinese citizens. Of course, novels can convey some of the effects. But few serious observers have managed to portray the reality of rapid social change from a human perspective in a nonfiction account. However, that’s what Anglo-Chinese reporter Yuan Yang has accomplished in her eye-opening new book, Private Revolutions: Four Women Face China’s New Social Order.

Four atypical women, idealists all

Yang calls her four subjects Leiya, June, Siyue, and Sam. All four began life during the 1980s reform era.

  • “Leiya, born in a patriarchal rural village, wants to escape a gendered destiny where she is only seen as useful for bearing sons.” In her 20s, she sets out on a life-long path as a labor organizer.
  • “June, born in a remote mountain village, has her curiosity sparked by a chance meeting with a teacher from afar.” Later in life, she leaves a paying job at a delivery service to start her own firm.
  • “Siyue, born to rural entrepreneurs, rebels against her teachers in school, and then remakes the education system for others.”
  • “And Sam, born to urban middle-class parents, is inspired by the Marxist revolutionaries who founded modern China, and wants to recreate their legacy.” Frustrated by the Party’s policies, which hobble efforts to enact revolutionary change, she eventually leaves China to pursue a PhD program overseas.

These four women are all atypical, but in their uniqueness they vividly convey how the country’s shifting priorities bear down on its citizens. They “are all unusually accomplished idealists,” as Yang describes them; “if they weren’t, they wouldn’t have tried to do improbable things.”

Private Revolutions: Four Women Face China’s New Social Order by Yuan Yang (2024) 304 pages ★★★★★

Photo of the courtyard in a wealthy rural family's home in 1980s China
Courtyard in the home of a wealthy rural family in Sichuan Province in 1980s China. Image: Xinhua – China Daily

Disruption was constant in all their lives

Yang deftly demonstrates how the rapid and far-reaching shifts in policy by the Chinese Community Party brought wrenching change to every one of her four subjects at one point at least during their lives. For Leiya, the government crackdown on labor organizing was an ongoing threat to her livelihood and her freedom. For June, shifts in official treatment of private entrepreneurs forced her to change jobs at awkward times in her life. In Siyue’s case, the Party’s abrupt turnaround on private tutoring companies, first encouraging then banning them, upended her life. And for Sam, restrictions on what could be taught and said in universities as well as the media forced her to look elsewhere for a PhD. Disruption was a constant factor in all their lives. And Yang lays it all out beautifully.

About the author

Photo of Yuan Yang, author
Yuan Yang. Image: Inigo Blake – Bloomsbury Publishing

Yuan Yang has served as a Labour Party MP in the British Parliament since the publication of this book in 2024. Previously, she worked as a correspondent for the Financial Times, specializing in Chinese-European relations. She is an economist.

Ms. Yang was born in NIngbo, China, in 1990 but moved with her parents to the north of England at the age of four. She received a first-class degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Balliol College, Oxford, in 2011. She later also studied at the London School of Economics and Peking University. Yang is a Quaker.

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