Li Honglin (1925-2016) was a leading public intellectual during China’s reform era from the late 1970s to the 1980s, an era in which people had been so indoctrinated that they forgot common senses, so fearful that they never question anything, and so enslaved that they had lost their basic dignity. Against all these, Li thought independently and fearlessly, wrote plain common senses, and questioned ridiculous practices that most people took for granted. Challenging the many restrictions by the Party on what books people could read, he claimed that “there should be no restrictions on the reading of books.” He told people that the nation’s political leader should be loyal to them, not vice versa. Taking great risks, he challenged the late founder of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong, who was and still is the god of the Chinese Communist Party. He said that Mao can be criticized.

At that time, numerous people were imprisoned for offending Mao. Li’s article saved them. Li personally helped more than 200 political prisoners to be released. Li’s brave writings were much needed in the era after Mao’s death in 1976, and his writings provided a light in the darkness, guiding people toward the dawn. He was China’s Prometheus. Unfortunately, the dawn has been eclipsed by increasingly more dictatorial policies since then. More than forty years after Li made the brave calls, Chinese people are still required to be absolutely loyal to the leader, and many new reading restrictions are being added. China’s prospect for freedom and the rule of law is still dim. All these have made Li’s calls in the 1970s very much alive with the Chinese people. A google search of Li’s “There Should Be No Restrictions on the Reading of Books” in Chinese yielded 1.8 million hits. In this issue, we pay tribute to Li Honglin by publishing his two articles that shook the nation, “There Should Be No Restrictions on the Reading of Books” and “Leaders and People”, and articles by public intellectuals and authors commemorating him.