Hushed Tones

When Tania Branigan moved to Beijing, as a correspondent for The Guardian, the city was getting ready to host the 2008 Olympics. Bulldozers prowled the streets, razing old homes and shops. On her way home from work, Branigan would often find that a building in her neighborhood had been torn down, or that a park had come up overnight next to a pile of rubble.

She sensed an arbitrariness in every decision, something she also detected in the labyrinthine secrecy of China’s political landscape. Years ago, Mao might have enjoyed spouting aphorisms to the occasional visiting journalist, but a decade into the new millennium, Branigan had a grueling time eliciting boilerplate responses from government officials in Beijing.