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Book Review: Teresa Wright, The Perils of Protest: State Repression and Student Activism in China and Taiwan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), pp. 192, US$ 24.95.

This brief study compares student protest movements in China in 1989 and Taiwan in 1990, using political-opportunity-structure theory as a basis for understanding the activities and outcomes of the two movements. The volume is useful for gaining an overview of the student movement in both places at a similar period of time, revealing interesting similarities in the political situation and the political responses of participants. In both places students reacted to one party dominance of the state, the media, and social organisations, along with a high probability of severe state repression. They conducted their protest activities in an environment of danger, which led to problems of trust among activists and a hesitancy to compromise on the part of the governments and students alike. Under these conditions, calls for moderation were viewed with suspicion. Wright’s work exposes a number of similarities between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang, or GMD) in the late 1980s.