Ignatieff in China

The Liberal addresses students at Tsinghua University.

In October 1966, as a young student, I helped organize a teach-in on China that attracted several thousand people to the University of Toronto to study the unfolding crisis of the Cultural Revolution.

Many of the experts at the teach-in viewed the events sweeping across China in a positive light, as the needed renewal of a revolution stifled by bureaucracy. As outsiders, we had no idea of the violence and chaos that were to follow. I learned from that experience how difficult it is to understand China from the outside, and how difficult it is to predict China’s future.