Zhang Lijia, the author of “Socialism Is Great!”: A Worker’s Memoir of the New China, is the highest runner up in the most-sought list of July 2009, is the biggest mover of the month, although she moved only from the third to the second place. But she has been the first to actually challenge the position of our mostly-unchallenged, media savvy Shaun Rein, who is mostly able to keep the first place.
Although the combination of summer heat, holidays and crisis has slowed down activities over the past few months a bit, Zhang Lijia has been very active with visits to Lausanne (at the beautiful Chateau de Lavigny), Amsterdam and London. In the month to come she is not slowing down, as she will participate in a three-month international writers program at the University of Iowa, sponsored by the State Department. In between she has time for multiple speaking engagements, in China and in Europe, at her Italian translation will be launched in October.
Otherwise, we see in July Marc van der Chijs moving up high and the return of some of the veterans, like Rupert Hoogewerf, Tom Doctoroff and Jeremy Goldkorn, who did not make it into past top-10’s.
Here is our July top-10 (with June in brackets).
- Shaun Rein (1)
- Zhang Lijia (3)
- Marc van der Chijs (-)
- Arthur Kroeber (4)
- Rupert Hoogewerf (-)
- William Bao Bean (6)
- Paul French (5)
- Kaiser Kuo (2)
- Jeremy Goldkorn (-)
- Tom Doctoroff (-)