An anthropologist and Sinologist, Stephen W. Mosher, lived and worked in rural China in late 1979 and early 1980. His shocking revelations about conditions there have earned him the condemnation of the Beijing (Peking) government, which denounces him as a "foreign spy."

Mosher was expelled from Stanford University's Ph.D program after publishing an article in Taiwan about his experiences in Guangdong. This expulsion occurred shortly before the publication of Broken Earth. The Chinese government was angry and embarrassed by the contents of the book, which revealed among other things that forced abortions were common in that part of China as a part of the one-child policy. Chinese commentators say that Stanford University was put in an awkward situation because Mosher went to places he was not allowed to go. He also released photographs of Chinese women having abortions with their faces exposed, a violation of personal privacy, according to standards of anthropological ethics.[