The Persistent Memory of Historic Wrongs in China: A Discussion of Demands for “Reappraisal”  

This essay describes two forms of institutional redress for historic wrongs in contemporary China, arguing that one is authoritarian, the other liberal, and that neither is entirely satisfactory. Some victims of political persecution reject the right of the state to classify citizens as enemies, and with it the authoritarian method of corrective official reappraisal. Liberal avenues of redress through adjudication, on the other hand, remain closed to most victims of historic injustice, and are meaningful only if accompanied by the liberation of memory and opinion