Given China’s undeniable importance on the world stage, it is not surprising that a robust literature on this complex country is emerging. Of particular interest to Western observers is the Communist Party’s seeming success at combining economic liberalization with a centralized and often massively coercive political structure. This development challenges some of the core assumptions supporters of democratic governance once held sacred: that opening up markets gives rise to democratic rule and that liberal democracies provide the best political base for sustained economic growth.

Veteran CBC Television correspondent Michel Cormier views this debate from a unique angle, seeking to elucidate China’s history of political contestation – particularly the events surrounding the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests – by examining the biographies of the protagonists. Cormier locates China’s leading dissidents, including student organizers and former Party members, many now living in permanent exile, and speaks to them about their failed attempts to drive democratic reforms and the often brutal repression they faced. Cormier’s history is rich and nuanced, showing the conflict of policy, politics, and strategy both within the regime and among its opponents.

Yet the problems with democracy as a concept remain disappointingly unexplored in Cormier’s account. These include the violence and illiberal market behaviour demonstrated by democratic regimes and the West’s current role in providing the capital and market demand underpinning much of modern China. Chinese politics, after all, do not exist in an hermetically sealed vacuum.

Democratization in China is anything but inevitable. But if it does occur, what will it look like? Democracy is not the end of struggle, nor – as even Francis Fukuyama has come to recognize – the end of history. If it appears in China, it will be forced to reckon with the current demand for constant growth, the country’s historical and social context, and institutional stability. Cormier fails to consider the possibility that a Chinese democracy might not look anything like what we expect or want it to.