BOOK REVIEW : Chinese Rebel Voices Ring Loud and Clear : NEW GHOSTS, OLD DREAMS: Chinese Rebel Voices, <i> edited by Geremie Barme and Linda Jaivin</i> , Times Books, $30; 528 pages

There’s really no way that description, paraphrase or even direct quotes can yield up the quality of immediacy and importance of this book.

The editors, who have worked with the support of the Tian An Men Documentation Project of the Australian National University and other research groups, have put together close to a hundred documents that pertain to the Tian An Men Square Massacre in June, 1989. These pieces--most of them--are new, elegantly translated and real.

This is not in any sense an agitprop work. The protest movement of the late ‘80s is not so much described here as illuminated.

The editors have pulled in everything: rock ‘n’ roll songs; an account of the events leading up to the massacre by an oh-so-suave journalist from Hong Kong, who is moved in spite of himself at the outpouring of idealism he sees; and the heartbreaking story of a young man, exiled to New York City after the uprising, who calls Beijing only to be told “there’s nothing you can do. Don’t come back.”

Obviously, this book will appeal only to a limited audience--Westerners who are fascinated by China, the Chinese and Chinese government.

Over the years, even those scholars and journalists who have been most conscientious in their studies of China have been hampered both by enormous cultural differences and twin journalistic distortions. One, the Chinese generally only tell us what they think we want to know; and two, on our side, we are only informed in terms that our journalists think we can understand.

Thus, Dan Rather stands in Tian An Men Square and talks about “Democracy.” One young student dances heroically in front of a tank and earns our admiration. But the editors here point out--with ample evidence to back them up--that the protest was far less about “Democracy” than about the process of petitioning the government--only to be ignored--or protesting a system of bribery and official corruption that has been in place in China since the beginning of time.

After Part 1, which covers the massacre, “New Ghosts, Old Dreams” ventures back in time with a unique collection of articles, short stories, excerpts from television shows, everything , to argue convincingly that Communism scarcely dented the ancient feudal system by replacing the extended, authoritarian, feudal family with the extended, authoritarian system of “Work Units” that effectively controls everything any Chinese individual sets out to do.

Feng Jicai’s famous short story on bound feet is reprinted here, with a set of disgusted, self-hating essays to the effect that a nation which has “bound” itself in so many ways has not the strength, the gumption, the initiative, to change anything about itself.

To read these pieces is astonishing, not because they are “revolutionary” but because they are so hopeless, and so sad. The truth, or a truth, seems to be that once an individual drops out of the authoritarian society, there’s nothing there to catch him, to buoy him up.

The movement seems to go from despair within the system to despair without the system, and in that sense, this is a grim book indeed.

After reading this volume, which contains work by dozens of authors, I found the stack of calling cards I had collected on a trip to visit writers and publishers in China in June, 1990.

None of the names on my cards matched any of the names on this book’s index of authors. During our stay, Fang Lizhi was let out of jail, but shipped out of the country. At one fancy dinner party, a middle-aged novelist--showing a lot of wear and tear--referred to the Tian An Men “event.”

“Surely,” he said, “you’re not still worried about that silly business?” For those who are still worried, this is absolutely the book to read.

Next: Constance Casey reviews “The Mismeasure of Woman” by Carol Tavris (Simon & Schuster).