He Qinglian

He Qinglian "was born in Shaoyang in the province of Hunan in 1956. Sent as a teenager to work in the countryside on a railway construction site, she studied history at Hunan Normal University and economics at Fudan University in Shanghai, passing out in 1985. After teaching jobs in Changsha and Guangzhou, she moved to the Special Economic Zone of Shenzhen, working first in the publicity department of the municipal Party Committee, and then on the Shenzhen Legal Daily. In August 1996 she completed a book on the social and economic ills of China after two decades of reform policies, declined as too explosive by eight or nine publishers. But after it appeared in Hong Kong in 1997 under the title China’s Pitfall, an expurgated version was published in Beijing as Modernization’s Pitfall in January 1998, with a preface by Liu Ji, Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, then an adviser to Jiang Zemin. The book was an immediate sensation, as a blistering indictment of far-reaching inequality and corruption in the PRC, selling 200,000 legal copies and vastly more pirated ones."

"When He Qinglian, 43, wrote The Pitfalls of Modernization, a hard-hitting expose of corruption and the seamier side of China's economic reform, she wasn't sure how it would be received. But not only was it a national best-seller, it became state-sanctioned reading for China's leaders as they struggled with corruption, bad banks, and unemployment. He's book is a no-holds-barred analysis of how officials have used their positions to get rich. She also writes with populist concern for those who have lost their livelihoods during China's rush to a more market-oriented economy." 

"He Qinglian, was born in Hunan Province in 1956. She studied history at Hunan Normal University and earned a master's degree in economics at Fudan University in Shanghai. After teaching at the Hunan College of Finance and Economics and working in the publicity department of the municipal Communist Party Committee of Shenzhen, she became a writer and editor of the Shenzhen Legal Daily. She moved to the United States in 2001 and currently lives in New York, where she continues her activities." 

"He Qinglian, renowned social economist, works including China’s Pitfall (also translated as China’s Descent into Quagmire), Media Control in China: 2004, etc." 


 * Senior Researcher, HRIC