The Wall Dancers

“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.”
—Jonathan Blitzer, New York Times bestselling author of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

“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.’”
—Evan Osnos, winner of the National Book Award and New York Times bestselling author of The Haves and Have-Yachts

“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.”
—Karen Hao, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of AI

“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.”
—Brian Goldstone, author of There Is No Place for Us

“As Yi-Ling Liu shows in this masterful piece of reporting, China’s internet is not only a battleground for authoritarian leaders and their oligarchs but also the site of a vibrant counterculture of queer activists, feminist writers, edgy rappers, and tech bros turned sci-fi novelists. A rare report from inside contemporary China, The Wall Dancers is an important intervention in our often-simplistic debates about China.”
—Ian Johnson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of Sparks

“China may be known for its Great Firewall, but journalist Yi-Ling Liu chronicles how the Chinese internet has also provided fertile ground for countercultures, activists, and writers—and in doing so offers a portrait of the country’s political and cultural trajectory in the last three decades.”
—Foreign Policy, “Most Anticipated Books of 2026”

“This incisive, empathetic debut study from journalist Liu examines three decades of the internet’s evolution in China, from the mid-1990s explosion of microblogs and message boards that corresponded with the country’s increasing liberalization, to the mid-aughts raising of the Great Firewall….Liu conveys how these individuals’ emotional and interior lives were shaped by events in the digital world, from their excitement at discovering a community online to the pain and isolation caused by growing restrictions and even the outright deletion of their platforms….It amounts to a vital and subversive window into a cloistered but sprawling online world.”
—Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)

“Liu brings broad perspective and nuance to an issue that, despite its extensive global impact, is often discussed only in terms of its extremes. . . . If Liu’s text is in part revelatory of the particular ambitions, risks, and pitfalls humming beneath China’s internet domination, it is also a global cautionary tale. . . . A timely and sophisticated study that is eye-opening, and a touch eerie.”
—Kirkus