Synopsis
An eye-opening exploration of the Chinese internet that reveals the intricate dance between freedom and control in contemporary China.
In the late 1990s, as the world was waking up to the power of the internet, Chinese authorities began conÂstructing a system of online censorÂship now known as the Great Firewall. But far from being barren, the digital world behind the firewall brimmed with new subcultures and tech innovations, offering many citizens previously unimaginable connection and opportunity.
Today, as the country's leadership intensifies its control of public discourse and Western headlines reduce the Chinese public to a faceless monolith, journalist Yi-Ling Liu presents an intimate porÂtrait of the enÂtrepreneurs, activists, artists, and dreamers navigating China's transformation into both the world's largest online user base and one of its most populous authoritarian states.
Drawing on years of firsthand reporting, The Wall Dancers equips readers with the tools to assess the past, present, and future of a global power. A vital exploration of the interÂnet's power for both control and liberation, and an unforgettable work of human storytelling, it ultimately asks what it means to live within the technological systems that now shape all of our lives.
In the late 1990s, as the world was waking up to the power of the internet, Chinese authorities began conÂstructing a system of online censorÂship now known as the Great Firewall. But far from being barren, the digital world behind the firewall brimmed with new subcultures and tech innovations, offering many citizens previously unimaginable connection and opportunity.
Today, as the country's leadership intensifies its control of public discourse and Western headlines reduce the Chinese public to a faceless monolith, journalist Yi-Ling Liu presents an intimate porÂtrait of the enÂtrepreneurs, activists, artists, and dreamers navigating China's transformation into both the world's largest online user base and one of its most populous authoritarian states.
Drawing on years of firsthand reporting, The Wall Dancers equips readers with the tools to assess the past, present, and future of a global power. A vital exploration of the interÂnet's power for both control and liberation, and an unforgettable work of human storytelling, it ultimately asks what it means to live within the technological systems that now shape all of our lives.
Details
05 February 2026
9781806172917Imprint: Ithaka
Reviews
The Wall Dancers is history told in a gripping, novelistic style. It is at once a crash course in contemporary Chinese politics and culture and an epic story about human drive, desperation, and ingenuity against inordinate odds. Yi-Ling Liu has written a masterwork.
In her intimate, inner history of the Chinese Internet, Yi-Ling Liu unearths lessons that apply worldwide as citizens struggle to assert their humanity against those who would homogenize what we see, believe, and consume. In the tradition of Vaclav Havel, Liu has given us an urgent, revealing guide for what Havel called 'living within the truth.
With profound nuance, clarity, and courage, Yi-Ling Liu writes about a cast of individuals who deftly navigate the complex inner workings of the Chinese internet. And yet in Liu's expert rendering, their stories embody so much more: a history of China's dramatic rise, a portrait of those who molded and were molded by it, and an examination of the true scorecard of the global internet on free speech and expression. At once intimate and expansive, The Wall Dancers is a masterpiece, made only more impressive by Liu's own exquisite dancing. To gain this level of access and trust to sources in China and to breathe humanity and agency into an often faceless story can only be pulled off by a journalist of the highest caliber.
Gripping from the first page, The Wall Dancers is a work of rare urgency and insight. Moving effortlessly between the intimate and the world-historical, Yi-Ling Liu pushes beyond the tired binaries that so often define Western views of China, offering instead a portrait of human lives full of contradiction, aspiration, and desire. In doing so, she vividly demonstrates that psychic self-censorship-and the generative possibilities born of solidarity and collective power-are not unique to China but a lesson for all societies confronting ascendant authoritarianism.
