Here is China down and dirty, a side of the country rarely, if ever, experienced by foreigners, no matter how knowledgeable or fluent in the language they are. What Chen Guangcheng shows, as only a Chinese peasant can – though no other has, at least in English – is what life continues to be like in rural China, where 80 per cent of Chinese live, and what life is like for anyone who challenges the Communist Party.

‘Bravest’ is just the word for Chen Guangcheng. Born in 1972 in a very poor peasant village, blind since infancy and largely self-educated in a society that scorns and reviles the disabled, he paid a heavy price for taking to the highest levels legal cases ranging from a local polluted