The world was captivated in the summer of 1995, when Harry Wu, a Chinese-born American citizen, was detained at the Chinese border and then later formally arrested on spying charges. To the autocrats of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, Harry Wu is nothing but a convicted criminal and spy, an unrepentant counterrevolutionary who spent nineteen years in labor camps and has taken revenge by secretly entering China under false names to steal state secrets.

To the rest of the world, Harry Wu is an extraordinarily courageous man, one of the most prominent expatriate Chinese dissidents, whose Laogai Research Foundation publicizes abuses in the Chinese penal system. Laogai is Chinese for "reform through labor," and the term, which is used to denote the labor camp system, has become analogous to the Soviet gulag, the nationwide archipelago of camps made famous by Alexander Solzhenitsyn's great work.

For sixty-six days, the world waited to see if Harry Wu would be sent back to prison. His detention was considered so important that both houses of the U.S. Congress passed resolutions condemning the Chinese authorities and urging President Clinton to use every diplomatic means to win his freedom. Only after his mock trial and expulsion from the country did Hillary Rodham Clinton announce that she would attend the United Nations women's conference held in Beijing.

Wu has returned to China secretly four times, compiling written and video information on the extensive prison system and many other abuses. In Troublemaker, Wu tells why the Chinese authorities rightly denounce him as the country's "No. 1 troublemaker," and put him on a secret most-wanted list of enemies. He explains why he willingly returns to a country whose dictatorial government wishes only to silence or do away with him.