A short life of the author
Jonathan Mirsky (1932–2021) was an American-born, British-based journalist and China scholar who taught at Dartmouth College before becoming a full-time journalist. As East Asia editor of The Times (London), he was a leading Western voice on Chinese politics and human rights.
Mirsky was present at the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and was beaten by People’s Liberation Army soldiers during the crackdown — an experience that intensified his already critical stance toward the Chinese government. He became known for his unsparing reviews of books about China and his insistence that Western media and academia had been too credulous in their engagement with Beijing.
His journalism appeared in The Times, the New York Review of Books, the Literary Review, and other publications. He did not publish a major standalone book, but his journalistic output constitutes an important body of work on modern China.
Collecting Mirsky
Mirsky’s work is collected through journalism archives and bound periodical collections rather than through the book market. His book reviews in the New York Review of Books are accessible through the NYRB archive.