Professor Fang Lizhi began a Personal Tour around Universities In China

In mid-1986, astrophysics professor Fang Lizhi returned from a position at Princeton University and began a personal tour around universities in China; speaking about liberty, human rights, and separation of powers. Fang was part of a wider undercurrent within the elite intellectual community that thought China's poverty and underdevelopment, and the disaster of the Cultural Revolution, were a direct result of the authoritarian political system and the rigid command economy.