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China After Mao, The Rise of a Superpower by Frank Dikotter China After Mao, The Rise of a Superpower by Frank Dikotter
While one needs to appreciate the ingenuity of the party leadership to develop very innovative policy measures from time to time to handle the contradictions of a ‘socialist market economy,’ one wonders about the sustainability of the Chinese governance model. With the economic modernisation project more than four decades old, the scope for ‘ad-hocism’ in policymaking is increasingly getting constricted. One of the few books that anyone who wants to understand the twentieth century simply must read' New Statesman Essential 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 However, Dikotter has woven a compelling narrative regarding how each leader in the reforms era has been ruthless in asserting the party’s dominant position, notwithstanding the price they had to pay. If one takes into consideration Deng’s ruthless purging of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, Jiang Zemin’s ‘three represents’ theory and its adept interpretation followed by Hu Jintao’s pronouncements regarding the unquestionable supremacy of the party, Xi Jinping’s policy of party first is more of a continuity rather than an aberration.Despite the "Superpower" in the title, Dikotter argues that there are quite some big structural problems in China's political and economic system. This is the first time I read such a carefully researched discussion, especially on the technical side of the Chinese economy over a long time period and find Dikotter's perspective valuable.
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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. From internationally renowned historian Frank Dikötter, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, a myth-shattering history of China from the death of Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping. In the US we've become shamefully addicted to cheap and plentiful goods from China. This book clearly shows we need a policy that doesn't rely on this consumption to power our economic growth. We also need to reconsider policies of the past two decades that have mistakenly believed that inviting China to participate in the WTO would induce them to play by our rules. They continue to lie, steal, and cheat to their advantage. Until/unless the other WTO nations stand up to China, we will continue to follow Lenin's dictum, the capitalist will sell us the rope we use to hang them. Consider, for example, the magnitude of some of the relevant indicators that mark the accelerated material and cultural progress following the incremental advances of 1976 to 2001. The economic boom coincides with China’s integration into the World Trade Organization. At the close of the Cultural Revolution, in some provinces more than half of the population was illiterate. Underdevelopment and dependence has today given way to the world’s most powerful industrial production base, supporting a massive and dynamic technical/scientific superstructure. With an annual GDP growth for years averaging at 9 percent (more recently it has declined to a more normal rate), the economy will soon surpass that of the current number one, the United States. According to the World Bank, China has lifted 800 million people out of Maoist Great Leap Forward starvation and extreme poverty and its Cultural Revolution mass violence chaos. New material relations among the social classes of the twenty-first century have already presented themselves.There is a narrative out there that China's regime has lifted 800 million people out of poverty since Mao's death, through "reform and opening up," the rise of the private sector, urbanization, and good old fashioned economic growth. MyHoover delivers a personalized experience at Hoover.org. In a few easy steps, create an account and receive the most recent analysis from Hoover fellows tailored to your specific policy interests. Second book of Dikotter's I've read. After devouring this one, believe I'll put the rest of them on my "to read" list. If there is something to criticize, it would be the human stories, which are the highlight of Frank Dikotter's masterpiece trilogy about Mao's China. We see those here and there, but reading about the economic mismanagement only hints at the struggles the common people had to put up with while their hapless idiotic overlords were busy exploiting the country. 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.
China After Mao by Frank Xi Jinping by Aust and Geiges; China After Mao by Frank
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 certainly is an expert, and I'd say one of the best informed of Western commentators on China that we have and should treasure. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind about how much archival work he has done to get this book out in the world. I don't know I found it too dry, certainly harder to read than his People's Trilogy which was absolutely fantastic. There are degrees of ignorance, nevertheless, and Dikötter is one of today’s major historians of China: he has been mining Chinese primary sources for decades – party records, provincial budgets and, when available, official records. For this volume, he draws on 600 documents from municipal and provincial archives, as well as conventional sources such as Chinese news media.Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based Dutch historian, has previously published a trilogy of books charting Chinese history since the coming to power of the Communist Party in 1949. These include Mao’s Great Famine, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2011. China's alliance with US after losing Vietnam War due to misconception that Soviet Union was the world's pre-eminent power, how would the world be different if China knew USSR was close to collapse? Implication for today that Russia doesn't need to align too closely with China as long as US has major weaknesses. Dikötter was given access to Chinese archives that were previously not open to foreign researchers. The period from 1976 untill now is often painted as a 'golden age' in present-day China. It is the time of the Chinese economic "growth miracle": the economy often grew by more than ten percent per year, and rushed closer and closer to that of the United States. This rosy vision has also been largely adopted abroad, according to Dikötter, without first really looking carefully at whether that image is correct. Because ... is this really correct?