China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower

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The epilogue has some of the best writing in the whole book, following are some direct quotations from it: Economically, the author paints a bleak picture. The 36 years of the “open and reform” era is a succession of economic crises and countermeasures, which lead to new crises. China’s economic boom, according to the author, is chronically inefficient and fueled by over-investment, over-leveraging, and over-capacity. Official statistics are not trustable, and economic calamity is never far away. This defies the conventional belief that China has a long-term strategy for economic development, including education, significant spending on research and development, and large-scale infrastructure building. Well, Dikotter does know his stuff. Lots of it is dry info on finance and all that, but it does show some problems China has had. Inflation, retrenchment - all that comes in and out. The last parts also show a shift since 1989 towards national patriotic education, which has led to a much more hostile relationship with much of he outside world.

The Communist Party leaders throughout the 1980s and 1990s are shown as having a staggering ignorance of basic economics (these are the observations of foreign contemporaries, rather than Dikötter himself) and we see that China’s economic miracle is also something that took a long time coming.

Reviews

In China After Mao , award-winning author Frank Dikötter delves into the history of China under the communist party – from the death of Chairman Mao in 1976 up until the moment when Xi Jinping stepped to the fore in 2012. He has published a dozen books that have changed the ways historians view modern China, from the classic The Discourse of Race in Modern China (1992) to China before Mao: The Age of Openness (2007). His work has been translated into twenty languages. Frank Dikötter is married and lives in Hong Kong. The book is thorough and Dikötter’s emphasis on evidence-based history grounded in archival research is commendable. However, it only adds to an existing notion in which the prevailing view on China is well documented – one in which the country is no stranger to manufacturing its own image to bolster its smooth façade. It’s damning and incriminating, painting China’s leaders as opportunistic and insatiable authoritarians. The likes of Deng Xiaopeng were unshakably hardline in adhering to their version of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, wielding foreign investment to leverage economic growth while simultaneously stoking corruption and inequality. And, of course, his name will always remain synonymous with the Tiananmen massacre. However, in extending this narrative across China’s leaders, he falls short of a more critical debate. On the other hand, you will remember that the book starts with Tiananmen Square, not 1989 but 1976, when people marked the death of Zhōu Ēnlái’s 周恩来in a movement perceived by the leadership to be 'counter-revolutionary'. One member of the Gang of Four banged the table and proclaimed that the police sent out to suppress the movement would not be armed with anything else but truncheons. Compare that to 1989, when some 200 tanks and 100,000 soldiers were used to crush the democracy movement. As one foreign military observer put it, it was a display of ‘total military incompetence'. Here too, Deng wavered, pulled from one side to the other, failing to exploit several chances of almost bloodless victory. What a talent, what a career, what a life, and what a treat to relive it all with this most down-to-earth of demigods.

One of the most insightful and nuanced looks at the complex rise of China since the Second World War ... engrossing and riveting.”— The Diplomatic Courier Nothing will reveal the downfall of the CCP other than the collapse of the economy. Every other aspect of life is dominated by the CCP as the author asserts. Dikötter ( The People's Trilogy) debunks the myth of China's miracle economy in this expert study ...Extensively researched and cogently argued, this is a must-read for China watchers.”— Publishers WeeklyEssential reading for anyone who wants to know what has shaped today's China and what the Chinese Communist Party's choices mean for the rest of the world' New Statesman Books of the Year China na Mao is een zeer gedetailleerd werk en als lezer is het soms moeilijk je hoofd erbij te houden. De auteur heeft duidelijk een grote kennis van het land en goochelt met termen die vooral economen bekend in de oren zullen klinken. Anderzijds zullen zij het dan weer moeilijk hebben met de geschiedenis van China die ook niet nader verklaard wordt. Het is dus een ingewikkeld werk voor lezers die zowel geïnteresseerd zijn in China, als in economie, en er bovendien reeds heel wat vanaf weten. Hierdoor is het boek zeker niet zo toegankelijk voor het bredere publiek, wat wel jammer is, gezien het interessante thema. Er zijn ook wel wat haperingen, zo stopt hij zijn relaas bij Xi Jin Ping, wie ook wel heel wat hervormingen doorgevoerd heeft die een impact hebben gehad. Hierdoor lijkt Dikötter zijn betoog niet volledig. De bronnen zijn ook eenzijdig, zo haalt hij zijn informatie niet uit verschillende soorten bronnen halen. From the Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author of Mao's Great Famine, a timely and compelling account of China in the wake of Chairman Mao From the award-winning author of Mao's Great Famine , a timely and compelling account of China in the wake of Chairman Mao But if upon completing chapter 8 readers get the idea that in the coming years the Chinese economy and political system face collapse after teetering on the brink of irremediable crisis, they are in for a rude awakening. A close reading of chapter 9 and the first section of chapter 10 prompts us to study the relevant comparisons worldwide. For example, we might want to study the early signs of a possible degradation of some of the core institutions of United States democracy and that country’s declining economic vitality (accelerating indebtedness, for example to China).