used to have to function. it's happening various bodily whiff of the foreigners. people are getting with particular politicians with a bunch of journalists they were able to work.

but they don't seem to have decided what they want to do about this. there is this kind of xenophobia a la moment that can be underestimated. >> yes, next to the aisle. estimate i have been to burma twice and i have bernie's friends there and here as well. given the pace of these reforms that seem to have done a complete phase there has been criticism that the motives of the generals are suspect and also i've heard this even from friends of mine here in new york the fact that he was out of sight for all those years that perhaps the relevance to any change one might question her relevance to any change that is

come this far and i wonder if you can comment on those aspects. >> and i think one has to have great respect for anything that the burmese say about the situation as opposed to us commenting on it. it's true that she was out of the picture for ages and ages and when she emerged it was a bit like rumpelstiltskin she never used a mobile phone and had no idea what twitter was. i think she had been working hard to catch up and working hard is the one thing she knows how to do. so, the only thing one could say clearly is if somebody is going to emerge as a more plausible democratic opposition leader they haven't emerged yet. >> any other questions? yes, all the way in the back.

>> i am a journalist. i wrote a book about political buddhism in sri lanka and i am going back after -- >> really? >> i'm curious when i go back well i find the group more politicized than they were 20 years ago or more less so? >> i spent quite a lot of time in sri lanka in 2010 after getting expelled from burma and i think the situation makes it fascinating contrast to very similar variations of buddhism and and the they're both quite different countries with certain exceptions.

the great wisdom to avoid. that might sound strange because of course we have the revolution the hundreds of thousands of monks marching through the streets and the cities. but as buddhism here in the state's who's written a fascinating book about meditation in burma and as she pointed out this isn't a political demonstration. this is purely a spirit manifestation manifesting that disapproval of the refusal to apologize for beating them up and it did not have an overtly political dimension and it's interesting to see in the recent

election campaign there is no way to be seen with. you have a desperate situation there is an extremely chauvinist british party. unfortunately burma is free of such an abomination. >> any other questions from the audience? you have a second question. degette power 24 hours a day or not, do they have access to the western media? even in china which has sensors should you can still read "the new york times" online in china. i'm wondering as far as if they are misunderstanding foreign news and odds in their daily living conditions. >> they've had the internet for a long time, they have had cable

tv. this is one of the reasons that it is changing so fast in the past ten years is because all of this stuff has come and during the revolution. the three brief camera man filmed it and manage to get the film held. cnn put it all over the news broadcast and i was there during this sitting in an outdoor cafe with two television screens one had a japanese drama and the other one had the burmese monks moving in the streets watching like this without saying anything. so, if you try to connect to the internet it would drive you insane because of the past the government tries to make it more

difficult and people have the ingenuity to do it all over the place. >> i was in burma just in january and went to all of the subversive websites and got through. the problem was, and i called "the new york times" real problem is more the technical aspect of being able to get a reliable connection with. but when you did you have access to anything and everything. >> the last time i was there you couldn't get anything. >> i was only in the urban center. >> in the two weeks i was there in january the power went out twice but only for several moments at a time, which i understand is quite good and is improving. >> i think it is much better than the country towns.

it reminds me of some of the state's just over the border and similar leal governed. >> i think that you have a follow-up question. >> i just wanted to answer the question i made my first trip to berlin in 2001 and the second of one in 2004. so i see my friends whom i made on the first trip only basically twice in all of these years and i communicated with them during the last 11 years primarily by internet. i would get e-mails from them. they will send the photographs of their kids. especially when there has been under arrest in burma that labeled hear from them and then they may say that there were problems with the internet connections. they are very good at, as i

gather other people are at maneuvering around the official internet service providers but i have had regular contact with them in terms of the power in the trips i made there were periods of time where the power did go out for a number of hours. most people had generators in their homes or their places of business, so this was an ongoing problem. but again, they were very resourceful. they prepared for it. so that is just how this tape on it. >> tuzee question here in the front. >> for the ethnic insurgencies to make these truces?

when it's clear that with a ceasefire is the first official ceasefire ever been a quite serious push by the government to bring some sort of revolution you still have a very nasty war boonen on in the area -- going on in the area. i haven't been to the insurgency and i am afraid i cannot pronounced with any authority on the situation except to say we know that unless there's a serious peace settlement involving the ethnic minorities the future will remain cloudy. >> understand their following of buttresses. >> that's right. as you know, there is this -- i

expect you know there are so many complicated commercial interests of warlords and smuggling and each situation is different which is why bringing peace to the ethnic areas is the biggest challenge of last. >> i think there's a question right here in the front. >> i was in burma in the summer of 2010. cynthia was with me and we had what we would call a young dissident guide, and he had a lot of fear. he and his brother were both in university. his brother had been arrested and for a long time until finally was released but in the moshi battle he was beaten senseless pretty much. our guide was very interested in our news from the west.

this was probably five months before it was released. so it actually took us by the lake and he did buy a pack of cigarettes and we stood in the foreground and then we moved all the way around. the question i have is i don't think that we know so much that the university of these universities have been moved 150 miles out and given what's been going on in the air of -- arad spring they didn't want to make any useful pricings if you could speak to that point are they out in the netherlands and stupid buildings worth what happened -- >> as far as i know, yes. it's one of the tragedies before in the education is the destruction of these would work ramshackle but still serious

institutions now simply out in the middle of nowhere. whether or not that is going to change i don't know. it won't be a priority because it certainly suits the regime's convenience to have the students a long way away. >> i think the same can be said about the movement of capital. having visited that capital is clearly made so that there are no protests or even people gathering. it is just impossible. it is an important question and i guess the bigger question is what will happen to the capitol as the countries are not setting up in the cease. maybe a few are now, bangladesh and a couple of others. will the capitol of return? >> it will start another one of the old burmese way to read a

bit wistful isn't it? >> it was quite a scene. quite unbelievable city to be in. >> one of the most enjoyable moments in the election campaign has been taking her wagons holding campaign meetings which i thought was a typical spawned debate goes on and in-your-face attitude. estimate if she's elected she will be spending a lot of time. >> i was told that a friend of mine who was a former ambassador said that they are basically hostages. they cannot leave unless they have a letter of permission from the senior authorities. estimate may be a lesson for washington. [laughter] >> whether that will apply i somehow don't think it will. >> one more question.

>> i am michele and i lived and worked in burma in 2002 and 2003 with others. my question comes from having a recent experience in afghanistan and other very different countries in transition. one of the things we have heard recently is a number of donor countries supporting the changes in burma with proposed or actual overseas development aid increases and often when it is well-meaning effort happens if it is not directed well it can also have unintended negative consequences. and do you have any comments on of really what would be the best way for the international organizations and donors to support the changes? would it be true the government was putting oracle ngos? what are your thoughts on that? >> very important but a difficult question there have

been a number of international ngos working in burma particularly since also the government was very obstructed the time in 2008 a number of organizations did get their feet on the ground and they did actually begin to develop some presence and start doing good work and i think it is a good place to start. one of the tragedies of burma has been that the civil society was raised for most of the years of the last 20 years as we know, and that's coming back into shape free slowly and fitfully fidelity a good place to start. >> i do want to call your attention to you in the book signing that will happen right behind us, and i do urge you to

stay and meet peter and purchase a book. it's a great for the and what a great gift. >> that's a very generous. thank you. >> the british version. >> i have to say as publishers in the room the american one is much better. >> i agree. i know michael told you a little bit about some of the upcoming programs we have but let me just say that is the tip of the iceberg of what's happening here at the society today it still stuns me how much happens in this building. not only in the area of the museum but the cultural performance treated by my colleague rachel cooper and

paul. so please go to our website, asiasociety.org if you don't know is already and the best way to stay in touch and know about everything we're doing is of course to join us as a member. so if he would like to join us, please come talk to any of the staff and we can help you. now let us give peter a big round of applause for joining us. [applause] we are featuring some of book tv

ninety-nine in former national intelligenceis t officer ezra vogel on his biography of chinese leader deng xiaoping. this is a little more than an hourformatio >> welcome to the cambridge frop discussing deng xiaoping and the transformation of china with

ezra vogel. i am michael professor of history at harvard and i willode serve as a moderatorthe henry ford second professor of the social sciences emeritus at harvard and expert on both japan and china he's visited asia every year since 1958. over his career he's offered or co-authored 50 books and many articles through academic and popular journals. the japanese edition of the book japan is no. what lessons for america is still the all-time best seller in japan of nonfiction by a western author. 1987 he began studying the transformation of china spending eight months at the invitation of the provincial government exploiting the economic and social progress of the province since he took the lead in pioneering economic reform in 1978. the result was his book one step ahead in china under a reform which appeared in 1989. the professor retired from teaching in 2000.

i arrived at harvard in 2007 and i truly grateful for the mentoring and the encouragement and the friendship ezra has offered a junior colleague since his retirement but befriending junior colleagues hasn't been his main focus in the years since his retirement. rather he has devoted his time to completing his book on deng ziaoping and his era. the book was recently awarded a lionel prize for contributions to international understanding. i'm sure it is going to be the first of many awards for this extraordinary book. the masterfully a comprehensive study, calls the rich and intricate career from his birth to 1904 at the end of the dynasty to his death in 97 only a few months before the return of hong kong to the mainland. his life to the most century of changes in china as experienced of the war, revolution, the nellis era and finally the economic boom of opening and

reform. and deng played a major role in the nation's politics and development over the period. helpless deng ziaoping find a way to turn china into a wealthy and powerful member of the international community? what personal and cultural factors contributed to the success? what obstacles did he face? how did vogel go about researching and writing the study of deng's live in legacy? welcome to the cambridge forum ezra vogel. [applause] >> thank you very much, mike. it's a pleasure to be introduced by mike szonyi one of the young studies around the world having gotten a ph.d. at oxford and coming from canada originally and harvard is very lucky to have him as a professor of chinese history. when i was retiring from harvard in 2000i was trying to think

what could i do that would make americans better understand what was going on in asia, and i did -- des moines need to get a little closer? i decided that china is the most complicated problem that we face in the future. the transformation that took place in china that set off on the past that it's going having formed a the country that would be a very good basis so current china was shaped by deng ziaoping. he came to power in 1978 and was a dominant person right up until 1992 for period of 14 years. but i thought i would do in the brief time today -- i was told

not to talk more than 20 minutes, would be to talk about some of the forces that shaped deng and made him what he was and what he did to transform china because 1978 the country she inherited had a per capita income of less than $100 per capita. now it's estimated somewhere around 6,000 it's on the path that he is headed on. there was almost no migration from the countryside to the city and since he came perhaps to hundreds of people have moved from the countryside towns and cities. when he became in the power the country was still involved in the cultural revolution and people were full committee toward each other and he worked to unite the country. what are some of the forces that shaped him?

one, when he was 15-years-old she was in the county high school at that time the year 1919 just after our dever site treaty there was an outbreak of student movements in beijing where people -- was the first budding of chinese nationalism, and at that time he was a youth in high school but a few joined in the demonstration and he joined the demonstration. they talked about how certain use at a certain time when they had their identity formed with a movement or with an institution that becomes very basic and central to his whole life and so

his dedication to the national purpose really began already at age 15. the second thing i would mention is his experience and france from 1922 25. after world war i a lot of the chinese students wanted to go abroad. they didn't have the opportunities they have today to study the united states and europe and australia and canada and get scholarships. the idea was of some leading chinese business people is they would send students abroad that would work part time, and then they would earn money and study at the universities can't come back and bring with a have in china build up the new strong shy net. at that time, deng ziaoping was 16 and he was one of the youngest and the group to pass the exams to go to france, and

of all the countries the chinese students wanted to go to at that time, france was the main one. during world war i, about half a million chinese workers went to the soviet union to work, and about 150,000 went to france. so there were a lot of work opportunities in france and the chinese felt that that was a great civilization and so a group of youths went to france in 1920, 1930, and from that group came the communist league. what happened was, to get their first of all they had to be pretty well-educated, and that meant their parents had to have money so they were not from the worker class for the present class, they were from the british law class. but when they got there what they found was that there were no jobs for them.

the french that survive the war had come back. france was suffering an inflation depression and there were not any jobs come and the jobs that were available went to french men and they felt that the cactus were looking very lavish and living a very luxurious style of life. and yet the workers were very poor and at best the chinese that were over there could get dirty and greasy jobs to ordinary french workers didn't want to get. so, when they formed to study groups and tried to think of what is a broad explanation of what's going on, what just happened several years earlier in 1917 made a lot of sense that seemed like the people were exploring the working-class and that the country was already a fairly well-developed were exploiting those in the poor

nations and so that a group that had gone to france was so disappointed they couldn't study in the universities receive enough money to get in the universities and so they just continue to work in the factories. there are very disillusioned with with their own country not coming up with scholarships when they had been encouraged to go there. the leader in the scriven france was joe was about six years older than deng and later became the premier foreign minister and was the one that read henry kissinger. it was critical in shaping deng's the character and his point of view was in the wartime

from 1937 to 1949. it was an active wartime, so his job as a political commissar in one of the leading have units and later as the front commander for the largest bottler in the history of the reality of the troops. now that deng a lot of other leaders were way back in the 1940's which is a lot are protected from outside areas and they have room to talk about fear the and philosophy and training in the generations. deng laws on the front lines for years. his job was to get ready for the next battle. she had to be pragmatic. he didn't have time to talk about theory and philosophy. he had learned the fury in moscow after france where he was for a year but he didn't have

the time to engage in the battle to engage in the theoretical discussion he was so busy in the battle. another important influence should have mentioned about the year in moscow is that when he was in moscow from 1926 to 1927 the soviet union had the new economic policy. the economic policy was in charge but to have the markets open to foreign trade, open to investments and the communist party was able to provide leadership for that he had this experience from 1949 to 52 when he was in charge of the southwest bureau provinces of southwest china which had about 100 million people because the laws before they had with the >> caller: socialist transformation before they built. so he had lots of experience in

leading the communist party and yet having an open market economy. so after 1978 when he began to develop that pattern leading an open economy it wasn't new to him. he already had that experience. another important experience that helped shape him was his experience as the general secretary to the party. he had liked mao in the early 30's when he was criticized and purged for leading the mao for action. he was an the province and down there he was accused of falling to closely and he was purged for that so that endeared him and he conceded that he was a very

capable person, very bright, very able, and so conveyed on the very early. so from the mid-1950s until 1956, he had the experience of being the general secretary of the party supervising all party activities, so while mao was the chairman of the board as the chairman of the party and the chairman of the country, deng ziaoping had the responsibility of dealing with practical issues. i think another thing that shaped deng that is important shaping him was in 1959 and the great leap forward was really devastating the countryside people were starving large numbers and the latest estimates are that perhaps 40 to

50 million people died prematurely because the famine that was caused by the commune system and remove to believe to move rapidly. wasn't based on realities and it wasn't based on what was going on in the hillside world. mao had never been abroad but deng had a better sense of what was going on. let me move from those influences to what deng did when he came to power in 78. he had died in 76 and mao was still pursuing to the end. he wanted to shake up the country and have people attack those who are going on the capitalist road who were too free and independent so most of the senior leaders of the party were criticizing and purged by

deng ziaoping. one of the first things he did when he took -- came back after being purged again in 1975, one of the first things he did was to start working on education. he took over the responsibility for foreign relations and education science technology in august 77 when he came back to work. mao purged him at the beginning of the cultural revolution but he always wanted to think of speed and as somebody that might learn a lesson in the long run so while some other people were purged in prison, he was sent off and to the hope was that he would come back and work for the good of the country and help the place to grow. well, when he came back in

august 17771 of the first things he did was to open the universities and require entrance examinations. the universities had been closed from 1966 of the beginning of the cultural revolution and deng felt that for the country to progress of all of the modernizations the industry, agriculture, national defence, science technology education was the most important. and she wanted the students to come back to the universities. and in order to do that, he wanted to have entrance examinations. under mao, political considerations were always very important in getting into universities for a higher education. mao wanted people that were well read. deng felt that in 1977 there were no longer any landlords. they'd been wiped out in the early 50's. there were no people that had

been wiped out in the 1950's and therefore the country could go strictly by merit so the entrance to the universities were strictly by marriage and in 1977 when he decided to open universities he made an entrance examination into those that pounced but in. so the people that first passed the tests were like 7 million who took the exams and a few hundred thousand with entrance into the universities but that group of talented people many of whom had worked in the countryside or had been involved in other labor when they wanted to study or extraordinarily thankful for letting them come back to the university's. another thing that deng did that was basic was send people abroad to study. when frank press, president carter's science adviser who was an mit professor went to china

in the summer of 1978, the had just begun talking on normalization and he said to frank press we want to send hundreds of students to the united states to utilize relations and we want tens of some sense to go. are you ready to accept them? he didn't know what to do. he phoned jimmy carter in the middle of the night and i interviewed jimmy carter about his role in relating to deng. he was awakened at 3 a.m. and he said sure, go ahead. so, deng was ready to go ahead and send all of these students abroad. now over 1 million have been abroad and deng's students achieve what he wasn't able to achieve in the 1920's, the opportunity to learn from worldwide what was going on.

one of the biggest reforms made the collectivization and to manage this politically was quite extraordinary. many people who were dedicated communists and many of those that work in the countryside felt that the commune system -- and the collectivization was a basis what they were trying to do. he managed to handle this politically and beautifully. he didn't do it like an american politician standing up in the campaign saying i'm going to be collectivize, not at all. what he did was to try to allow one of his best friends to go to the province which had some of the biggest starvation and retold them if people are starving you've got to let them do whatever they can to find a

way to earn their own food and survive and even the conservatives couldn't oppose that. so they decided what they could do to get ahead and sure enough a lot of them began forming their own family plots and broke off from the big collectives, then what he did is he said some journalists to observe for happened in the report and the report in beijing that there was a lot of progress and production had gone up in those areas where they had tried it and then deng announced that if people really wanted to in which areas where there was a serious famine they should be allowed on a broad scale to find a way to produce goods on their own, and within a year or so over 90 present of

the country d collectivized. it was a brilliant way in which he had supported the conservatives. he didn't go out on a limb and he let it develop readily so that many people supported it. and in the fall of 78, one of the reasons why i mentioned his fall in the cultural revolution as being so important is because it led him to think the chinese could go a very different path, and one of the important things was also of forming a good relations with the major countries with which they would learn. he had already been to europe and 74 and 1975 as well as 1920 to 25 triet so in the visit to the united nations to france in 74 and france in 75 and to southeast asia in early 1978 he had a good idea what was going

on the outside world but he wanted others to get that same message. so the summer of 1978, sorry, 1978 he encouraged the delegation led by a prime minister likes deputy minister to lead a group of people from all the major economic units, all the major economic mission planning commission's, construction commission and the torch ministries concerned with the various kind of industries to take a five week tour of europe. when they came back it was led by a man when they came back some people felt that they would have a meeting the last couple of hours. they started at 3 p.m. and finished at midnight. with the group reported is that china was far behind the west, much further behind than they

thought. also, however, the european countries are ready to lend money for and help with their technology so rhetoric and being discouraged by being so far behind europe they were very excited with the could do as a result of that visit. so in the 1980's another thing he did is to begin to open up markets to the al-sayyid world, and here he played a very key role. he knew that if he immediately set the whole country has markets that the conservatives would be infuriated and there would be a lot of polarization. but he did was to say let's try some experiments. if they work in some place we will see. and he allowed some of these special economic zones down there in hong kong and along the southeast coast areas from which

a lot of chinese had migrated overseas to begin to open up its zones and he also knew the people that had migrated overseas often had been successful businesspeople and willing to invest in their own local area. so he let them begin to bring because the government was so short on money they relied heavily on these outside investors to provide the funds for necessary to get those experiments started. and once the experiment started, then he encouraged the high level leaders to go visit to see the progress and they were stunned by the industry and construction that the salles and the build a broad base of support so those were experiments that were not successful and began to spread on the localities.

in 1989, he faced a very serious problem of student demonstrations. the students -- let me back up. in the beginning of 1989, gorbachev was invited to beijing to bring back to good relations. they've been broken off in 63 by deng himself when he went to moscow to argue, that in 1989, he invited gorbachev and his wife to come on the conditions that they pull out of afghanistan and pull the troops back from the northern chinese border and the vietnam would pull out of cambodia and gorbachev accepted the conditions. so they invited the news people from all over the world to come to beijing. but when they got there what they found was some student demonstrations. they started out over the death of a very progressive open

leader who suddenly died, and the students were so upset that their beloved leader had died she wanted more dhaka see and he wanted more openness so they began to demonstrate. there was still a lot of political control over students and ordinary people. that upset them and so there were a lot of urban support for this did in-store demonstrating and they had huge demonstrations after gorbachev left they still demint quieted down and so deng and warned them if they didn't quiet down he would have to take some stir in the steps. on may 20th of 1989 he brought in the troops to try to get control but they couldn't get control. they ran into all kinds of obstacles and the people who

didn't want the troops coming into the city. said he supported what other leaders decided to do to allow the trips to do what was necessary to lead an order and the entered the city and the best day that we have is as many as 800 people were killed on the streets of beijing. i think if i had written my book 20 years ago nobody would have paid attention to it because people were so upset at what deng did to crack down on june june 4th that nobody would want to think about his historical role. in my book i try to be clear about what he did cracking down on june 4th and there's still a lot of kids that feel there was a terrible thing. but i think as we look at the chinese history, we have to

recognize his historical contribution. if we look at people like thomas jefferson and george washington the own slaves, lots of slaves. there was a terrible thing. it was an and humane thing. if we were to think about the role in history just on owning slavery, we would have missed a lot about what they did to form their country. and as a complicated character he did crack down. she felt that they needed to to keep the peace and allow the country to grow. but he also led the country to modernization. since he came to power perhaps 300 million people had come out of poverty and are now living very comfortable lives. the countryside has turned into an open eris. he's brought modernization technology, raised the standard of living and they join the

world inventor organizations. students that come across and come back to china bringing new technology, new ideas so that it's really transformed the country. i think if you personally start to think which leader of the 20th century did more to change the shape of history i think there's a strong argument that maybe it was deng ziaoping because several hundred million people out of poverty, people got much wealthier and raised their standard of living and changed the balance of world power because 1978 china was a weak country. it wasn't considered an important country and today china ranks up in the united states in terms of its influence in world affairs. so i think in short we have a very remarkable man and wife

tried to do is as objectively as i can record what people consider good points and bad points and to recognize the extraordinary role that she's played in three making history. thank you. [applause] the acclaimed biography of china's transformational leader deng ziaoping. when you were talking about his life in the military and the army you mentioned that he was pragmatic and too busy for theory given that he's the author at deng ziaoping's theory that students what to study and one of the interesting things i found in the book is the suggestion some of the reforms for which he's famous for actually done on his predecessor

leader the transfer of practices that had been tried out in places like south korea and taiwan was he a good learner were said just on the conclusion of the book a competent manager. it wasn't unique to deng ziaoping, and even he was criticized the successor one that now chose to be the successor who turned out not to be a great strong leader was in favor of a lot of those reforms and a lot of the more in favor of a lot of the reforms. to some extent, she did have a very long perspective and

whether visionaries' a rightward but when you think about hong kong, he said for the years you can keep the system if you ask obama what do you plan to do for the next 50 years for this country, that would hardly be a serious question. i mean, no american leader -- for years as a long-term for the end of the term to the next election so she did have a longer-term perspective. devotees same time he was experimental and he didn't have the fixed notion and used the expression crossed a river by groping for stones and again that term was attributed to deng but it wasn't unique to him he didn't invent a. he used the ideas and he was a manager that put it all together and provided the deduction on a firm hand that made it all happened. >> you talk about the skill of

the politician pushing the collectivization reforms. we've seen from one of the leading stars of the young leaders in china that personality politics and factional politics remain very important in china. what enabled deng to be so successful what managing and reconciling the fractional interest? >> i think that he had the authority that came in very closely with mao and worked closely with both of them learning foreign relations and 73 come 75 he worked with france as a young man and he also worked very closely with mao. but i think it was also he was smart. he remembered things and have a

perspective of history. when i interviewed him he'd met many of the world leaders and thought he was as great of a leader as he met because he was able to recognize that what he had learned and put in practice wasn't working and he was ready to try something new but step by step in a way people could accept can it wouldn't add to the polarization that would help resolve the polarization. >> the skill that many politicians could benefit from having. >> welcome to the forum as we continue the discussion on the transformation of china if the dean of harvard scholar. what role did he play in bringing china to the places points today as a powerful player in the pacific rim and the international economy crux of the spread in the program will take questions from the audience please line up at the microphone and asked one question we want to get as many of you as possible chance to ask

your questions. >> thank you. i'm wondering if you'd care to go off from this chronological history about what he did to develop the country into its cultural anthropology and its political philosophy as the great chinese miracle was blooming there are tens of thousands of chinese particularly in africa and other parts of the world about our gathering resources to feed the great dragon if you want to call it that. and how well the chinese people better in these foreign countries and absorbing information education whether they want to stay within the countries that they have visited or pledge your dedicated to return to read to talk about the tibetan buddhists, stuff like that in the scheme of this development of china for 30, 40 years out for us.

>> the associated senator paltry i'm happy to make a few comments. first of all, although mao was revolutionary in theory he blocked mobility. he led the people in the old countryside to stay in their common. they couldn't move to the city and people that worked in a certain units in the city were bonded to that unit and they couldn't move easily to other units and the housing was owned by the state. so what deng did by opening up the migration, allowing people to move from the countryside as they had enough food to feed the city population completely transformed the society that had been really rigid and locked in to one that was mobile. the old family system and a lot of the rural areas is not preserved when you moved so rapidly and the people in the

city only had one child. as for the chinese going overseas there are many different kind of reasons and different kind of changes going overseas. some are diplomats who want to keep good relations. some are working for a private capacity to try to find out what's going on and pass it up through the leaders of their well informed of what goes there. some are companies that are out there to make money and look at investments. some are energy companies% by the state to try to establish solid sources of energy that will continue to fuel china as it continues to have more automobiles and more steel plants and remake china. so, maybe that is a quick answer to some of your concerns, but i think that is a very quick overview. >> i just have one comment and

one question. the comment is what underlines what you just described. that is the ability to seize power. ferc said, in short after she started a restructuring accord of the leadership if. to fund german of the communist party and eventually it had fallen out of the leadership, so without the ability to seize the power in the chinese communist

party nothing would be possible just very recently there has been allegedly been within the core of the chinese communist authority the proposal to at least read the decision of the ambassador but highly controversial in the core of the communist authorities so i want you to comment on the impact is that stabilizing impact under the chinese communist party under the turning the table around on this issue. >> first your assumption general comment, first anybody had to

have a firm grip on power to carry out his activities and that is true that two years after the vietnam war but i don't think that they are related and i talked to and i talked to many others and went through the records of the war, and what he was concerned about in 1979 when he invaded vietnam was that the soviets and vietnamese are cooperating the united states pulled out of vietnam he was very worried that the imam were going to circle around in circles china used by the soviet ships and there was a real danger of encirclement, and that was the reason why he went

to the war in the vietnam. and he didn't have to do any of the pushing. it was done by the others basically it was done in november of 1978 by the seniors. while ezra was in the southeast asia that they basically began to push him aside. on june 4th it is true that there are a lot of people in china who feel that those that were assessed for forming the demonstrations and so forth should be considered patriots and other cases should be reversed. they should no longer be considered people who challenge the order but who helped the order because there are certain people living who were deeply involved thinking also of the

successor who wasn't there but succeeded after that. i think it is on - trend to note the inside power in china suggests that would probably take many more years and to respect that there would be the reversal of the verdicts, but probably not during the lifetime and perhaps not during his lifetime. thank you. >> professor vogel, i appreciate you commenting on the experimental nature of deng and his reform going through the long history of reform without blueprints come and i also wonder -- i haven't read the book. i'm sorry, but i'm just curious when you said that he had a long-term vision of hongkong,

did he have a similar vision on taiwan, the sovereignty of taiwan and tibet and so. thank you for your help at the service center to have your own troops but unfortunately he was unable to resolve the issue and what he thought was most critical is that america was still sending arms to taiwan, and therefore taiwan was not willing to begin to negotiate and they felt that as long as the united states was behind the didn't have to negotiate. so now we have a very complicated system. one of the tensions between the united states and china over taiwan because as america sells arms to taiwan, then tie one

does not want to have the integration. they feel they can remain independent. and that is very disturbing. he had hoped that in his lifetime he would achieve the unification of taiwan. the most bitter disappointed he had with his achievement is he wasn't able to bring them back into the mainland. >> it's hard to see the business in taiwan becoming inevitable. >> is certainly would. >> i have a question about the current and the new administration. china is going through changing of guards and the recent scandal seems like there's comment that china is going to go backwards and is going to be less open and

i wonder about the new administration following the path of deng ziaoping becoming more open market reform and do you think that this kind going backward? >> there's a lot of things we don't know. the united states before a person takes office we have election campaigns of the constant exposure to the press conferences. now he's going to be the new successor keeps quiet as possible. he knows that if he speaks out it may disrupt things, and it's very difficult there for to analyze but he would do. he's not stating his policy. one can say a few things from his background. i think it gives some clues. one is when he was there is the party secretary he was very open. second, when he met forerunners

in australia and japan they feel he's a very open man they can deal with in a very frank and direct way and that he's very bright. the third thing i would say judging by his father who was very unusual, he was one of the leaders of this new opening and the special economic zones out on the front doing it and also was criticized and thrown out in january 87. he was known as the most liberal and open minded of all of the chinese leaders. there's only one leader that stood at that time and that's his father so i think there is reason for hope that it will be a more open leader and continue reforms more than the present leader is doing.

>> many people see the transformation of china is not yet complete and the leaders of the transformation of china is not yet complete and then he has done most of the political transformation is predicted to be more difficult and may involve more interest so what do we learn from the leadership skills and the strategies that he's used and how much can we apply those experiencing in the political transformation? >> as you know there was the expression in the continuous revolution, and i think when you use the word continuous reform

it's not just one stage that's all done forever. i think the reform and opening will continue and i think for example the rule of law will become more important however i don't think we should expect them to file for western-style democracy. it's not clear to me that is the vision for the i think the need to find a to have broad public representation so the leaders have a broad base of legitimacy in perpetuating the communist party and they are experimenting with various means and the party of the voting and the national people's congress where more voting is more dissent. there are more cases where your select a group of potential leaders and choose which of that group. these experiments will continue

and reforms are many kinds for many years to but i think particularly now they've become so widespread in such a serious problem that she has to take firm steps for corruption than the current leader does. >> thank you, and i think what

you talk about the character leader for years ago but sometimes she made. 1989 join fourth of that trouble caused by his own mistake. if you don't discharge the sector have so many students did

on the street. so he went after this. also, he -- to make a quick decision maker and a very quick question. >> he was also not a good and reader. he's a good leader but not a good reader. in his spare time played a part for the people and he promoted to the high position in a lot of ways of people's time i would

argue i would ask your progress and i appreciate this my comments to your talk. >> thank you very much. i think he did play bridge often once or twice a week but it's not true of all the people that were promoted i was able to interview one or two, one of them was a brilliant bridge player when he played bridge he often got in his bridge playing start he thought was a good mental exercise to think about bridge. he often had a partner who was a bridge playing star and the

other star also had one so that would improve his skill and he also liked to play pocket pool billiards he often employed that also. >> for a time we had brought chinese students here to learn about aids i think it was the basic sciences. the students were all very bright and they knew their facts, but the teachers and the professor road that down. they never questioned anything is one of the chinese american professors deliberately gave the lab experiment and when the lab experiment didn't work he said and you believe to be? my question is is this still true? are they learning to question even the learned professors? >> since china has 1.3 billion

people, there is quite a bit of. but i think that there's a jury strong a kernel of truth that is still true that in the better high schools the key point is to get ready for the university exams and that is learning fact of mastering the information and they do that very well. the critical judgment is not something that half as much a part of the education as part of ours. however, they had 1.1 million people a half from abroad. they had more critical - and over 200 have now gone back a lot of them at universities. so there is an attempt in many universities to try to develop critical thinking in a bigger way. but still, i think the dominant

pattern is to learn the facts, learn the information and as he who is the brightest to get the information, to get in the next level of examinations. that's still very dominant, and china now wants to become a world leader in science technology and i think it's not only that the party has trouble tracking the world's best scholars because of some clamping down on freedom of thought and free expression but it's also this fundamental issue to bring attention to and that is the people are not taught to think critically. >> in some ways we are the beneficiary of that here at harvard because we have students that have rejected that and demand political thinking those are some of our brightest the first pass exams and beyond that they also do fun of critical

thinking. >> i imagine would be ten or 20 years before another biography about the level of years is going to be written. when would you like to see it cover that your book wasn't able to cover? that is a great question. when i was writing it all is afraid somebody might beat me to it. [laughter] but there is nobody else that has done anything comparable, and would take a few years to get anything comparable to the i had a lot of good luck some of which was having so many chinese students here that had developed connections that i could interview a lot of people that ordinary people could not interview. when i hosted the amendment in 1998i was able to interview him

about deng ziaoping and i don't know anybody else that has interviewed him. one source of information of course is going to come out and that is a lot of stories in the meetings and a lot of rich deutsch held discussions and records of meetings will come out and give a rich picture in the process because he didn't keep notes. it's tough for a biographer but i think what i would like to see is -- i may not be around to see ten, 20 years the new biography to come, but i hope they would make full use of records to get a rich picture of the actual decision making process in the consideration of what happened i could sort of guess but i couldn't nail it down. thank you.

>> he brought him on to take charge of propaganda for the committee. the second time, of course, was purged was in 1966 by mal

himself as the beginning of the cultural revolution as one of the two leaders in authority taking the capless road. the third time was at the end of late 1975, early 1976 when he was purged for fear he would not continue the path of revolution and continue the respect for what was done. i think those were all the kinds of things that were set backs, but i think in terms of things that you might call errors or -- i think another error he made was in 1988 when he was an heir, and he was in a big hurry, and the person he was paired with worked closely with him, and he was in some respect much more cautious person, and when they worked together, they accomplished much, much more. 1988, he was in such a hurry to

release prices that he knew he was going to end his career soon, and that he wanted to finish that off before he retired, and so he released all kinds of prices at the time when there were inflationary pressures. that made inflation sky high and that's part of the reason people in beijing are no longer enthusiastic about dung as they had been before. >> professor, thank you very much for presenting this history to american people and i'm from beijing, and this is not only the history of its person, but the history of a lot of people of my generation, and i grew up with his policies, and i think this is a great to -- let more american people know better

about what he did, in fact, in china, but not just through all the superficial events, reportings from the newspapers so this is my first book already so i usually give them as gifts to americans or other people, those wanting to know better about chinese history in the past 0 years. my question will be very simple. this is the history. for the future and for the near future, what's your point of view between -- i mean, what's your point of view of the china's rise and the american relative decline? will they be punished or will they be enemies 1234 -- enemies? >> i think there's going to be a

lot of tensions between china and the united states. as kissinger pointed out in his book, you know, for eight presidents, beginning with nixon, all of them felt we must be engaged with china and must work with china so even though there's a lot of tension and competition, in the end, i think it's in leaders' interest, leaders of both countries recognize that it's in their interest to contain the pressures for competition and for, particularly for the disstressed. the critical single problem we refer to now as a team of strategic mistrust, and i think it's that we are not sure of military chinese intentions, and we say, of course, we want to engage in china, but they suspect maybe we really don't, and we -- we hear the chinese leaders say they want a peaceful rise, but then in the south

china sea, they have many patrol boats that are coming in conflict from other countries so i think it's going to take a lot of determination on the part of a lot of leaders and much more open discussion of military goals and much more transparency and military preparedness on both sides in order to achieve the cooperation and peaceful future that we all want. >> china faces a lot of challenges today, not just internationally, but many challenges created either by the policies dung implemented or circumstances that occurred on his watch. china faces a looming demographic challenge both in terms of declining number ofs -- numbers of working as a result

of a gender imbalance as a result of the one child policy and expansion challenges, driven in part by the economy, political challenges created in part by the creation of the middle class demanding new rights and so forth. dung, had he gone to meet marx, were he on the scene, what would he be doing about the challenges? >> that's a brilliant summation of the issues they are facing. i think if dung were alive today, the biggest issue he'd think of is corruption because dung thought of political support as key to power, one of the most fundmental things he was concerned with, and with so much corruption, there is a danger that people will no longer support the leaders and communism party, and when he was stepping down in 1992, he said, you know, we must use two fists.

we must grab reform with one first, and we must grab illegal behavior, corruption, with the other fist, and i think he, of course, is a much stronger and had a stronger base of power than the leaders do nowadays, but if he were alive, he'd attack that vigorously, but i think in terms of openness and relations -- i think also he would work very hard to deal with that strategic disstress with the outside world. he felt the soviet union made a terrible error by having enemies, spending so much on the military, and exhausting the nation on trying to maintain a small military when they didn't build up their own country, and he would slow down the growth of the military and work to have better relations for all major powers, including japan especially, but i think eyed also want to make sure that they didn't spend so much on the

military. >> thank you, ezra vogel. [applause] >> after that, james gilbert and his findings on the world economy in the book inequality and instability. book tv is in prime time all week on c-span 2.

in a few moments, masha gessen takes a look at "the man without a face: the unlikely rise of vladimir putin." after that, we will be re-airing ezra vogel on the life of deng xiaoping. >> on "washington journal" tomorrow morning, the new book spoiled rotten. his observations about the democratic party. we will look at finance reform and the losses at jpmorgan with conor kennedy. we will be joined by new york daily news columnist. "washington journal" is live on c-span everyday at 7:00 a.m. eastern. >> sunday on "q&a", i think the problem with walter cronkite, people see him as the ultimate family man. but there is another side of him

that wanted to be the best. he was obsessed with ratings and beating the brinkley report every night. he is probably the fiercest competitor ever written about. i have written about presidents and generals and concave desire to do the best was very pronounced. douglas brinkley on his buyer fee of walter cronkite. sunday at eight eastern p.m. >> a look at world leaders continues with journalist mashae gessen olen vladimir putin. this is a little less than an fr hour. [applause] >> thank you very much for the kindtr introduction. i might have to stand on the little box to reach this. from i'm going to read the epilogue from the book, which i was

lucky to secure. it would otherwise it would have been outdated the moment it came out. it is a little bit more personal than the rest of the book. i liked it. i'm going to read from it. is the book is called "a week in december." saturday, december 3. i am driving my family to see ai american comedy at a central mall in moscow. a the snow was late this year, and the city feels like it has been plunged into permanent darkness. excessive lighting on the guard ro rain, it illuminates the citycky center. it does little to change the feeling. one might call it a poster orug billboard, but my description would do justice to the scale of

it.y, it stood atop the two-story building and appears taller than the building. it is backwards and also illuminated around the edges. the digital photo frame. inside the frame, putin looks over a caption. morrow i united, russia, together we wily win. tomorrow is the parliamentary election. that makes today by law a day of silence, meaning any and all, or campaigning is banned, advertising included. i take a picture of the monstrosity with my cell phone and uploaded it to facebook. within an hour, thei picture collects 17 comments, no world record, more reaction than i expected on a saturday night. even more surprising, this commenting is not my usual, butt friends.o it still makes you want to

throw, doesn't it? writes a former political reporter who gave up journalism 14 years ago. because i have not voted in an election for more than a dozen years.en putin's laws under elections meaningless. members of parliament were no longer elected directly. the results were rigged by election officials anyway. but a couple of months ago, when a group of well-known liberalrs, writers, artists and politicalal activists called on people to go to the polls and right in a ballot, i criticized the idea online is a losing tactic. the government had made a mockery of the elections,.we nea what we really needed was an alternative, like a reason to vote. in the back-and-forth that followed in various publications, a few people chimed in to go to the polls. the first make sure that the no-name party, and the second was to vote for one of thewa quasi- parties on the ballot.

amazingly, this went viral. having heard a dissertation on h elections, might often woke up and asked me, or who did you sa. you were going to vote? i yes, i'm going to vote. s why, she asked? i can't quite explain it, but iu do something different. i said this because of the last .ew days i have had several to e discussions with my friends who are also going to vote. we had been deciding whichnds circle to pick. thousands of people, including a number of my friends, our volunteer servers. they are organized by political scientists who is my girlfriend's father. people are discussing the future of putin and the future of russia. sunday, december 4. to a

i go to the polls a half hour te before they close. used my so i can catch the election thieves red-handed if they have already used my name to vote. neither me or my 91-year-old voe grandmother has a problem. cas i cast my vote uneventfully. i go to my colleague's 40th birthday party.it's a book publishing people, every ad journalists, designers, and manufacturers. my friend is one who knows everyone. everyone is talking about the election.ngs come in thirtysomethings declaring a voted for the first time in my life. after a while, it gets predictable, anyone who reached legal majority under putin came to power will utter this phrase within minutes of walkingth through the door.inu coupl a couple of election observers

yo regale us with tales of violations. young people who are prepared to hide ballots under their clothing and slid them in. unting once the counting began, we will find out tomorrow what the no official tallies are with no egards to the actual results. what is new to the fact that we are talking about all this late into the night, and that we allo heard it, and something else, too. us election observers tell us that there are observers that includs other people who are not like us. something shifted. not only for our media junkie unkies. i am not sure, but i feel likebi something is in there. monday, december 5. driving the kids to school, i

listened to reports on the radio. radio. united russia has just under 50t of the vote.t it i know this is not an accurate figure, but is considerably lower than the falsified result of the previous election when united russia supposedly got 66%. perhaps, this time the numbers are so low that some local low election officials thought they ought could take the lie only so far.d as we will also find out later today, some people resistedthe b altogether the pressure to listen to in the numbers. 500 election observers saw no major violations of votingwhen e procedures that 36 of them. ov united russia came in second vote with just over 20% of the vote. trailing the communist party. it will appear that the official count, more than double of the r real one. er% of eligible voters took part of it far more than in any other

recent election.o a protest is planned for tonight and i plan to go.to i do not want to know why. the way it works is that anyone planning a public rally has to notify their government.icipant. you have to provide a specific number of participants. if the permission is denied, [inaudible]r. if permission is granted, metal detectors will be installed at the perimeter. people must undergo searches ann i feel that i must go.imes. this is one of those times. my friend anna messages me with

a quote from today's new york times article. anna is a foreignacy is correspondents. a she adds that if it wasn't sowat sad, it would be quite funny. funny. i respond with something is going on, but it doesn't go anywhere. i go to the protest. it is on c. willse -- it is on t unseasonably warm.th t as we walk, one of them amnt

untrained people that we walk with, has spent a fair amount of time in jail to protest. the other, recently quit his joa in a dispute over pre-election censorship. he had been instructed to exclude critical articles for his coverage of russia. as we draw closer, we cannot make out the metal declared untrimmed detectors through the crowd. word spreads. the police will not be letting any more people m through.moscod there are several hundred peoplg in the park. that is huge. we walk along, looking in. hunde ofey're not hundreds, but thousands of people in the parku we find ourselves parked alongss the street.ght and we are waiting. traffic detains us. s a dotrzen of us climb over the fence to join the demonstrators. the rain keeps coming, and mylia hair is soaked and my feet feel.

like they're going to fall off. i'm happy to be standing there freezing and endlessly saying hello to friends appearing from every direction. i there comes my friend, w photographer with whom iveled traveled in w the 1990s.there there is his son, born a yearyer after the soviet union a collapsed.on and my editor 15 years ago. remember how we used to count the number of people atount demonstrations in the '90s by io mentally breaking the cowed int. quadrants? i can do it anymore. t neither cannot. i cannot remember the technique, nor can i distinguish anyone in the crowd and rain in the dark.r i'm certain they're more than 5000 people here. estimates will range up to 10,000 come and that makes usess the largest protest in russiaea since the early 1990s. as the rally breaksrl up, whichs just down the block, we go to my apartment. the women accept then, invitati. the men say they are going tothh watch in the central committee , building. 300eed, it will be about 300

arrests, and there will be violence. but there will be something else, too. in about an hour, when people ck are sipping cognac in my warm apartment, still trying to warmo up, in another hour, two men i l have not met will be at my apartment to share and embellist the story. have s i think i ehave seen this befor. this is the moment to be and fearless. him. it is a tiny moment of great of change. the young men go to the police station where their lesson. fortunate friends have been held. now i will frd fast forward from monday to the following saturday. >> saturday, december 10.ehe

driving near the protest, so whf what if 35 people on 10,000 people f have stated feeling la, want to sleep in or stay, and they will figure someone else goes to the protest. as i get closer they figure someone else will go to the proce,ess. as it gets closer to the square i see people pouring in fromdi every direction. in groups and couples alone, young, old, middle-aged.earing people wearing white ribbons, white hats, white scarves.ns and it still [inaudible] wear and cy has to compensate. i meet up with a group of friends including andre and two brothers. the police are calm and polite. inside, we wander into the square. scanning for familiar faces. monday's protest, i knew

everyone was there because i could see them all. today i know they are all here because i can't see them through the crowd. texting is impossible as the volume exceedses the capacity of the moscow's networks. there's banners people brought. one features a graph of the official results recorded by the central election committee. it shows what normal distribution of support for united russia would look like. we don't trust you says the poster. it refers to the mathematician who gave the world a bell curve. i did not vote for these assholes proclaims another banner. i voted for the other assholes. [laughter] i demand a recount. there's so many people here a very young man shouts, and they are all normal. i heard like a million joke, and they were all funny. if you have spent years feeling your views were shared with a few of your closest friends.,

being surrounded by tens of thousands of like-minded people feels like millions of jokes all at once. there's a stage. i can't see it and hardly can hear the speakers. there's a trip one remembers from the early 1990s with they brought radios to listen to the speakers. she turns the root orn the cell phone. the public square that has free wireless, and gives us the speeches. we look around and join in chants. new elections, freedom, russia without putin. the speakers include a best selling writer, made it from the south of france in time, and a well-loved, long blacklisted television anchor and dissorted activist. speaking about election fraud, and noun of nose who pass for opposition parties are not here. they have not yet gotten the message that power shifted away from the kremlin.

app anticorruption blogger is in jail, so one reads the address to the protesters. the billionaire who suspended his political career two months ago is silent. on monday, he'll announce he's running for president, but by then, it's too late to win with the crowd. he'll immediately be branded a pity. i'm wearing thermal underwear, two socks, and moon boots. we decide to leave. other people are arriving. walking away from the protests, i stop on a pedestrian brimming to look back at the crowd. there are a lot more than 5,000 people there. later, estimates will range as 100,000 to 150 ,000. we take a large table at the restaurant where many order mulled wine to warm up. they shout the latest news across the tables. there's a couple lines from a radio station's website. the protest is drawing to a close.

the police representative mounted the zag and says, today we acted like the police of a democratic country. thank you. there's applause. at our tail, there's a moment of silence. this is great, all of us start saying looking at one another. this is great! how long has it been since we were able to say this is great about something happening in our city? i leave my friends. at the restaurant to return to the family. i go over the big stone bridge, the largest over the moscow river as the police leave the square. there's hundreds upon hundreds of them moving on the sidewalk, four and five across, the length of the bridge. for the first time i can remember, i do not get a knot in my stomach looking at the police in the riot gearment i'm stuck between a snowplow. it still has not snowed. i don't know what the truck is doing in the street, but there's a white balloon tied to the corner of the plow. protests were held today in 99 cities in russia and in front of

consulates in more than 40 cities around the world. in the evening, putin's press secretary tells journalists the government has no comment on the protests and promises to let them know if a comment is formulated. later, the television station taken away ten years ago airs an excellent report on the protest. i watch it online, years since i had a working television in the house, and i recognize something i have observed in other countries when i covered their revolutions. there comes a day when you turn on the television, and the very same touting propaganda at you yesterday in the very same studios with the same backdrops start speaking a human language. in this case, this gives me head an extra spin because i remember the journalists before when they lost about a dozen years ago. as i approach, it starts to snow. by morning, the countryside will be covered in white.

[applause] >> thank you. thank you. >> today is march 8th. march 10th looks to be a major rallying time. can you speak about your anticipation recording that? >> i wish i were there. that's my strongest feeling about it. i'm worried because what putin clearly thinks that the election on march 4th was his final word with the protesters, and so he expects it to fizzle.

i think he expects the police to break up the administration although the administrations on march 10th is legal, but there was a legal demonstration in moscow on march 5th, three days ago, which was rather brutally broken up towards the end. that's part of the concern. the other concern is that i'm worrieded that some people have been very demoralized by the election on sunday. we don't expect any bet eric -- better, and it's still depressing. >> okay. any questions from the audience? we'll come back again. i have a bundle myself. i wonder if you could talk a little, too, about the making of this book and actually the timing it because, indeed, you've been working on this for

awhile. you hadn't completely an tis paletted -- anticipated that you'd segue so simply and elegantly with the timing of an election. >> well, actually, the book's publication was planned for the election, but we just didn't realize it was going to be such an eventful election. i assume putin would run for president again this year, which was not clear when the book was being scheduled, so that assumption proved correct, but i did not plan on the protests. >> okay. all right. i meant to ask you this before, and this is slightly off topic, but i wonder if you would care to comment about the cultural organization we encountered

around here, or do you want to just set that aside? >> i'd like to set that aside. >> okay. >> thank you. >> questioner here, and if you can just stand. >> there's a book about the russians -- i just read a book about the russian revolution, and it appeared from the book it was the bolshiveks that was the force of the revolution, the czar was the enemy, but there was the political force. do you see the possibility of a political force coalescing in russia that would, indeed, change the situation where at least it would be a democratic country? >> it's a lilts early to talk about a political force because we don't yet have a political space in which this force could exist. what happened over the last 1

years 1 that all -- over the last 12 years is that all media has been taken over by the state, and there's been no public conversation, so as a result, there's no politicians. what we need is a transitional government for at least a year or two after putin leaves and before new elections can actually take place. now, that was needed in 1917 as well, and it didn't end as well. the transitional period began in february, but by october, the bolshiveks revolution began. i'm hoping it works here. >> question here, and then another slightly further back. >> what's the relationship between the police and fsb, and how far do you think the police will go going forward in the

protests? >> the police and the fsd are two separate entities. they do not have armed force of its own, so putin will have to rely on the police and the interior troops, part of the same ministry, but a separate agency from the police in order to call the demonstrations. he clearly doesn't trust the police in moscow and st. peters berg. they gave every indication of being too cooperative with the protesters, and last week, interior troops were brought in to control moc cows because the -- moscow because the troops were not trustedded. >> follow-up question. are you worried about your own safety when you go back? >> i worry sometimes. i don't want to overstate it

because there are people, and there's people i know who actually have. attacked and threatened in the last couple years, and i'm not one of them. >> please. >> do you think the protesters might at some point turn violent? one of the protesters speaking in front of them sort of threatened to take the kremlin, you know, we have enough people to take it. >> has a way of getting away from him, and it was very clear that he couldn't believe he was saying what he was saying, and he was rather remorseful

actually. there's always a risk, and one thing that has happened is the protest woman has been radicalized significantly in just since the beginning three months ago. two months ago, people came out for fair election, and it was clear in the first large protest i described on december 10th, that there were people willing to chant along with re-election or new elections than people who chatted with putin. putin made the remark that the white ribbons the protesters wear remind him of condoms, and you could just feel the mood change. you could -- and at the next protest on december 24th, there were just as many people willing to shout down with putin as there were people just coming

out for fair elections. that process of radicalization is continuing and the brazen way in which the lexes was stolen on march 4th crickets to that, -- contributes to that, and even though the loss of the movement has been consistently peaceful and that's all we've ever talked about is using peaceful politics, i worry that i may be underestimating the radical potential among the very many, very young people involved in the movement whose patience has started running out. >> okay. >> what do the protesters expect of the united states government? the obama administration has a back record when it comes to providing at least vocal support to protesters in other countries

so what could they poly expect from the u.s. government today? >> nothing. actually, it's -- putin accused the protest movement of being funded by the state department, which is not true. the protests are funded domestically, and, you know, i covered protest movements funded by the state department, and this is not one of them. at this point, it's extremely important for the protest movement's celt to -- credibility to be perceived as domestically funded so, in fact, i don't see that we need the united states government to do or say anything in the foreseeable future. >> i noticed your use of social

media in your talking about it. has that changed how communication between groups are going, and is that limited to the cities because that's where most of the wi-fi might be? have you been disappointed or pleased with how news media across the world has reacted to the russian citizens meetings and has that been a true and accurate representation in your view? >> social media -- well, first of all, the city's question, and russia is an urban country so russia is in the cities, and russia is 80% urban, but, in fact, the rural population is so dispersed and so for the most part, in a drunken stupor and so

most of the people where there's broadband and internet at this point. social media's at this point as a tool, but i don't -- i think, you know, there's this sort of romantic notion that social media creates something where nothing existed before. it holds people connected where people are already connecting. it makeses the connections more effective and more efficient, but it can't create connections where it didn't exist before, and that's been one of russia's problem. the systematic destruction much public space over 12 years. it's the destruction and information has not been flowing so people have wanted to broke through those information barrier, and that's one social

media can hand it. the second question was? >> the news media. >> the news media. and i've been happy that the british woman has been covered wisely and has been taken seriously, largely the consequence of the recent example of the arab spring where movements were dynamic and so successful, but i think a lot of the reporting has been lazy and there's been stereo types with no relationship to reality, and the most destructive of the stereotypes is the middle class revolution which is actually a stereo type advanced by the kremlin, and that was the first reaction to the protest, not putin, himself, but his right hand man who said this is a protest of urbanites, and it's

not, unless you count the fact we're all urbanites. it's really a broad based movement, and surveys have shown it involves people of all income level, all education levels, becauseically people of working age all over the place, and there's also the stereotype that the protests are limited to the two capitols which is not at all true. the protests were in 99 russian cities in december, went down by a couple in february. they did things like stage purchases, and i don't know if you saw pictures, but they -- people put out that poisen puppets and had tiny banners in the toy arms, and planted them on the lawn in front of city hall which they were denied

permission to demonstrate so since then the city has banned toy purchases. [laughter] there's also the example of a town like the top that's -- when i say "99 cities," russia has few large cities, just a dozen large cities, the rest are small tops, and so places like the town outside moscow, population 125,000, a back water town because moscow sucks out everything from the town, and 120 people came out to protest, and in a town like that, these people expect to be personally known by the people who pass them in the street; right? this is either an extreme courage or extreme confidence that their sentiments is shared by the people around them.

>> we'll come around. the gentleman there. >> you might have answered this, but i was going to ask if you could speak about the people of the interior, those willing to be busted to show support for putin and those who don't join the protests. what is the mood or motivation? >> what -- sorry? >> their mood or motivation or what do they want? >> right. >> well, that's actually great big potential for the protesters because these are mostly people who have been forced to take part in the rallies or putin as we call them. they -- they are state employees or they are college students at

state universities and they have been threatened with firing if they don't take part. the putin victory rally outside the square in moscow on sunday that at some point they were trying to breakthrough to get out of the rally at one point they broke through and a large group headed for the subway so i think the general mood is that they've been humiliated and forced to do something against their wills and this is an extremely short sided strategy like most recent strategies. >> question right back here. >> hi. i have two questions. one about russian -- based on your knowledge and experience, what do you think in the current

circumstance, how far he's able to go to become a really independent politician? what is your feeling about him? how honest he is. that's one question. the other question would be even more difficult is how long putin's power may last in the country? 12 years, 20 years, 25? >> a few months to a couple years. not more, i think, but putin's interesting. he's an example of the super rich who is been humiliated. it's a good example of that. he was in politics last year, asked by the kremlin, to take over the dormant regulatory

party. this is the standard of the kremlin practice to get some parties together for the election and then sort of let them wait on them for awhile and just in time for the next election. he was handed one of those parties called the new ideal, and he got serious very, very quickly, he's a guy with a lot of trouble doing something halfway. he was holding policy meetings every weekend, calling local people, local leaders to join the party. he was warned by the kremlin this was more activity they expected of him. [laughter] he didn't listen, and sure

enough, in december, he found himself locked up. the party had been -- the government handed him a party and had taken it back. he organized a ternal party congress of his party, and he gave a passioned speech saying he would fight this, fight the kremlin puppeteers, go all the way, and he promised to come back in ten days with a specific plan for the fighters, and then he disappeared. he disappeared from public eye for two months, and during that period, we have to assume that he was threatened sufficiently to do something that is, i think, would be humiliating for any public figure, but especially humiliating for somebody used to having his way and to just be forced to disappear, must have been extreme humiliation.

then when he fell back into line, he was yankedded out again and told to run for president, and he's run a very subdued campaign for president. what's interesting is that despite the fact that it's been anything but a vigorous campaign, polls show that he came in second. second to putin. i think he feels that he has real potential to take putin on. he, in testing the water, sunday night, he conceded very quickly, but then on monday he said that the election had not been fair, and then on monday night, he actually spoke at the demonstration. if he keeps going like this, he may -- if he feels that he can without extreme risk to his life and fortune, keeps going like this, i think he has agreed

potential, and he clearly wants to. >> over here, yeah. >> would you comment on a relationship between the kremlin and u.k. and as well as several other people who seemed to escaped with millions of dollars and seem to have no problem with it with the u.k. government or russian government? >> actually, it's another interesting case in point that he is putin crony who accumulated extreme wealth in the early putin years. putin did not feel safekeeping that money in russia or keeping himself in russia. despite his happy relationship with the kremlin, took his money and moved to london where he's been living for the last nine

years. he was recently in court with his former business partner who is suing him for billions of dollars alleging that he, with the kremlin's help, was forced to. the testimony in court has really been his only public statement ever. he's one of those guys who doesn't have a face. his testimony was incredible. he confirmed everything that was ever heard about kremlin corruption. it was very assumed and that

russia where people were following the trial closely, that his audience was prepared to hear how corrupt the putin system was, and it's also clear he was probably not going to be coming back to moscow soon after having made those statements. >> up front, yes, right here. >> an interview last night with charlie rose, talked about being a good journalist in moscow is not only dangerous, but frustrating and what it's like to be in the absence of a freedom of information agent, something here journalists to a degree take for granted. how did you tackle the story at book length knowing what the obstacles would be and how you tackled that as a writer? >> it's a trap because what the

system that i'm trying to describe is a closed system that doesn't let information escape, but, of course, it doesn't let information escape, and it's a difficult system to describe and so ultimately i do a lot of interviewed, a lot of reporting for the book obviously, but i don't think that's the most valuable part of the book. the kernels of new information are of interest to some russian geeks, but what i think was much more important thing to do was take information that had been out in some some or another, some published in russian, some had not been published or was available in russian, and it hasn't been systematically analyzed. the story had not been told, and that's what i tried to do.

i tried to take information that demanded to be organized and interpreted and tried to organize it and interpret it in as convincing a way as poll. that's part of the regular work as a journalist in moscow. i sort of make this discovery last year that would be as most successful among my readers were long detailed stories of corruption stories, but they were familiar ones because it's like when don and i talked earlier today, don made this wonderful comparison to trying to make out shapes in a fog, and you sort of know what's happening to you. you have a general idea this is happening. you know, somebody lays it out and says, again, this is how it's done. this is the structure. this is the scheme of things.

that's first and that money goes there, and they do that, and it's all falling into place. in a word because it affirms your general impression of what is going on around you, and it also helps to understand whases -- what's happening. >> thank you. a question right over here by the post. >> thank you. actually, two questions. first, could you follow up on hoping you think putin's time is limited to two years you say, and second, what structural changes need to be made to the russian political system to prevent another recurrence of where he's at or where the country's at now. >> what's the first question? >> what structural changes to the political system in russia would prevent russia from being in the similar position in

another five years or ten years. >> the reason that i think putin is not going to be able to hold on to power for very much longer is that sort of the other side of what -- the flip side of what he's done to russia by destroying the democratic institutions is that he's trieded his own regime of any sort of legitimacy other than fear and the cooperation of the population, okay? and he's not accountable to the voters, but the voters' also not obligated to consider him a legitimate leader because they didn't vote for these assholes, but they voted for the other assholes. when a system like that begins to disintegrate, it actually happens pretty fast because people lose their fear and

people stop cooperating in the daily work that is the existence of the regime. journalism and state television stop reporting stories in the way they are expected to do it. the police don't follow orders that they don't think should be followed, and that's already started happening. you know, local bureaucrats don't do their part for the worse corruption, and it also starts to di sent grate which i think is going to happen in russia. now what needs to be done is democratic structures need to be restored. putin has, over the course of his eight years during the first two presidential terms, completely decimateed institutions, very systematically, step by step,

just destroyed them. in the first year of his presidency, he also basically allowed, enabled the executive branch to take over the judiciary branch. there's no independent judiciary. many others have been taken over by the state. all of that needs to be restored, rebuilt, built from scratch. is there a guarantee that those structures won't be able to be destroyed again? no. the reason he was able to do it is because he it the complete, full cooperation of the russian population for quite a long time. maybe this time we'll be wiser and we will not cooperate with another dictator. >> we'll have time for just a couple more questions. the gentleman here and one here.

thank you. >> what's the meaning of the button you're wearing? >> it says we'll come again. it's a white ribbon in the form of a chip sign meaning it eludes to the voting, and it's one of the popular chapters of the protest -- chants of the protests, "we will come again,," and we try to pin up as many buttons as possible in the hope that if -- there's always the counting problem so i have this idea to print up hundreds of thousands of these buttons, and we'll actually give them out one button per perp at the protest -- person at the protest, and that way we know how many buttons we get rid of, but there's not enough capacity in moscow to

print out that many buttons on that budget. handed out about 20,000 of them, and also we wanted people to leave the protests with something that they could then wear to show that they had been there, to signal to other people like other participants so that's why it says "we will come again" because this is the thing you can wear from protest to protest. ..

yes. is hard to talk about how bad things are. people's standard of living changed exponentially. people could afford a complete the new kind of clothing, a lifestyle. restaurants were opening. good food. good wind.

at the same time russia has not mitigated the disadvantages of extreme wealth the ruble is too strong to live comfortably at this point* because everything is so expensive. everything is imported because there's no point* to manufacture so that accounts for the high price of living. everybody but the super rich priced out of moscow. exactly. imagine much of the country or working manhattan that

have to commute. private cars have been a disaster. it is not unusual to spend four hours per day in traffic. infrastructure cannot keep up plus the gap between the super rich and the rest of us this huge andnot only ostentatious. tnd has the largest amount of mercedes s class in the world. not only sitting in traffic in the trash can car but then use the the mercrcedes passing to do their their important rich business.

>> here is the last question.nythg i am curious with the protest movement in libya, egypt, or occupy wall street, they seem to springup ak up then disappeared for co-op did by libya orarty to a squire to the shatt. or occupy wall street evaporate somewhat street.

there are no structures to co-opt the participant. it can't be swallowed up by political party because those political parties don't exist. obviously, the danger is there and i am scared of it. but the danger of politicians, not so much. >> okay. thank you. we wish you all good things. thank you all for coming. thank you, masha1xhhhhhhe

lady and the peacock", for a little more than an hour. he is introduced by michael >> grts. >> good morning. i am the executive directorel of public programs at the r asia society.reat it is a pleasure to

introduce a new biography of one offi the most compelling figures will last 25 years the embryonic transition ofng myanmar succeeds to bringtry bk that country back from repression and pariah status of a great deal close back8, aso to aung san suu kyi who was propelled from the obscurity of the english academic life to become the leader of the burma democracies movement and after her victory and the military crackdown spent the next two decades under house arrest. like mandela before her they only succeeded to make her moreop potent symbol of her country.of now she is out of

wh confinement the whole worldne is watching the elections be and the fed next extraordinary story. the book "the lady and theof tht peacock" the life of aung san suu kyi is the indispensable part of the story. it is on sale afterwards ie you hope you will buy it and the author peter popham is happyas s to sign it. been able he is here tonight. writes for the independent reported from albania, mongolia, a south asia and italy. i am happy to say the asia society has made important contributions to continue to inform the policy dialogue idirt to bring about the democratic transition. ran

we're delighted to have the architect year suzanne dimaggio to conduct the conversation. she is co-author of the report to would finance the myanmar transition which is. poc nhink he will find copies ofo and it is an excellent piecet ao of pork.rt they're also doing baines to pakistan and iran and other areas facing a share in the world. they will release a new report released a those who assess the police forcese in ats report that is co-authoredstani by other pakistani and u.s. experts to enhance capacity.

please come back april april 12th word the u.s. pakistan afghanistan entangling without unraveling the hbo series featuring the newly nameddo dean of the john hopkins be school and former advisor to soc richard holbrooke. and also speaking with georgetown university. please check out the website and the flyers.e if you are not members of the asia society i hope youady, would consider joining.ho

with all the disciplines and m&a is a tremendous valuedous vf for a small amount of money.livg we are live webcast thing ando also is recorded forfora c-span and uribe have questions from the on-line viewers. turnaround for cellphones. peter popham. suzanne dimaggio. l> per wil >> peter will read first.

>> good evening.evenin good to see people here today. more than 20 years i have been writing the book five bourse six years searchinggh weber but has never been so interesting and important and it is at this moment. loopy energy and gumption to get it out and the asia society to welcome me toi talk about it.

i thought i would read a few we pages because we're a on the the cusp of an election. april. it is only the third such election since 1990, a multiparty election. 1990 election, then the 2010, and then this election, which was followed by another general election in 2015. i thought it would be worthwhile looking back 22 years. two in aung san suu kyi had a first appearance, but that first appearance of her party and what transpired. on sunday, may 27, 1990, aung san suu kyi, still under

detention in her home, cast your vote in her country's first free general election or 30 years. the ballot paper was put into an envelope, which was sealed and taken from her home by a regime official. to most foreign observers, it looked like a futile gesture. four weeks come in the international media had been scrutinizing burma's upcoming poll and concluding that it was bound to be rigged. the military ginger had done everything in their power to ensure a good result. a win for the national unity party, became proxy party, as the bs pp, the burma socialist program party. they had been herley rebranded. the top leadership of the party, the national league for democracy, had been put out of

action. the retired general who is chair of the party come and who had been detained the same day, was sentenced to three years hard labor in december and taken to insane jail. most of their closest colleagues had been jailed and would not reemerge for years. the party was now run by a skeleton staff of those who remained at liberty. led by ugi mao, aged 72, the wisecracking former colonel who had been one of the first people to join suu two summers before. in january, the regime sought to neutralize the threat posted by suu's marriage to a corner. it was a new rule. her image was everywhere.

it was in the mlb's campaign, banners, t-shirts, posters, badges and scarves. cassette tapes of her speeches were sold for market source. the lady herself was firmly locked away. the head of military intelligence and the second most powerful man, into long speeches, talked about how suu's party was a menace to the future. on august 5, he repeated the now familiar claim that the nld had been infiltrated. he made a diametrically allegation that suu and her party were at the heart of an international rightist conspiracy, involving powerful foreign countries. the speech was later published in a 300 page book with the

catchy title, the conspiracy of treasonous minions and cohurts. emasculating be nld, however, was only part of the result of manufacturing a good result. the state state law and order restoration council, now set about tackling the remaining challenges with military foreignness. other enemies of army rule were put under house arrest, including the former prime minister. the regime identified city neighborhoods with a high proportion of opposition supporters and broke them up. in the months leading up to the election, at least half a million people around the country were forced to abandon their homes and move to crudely constructed and malaria ridden townships far away.

practically all conventional forms of campaigning, including rallies, portugal lobbying and interviews were banned. criticism of the military was a criminal offense. gatherings of more than five people remain illegal under martial law of rules. each party of the 93 registered for the poll was allowed to hold a single rally, on condition that a single day's notice was given. each was given a single, preapproved statement on television, and 15 in its on state radio. to make sure that the heavens were on their side, the regime made sure to pick a good day. may 27, contained a plethora of lucky nines, two plus seven for the day itself, plus the fact that it fell in the fourth week of the fifth month. an offer from the u.s. to send

election monitors was rebuffed, and foreigners were banned from the country for weeks before the election. on the e-book polling, the generals could be well pleased with the handiwork. [inaudible name] had been through the wringer in the past 24 months, since the class decision to unionize the currency, and throw them into a constitutional arrangement by raising the possibility of multiparty elections. since the locking up of that woman, as no one referred to suu, he refuse to pronounce her name, the situation had improved all around. the socialist ideology which had conditioned policy for generation was consigned to the waistband, along with the bspp. some western countries may have

found it awkward doing on normal trade terms with a country that had slaughtered thousands of its unarmed citizens in cold blood. thailand, singapore, and south korea had no such inhibitions. stepping up contracts to extract timber, jade, precious stones and seafood at bargain prices. a south korean company, yukon, became the first one company to be allowed to explore for oil on the shore, rapidly followed by shell and petro canada, and amoco. when the army roared into downtown rangoon in september 1988, the foreign exchange reserve had been less than $10 million. now they were between 200 and 300 million. tight security prevented any

significant demonstrations to mark the anniversaries of the great uprising of eight-eight- eight-eight-88, or the military crackdown of the following month. in a further sign of the softening approach, coca-cola signed a deal to bundle its drinks in burma. to demonstrate to them the general public and the world at large, that they knew a thing or two about good governance, a major cleanup campaign was launched, reminiscent to the operation in 1958 under his caretaker government. rangoon's public buildings leaned with fresh paint. the governments of western europe and the u.s. remain dubious, unwilling to forget how he had come to power. an election run with military efficiency, producing a solid working majority for the nup. or the army would be fully

justified in retaining control, surely it would bring them around. so confident were the generals, that they began to relax a little. they admitted a handful of foreign journalists and news crews to watch the bernie's lineup and vote. as polling day approached, martial law restrictions were past. army and uniformed police disappeared from the streets it was the usual burmese vanishing trick, as seen on the day of suu's mother's funeral, the zero-sum attitude to power were the army is either over warming we present or totally absent. even if absent, everyone knows they are not far away. the nld took advantage of the pullback. to take to the streets in their

pickup trucks, imploring the people of rangoon to be sure to give them their vote. in the end, the people needed no imploring. the lines began forming outside schools and government offices where voting was to take place early -- sorry, where voting was to take place, early on the morning of may 27. the army, again, was conspicuous by its absence. the voting was overseen by civilians, as it burma's conversion to civilian rule had happen by magic overnight. people put on their sunday best to perform this important and extremely rare civic duty. as in india, every registered party was symbolized by an icon depicted on the voting slip. these included a beach ball, a calm, comb, a tennis racket, and an umbra love. powerful and evocative symbols,

such as a peacock, which is now the nld's symbol in the present election, were banned. but the nld had chosen the farmer's straw hat to symbolize their party, making it easier for their supporters to indicate their preference while appearing to add to the rustic costume. nationwide, more than 20 million people were eligible to vote. in seven constituencies where the army was fighting insurgents, pulling was canceled altogether. in many other border areas, only a fraction of registered voters manage to go because of the violence. in most of the country, the turnout was heavy. 72% casting votes in total. a late on the night of polling, the chinese news service was the first foreign news agency to report, the first result of burma's first election for 30

years. the nld candidate, a woman called san-san, the team have the book. to the shock and horror of the military, the overwhelming majority of results went the same way. voters did not care for the evergreen young men's association, the national peace and comfort party, nor for the army's favorite, the nup. aung san suu kyi's party was sweeping the board. thank you. [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] thank you, everyone, and welcome. thank you michael for the introduction, and thank you, peter, for joining us today. i have many questions, and i am

going to be mindful of the time because i know you do, too, and i want to make sure that we get as many in it's possible. let's begin with the obvious, what everyone wants to hear about is this meeting. the first time was in 2002. aung san suu kyi had just been released from house arrest, and most recently, march and 2011. there was a decade spanning between the first. was there anything that struck you in that time. map that changed about her? secondly, described the meeting in general, but also, when you told her you were writing a biography about her, how did she react? >> she wasn't remotely interested. she didn't want to know. in fact, to my surprise and disappointment, she didn't want to help. subsequently, after it was

published, i got a copy of the book to her by the british embassy in rangoon. she wrote me a very gracious e-mail thanking me for my effort. as part of her un- egotistical character, she doesn't care if people write books about her and she doesn't want to read them, and she certainly doesn't want to endorse them. that was the message is i took away. >> any difference between then and now? >> 2002 was a bit like last august when things started to shift rapidly. it seemed that things were really on the move in 2002. she was released, and then there was [inaudible name] who was facilitating negotiations between her and [inaudible name], we've had some imagination.

we were keen to bring her into a dialogue. i run around ran to talking to lots of people, some very close, some close to her in the party, and the impression that i took away was that they were going to do a deal, a deal was in the offering, and that she and the party would come back into the constitutional process, and the whole thing would start again. the thing was derailed in the 1990s, and it would start again. >> let's talk about [inaudible name] diaries. aung san suu kyi's diaries provided a key source. she was one of aung san suu kyi's closest companions incompetents who was turned by military intelligence, and many see her as a traitor to the nld. tell us how you obtain the diaries to the extent that you can tell us, and you have met

her. how did she react it you had the diaries and you are using them as a source in writing this book? >> she was quite reluctant about it. i met her through the wife of one of my best friends who happens to be [inaudible name]. i had a privileged introduction to her. it was a person in london who gave me the diaries. i cannot reveal the person's name. when i told her that i got this book, she was pleased. the whole story is that she is a fluid english speaker. the divorced wife of a diplomat. and she was brought up in international schools, and she is a very good writer. she became suu's close companion during the first campaign tours

in 1989 -- 1988 and 1989. she went everywhere with 10 -- suu. being with her all the time, and taking care of her needs and so on. the request of michael, suu's husband, she was writing a daily diary of what happened. when i found this, it was absolute gold dust, because part of the problem of writing about suu is that we know that there are facts of her life. there was a great deal of human detail. interesting insights, humor, lots of charm, if anyone reads the book, you will find that it puts away a completely new and charming light. it brings out the human dimension of her.

in july of 1989 when aung san suu aung san suu kyi is put in house arrest, oliver closest colleagues were taken to insein prison in the middle of rangoon, in northern rangoon, and shouldn't out for three years. she told me that while she was there she had all-night interrogations, and i was informed by two sources, who i think are very trustworthy, that she was prevailed -- basically to change sides. since 1995 when suu came out of house arrest, she became a valuable critic of suu and a valuable critic of sanctions and she never missed an opportunity to talk to the likes of me.

and the likes of [inaudible name], who wrote a piece about her -- part actually about her in the new yorker in which he said over and over again, the sanctions are wrong, she is stubborn and she must be stopped. what happened and what had been a beautiful friendship turned into an ugly entity. >> has she read the book? >> i went to great trouble to make sure she had a copy. i received a number of very hostile letters from her. [laughter] [laughter] >> okay. one other thing i want to address is the mystique that surrounds aung san suu kyi's. i think a lot of the previous biographies and biographical accounts of her, all into one of two categories, either seeing her as this divine being, almost

superhuman, and then the other is people who critique her for being like you said, stubborn, focused on the sanctions -- also coming under criticism for her, you know, so-called abandoning her family, her two young sons and her husband to pursue a career in politics. your book really presents the complex picture as close to reality as we have seen. through this journey of writing this book, having access to the diaries, meeting her yourself, what are the key characteristics about her that you think people just don't know? >> well, i think that people have confused -- i think people have been confused by her. it is a fact that she was

extremely and totally an experience when she first got into politics in 1988, and she made lots of mistakes as she evolves. it is also true that she's not a natural politician. she has never been involved in politics of any sort before 1988. i think one can look back on the past 23 years of her life, the extraordinary life she has led, and see that she wouldn't be where she is today without some quite remarkable qualities, and the quality which i identified -- is from quite an early age, she knew who she was, and she knew what she wanted -- and she cultivated the willpower to achieve it. she came to england to study at oxford in 1964. there was a 10 year period

between arriving in england and getting married. in that period, having been under the thumb of her very fierce mother, throughout her childhood -- she blossomed in various ways. she took all sorts of decisions, she came to study politics. she didn't like it. she tried twice to change subjects. once to english, and once 243. both times she was refused. she ended up getting a poor degree. nothing to be proud of, but she has never shown any sign of being ashamed of it either. she said she only studies when she's interested. she fell in love with a student who was a pakistani. the relationship continued after

she graduated, and it ended in tears. then she fell in love with the man who became her husband. i see her mother back in rangoon. i can envision her getting these letters from suu and the mounting anguish that she sought when suu made different decisions. she was the beautiful daughter of the family, and she would graduate with a good degree, fly back to burma and marry a mary a suitable boy. or something like that. instead, what it should do? after graduating end up mucking about in london, she flew to new york to live with a friend who was an older lady who was a former pop singer in rangoon before the war. she stayed in new york for only three years and worked at the united nations. she was very much doing what she

wanted. she decided i want to do this. she was sorry that her parents -- that her mother wasn't happy about it. but it was her life. i see this early on. she got her own compass, and that is what she has followed since. >> another key point that you make in the book is she is so important to burma for many reasons, but one of them is her insistence, even from the first days of involvement in the uprising in 1988, of nonviolence. without her insisting on it, using perhaps the burmese revolution may have taken a different course. up until now, we have seen a different course for burma. then we go on and make a point that because of this, she is not only important to burma, but important to the world. this value or this -- this point

of view or philosophy she has found of nonviolence approach to democracy. talk a little bit about that. >> i think that she -- well, she lived in india for three or four years in her adolescence when her mother was the burmese ambassador in delhi. she absorbed a lot from the indian environment. particularly the writings of d&d and to board. this actually only surfaced in her scholarly world many years later. she was very much into nonviolence, which was a gambian point of view. it was very important because the students who were the cutting edge of the uprising, were by no means n