China After Mao

Reviews

Iconoclastic. A clear-eyed and detailed account. A blow-by-blow account … An important corrective to the conventional view of China’s rise. One of the most insightful and nuanced looks at the complex rise of China since the Second World War ... engrossing and riveting. A skilled writer, Dikotter is accessible to both expert and lay readers alike. Challenges assumptions about China's speedy, four-decade rise and its transformation from a reclusive agrarian economy into a global superpower . . . Dikötter's well-researched volume marks an important contribution to the literature on China's rise. Highly recommended. A compelling and informative account and analysis of Chinese history from the early 1970s to 2022 ... China After Mao is packed with intrigue and insight for the layperson and scholar alike A revolutionary book. Highly-readable. Dikötter delivers an excellent, highly critical description of China’s spectacular expansion that emphasizes banking, industrial policy, trade, and currency … a richly informative, disquieting history. 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. Whether he is pondering which came first, Party politics or economic policy, or navigating the slippery relationship between power, productivity and protest, Dikötter unpicks this most tangled web with admirable clarity. Convincingly shows how foreign capital pouring into China (to benefit from low – and often artificially suppressed – wages) became a key ingredient of economic growth at a time of intensifying repression following the Tiananmen Square massacre. [China After Mao] also shatters the myth of competent technocratic policymaking . . . Most radically, the book makes the case that, rather than being a sharp break with the recent past, President Xi Jinping’s more nakedly authoritarian rule is in many ways a continuation of trends that started long ago. Expand reviews