The activism and career of Perry Link—the translator-in-chief of China’s dissident movement.

By Liu He | Peking Hotel

In Brief

As a pivotal translator and editor for China’s dissident movement, Perry Link—Professor Emeritus at Princeton and UC Riverside—began his journey as a champion of China’s democracy movement in 1989, piqued through the works of writers who dared to interrogate the country’s political reality. Liu Binyan’s Between Human and Demon, and similar reportage literature, shaped Link’s early consciousness, crystallizing a dissonance he had already sensed during his time in China under the Party’s professed socialist ideals.

In this interview with Liu He for Peking Hotel, Link unpacks his work to amplify the global dissemination of the written word by the leading lights of China’s pro-democracy and human rights movement and the pressures involved, including negotiating edits under police surveillance.

Through his involvement with overseas human rights organizations, Link would go on to support the asylum of astrophysicist/dissident Fang Lizhi in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre (after Lizhi was held partially responsible by the Chinese Communist Party for the student rebellion that led to the events of 1989). Another milestone includes crafting the legacy of Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo as a co-writer of his biography, I Have No Enemies.

One of Link’s greatest high points was almost missed. Preoccupied with a new teaching position at the University of California Riverside, Link nearly dismissed the opportunity to produce the English translation of Charter 08, a manifesto signed by some 350 Chinese intellectuals in December 2008 calling for reform of the Chinese constitution and an end to one-party rule. A last-minute read of the manifesto draft, and its conspicuous significance, compelled Link to action.

Perhaps the most famous of Link’s translations is The Tiananmen Papers—a collection of leaked Chinese government documents detailing internal deliberations during the 1989 protests that had been smuggled abroad by the pseudonymous “Zhang Liang”. The documents reveal systemic contradictions in CCP leadership, such as Deng Xiaoping’s dual orders to “clear the square” while urging troops to “avoid bloodshed,” reflecting his strategy of delegating blame. The Papers exposed Deng’s calculated decision to deploy lethal force as a deterrent against future dissent, cementing national fear and political stagnation. Published in 2001, the book reignited global scrutiny of the massacre, underscoring the CCP’s prioritization of regime survival over reform and its enduring legacy of suppressing truth through state violence.

Continue to the Peking Hotel Substack here to read the conversation with Perry Link in full.

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