China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower

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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. These were the years shaped by Deng’s policy of opening China to global capitalism that produced four decades of spectacular economic growth, years that have been lazily described as the China “miracle”.

If we add to that list a misconceived war against a mutable virus, Xi’s claim to global supreme power may be less secure than it seems. The CCP learned the value of hostage diplomacy for one single dissident as Japan ramped up Chinese investments by 40%. With China After Mao, Dikötter has told the story of the years after Mao's death in 1976 until the arrival of President Xi . Hier und bei allen anderen kritischen Betrachtungen muss man sich wundern, wie China überhaupt sein Wachstum erreicht hat.I believe this has significance to preserving the communist philosophy of Mao as well as the reputations of those who acted on Mao’s dictates. Zhu Rongji, Li Peng’s Vice-Premier wrested tax collection from the provinces and replaced it with a centralized revenue service in Beijing. Essentially the CCP is hiding in plain sight as a totalitarian, repressive, hostile to foreign powers, and (soviet) Socialist. wasn't there also a considerable uptick in consumer goods, industrial production, and improvements in daily life for many (especially in the cities)? When stymied by the old guard in the capital Deng resorted to former tactics of Mao, appealing directly to the people in tours of economic centers where he championed reforms and opening up to the West.

On April 4 1976 pro-Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping protests rallied against Madame Mao’s Gang of Four coup attempt. As moves were made to address the deficiencies many outside observers thought China was transitioning from a planned economy to a market economy, and that democracy would follow, promoted by the Clinton administration. Four years after the Olympics, Xi was appointed general secretary of the Chinese Communist party after a most dramatic series of events, only briefly described here: the most visible and extraordinary manifestation of the power struggle within the party was the flight to the US consulate in Chengdu of Wang Lijun, head of security for Bo Xilai, then party secretary of the western megacity of Chongqing. Dabei kann man eine ähnlich kritische Haltung zu China einnehmen wie Dikötter und muss nicht einer naiven Chinabegeisterung verfallen oder China auf dem Weg zu einer Demokratie sehen.No, it's not the same political bent, but both books look only at things that back up their bent, leaving an enormous blind spot for anything/everything else.

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. I found the author's writing style far easier to read than some of his previous (equally illuminating) works, although such is the breadth of the 'sweep' over the last (almost) 50 years that the cascades of economic developments, policies, 'tricks', changes and corrective measures threatens at various places to 'overwhelm' the reader. A crackdown on enemies of Xi began, journalists expelled, a million Uyghurs detained in labor camps. Using Tiananmen Square as backdrop Dikotter looks at past dissents in post imperial China from the May 4 1919 protests against cession of Shandong to Japan in the Versailles Treaty to the March 18 1926 massacre of protesters against the unequal treaties still in effect with western imperial powers. United Front established a network of domestic and international celebrities and spokespersons to win over hearts and minds and to promote acceptance of the Chinese Communist Party.Lech Walesa’s Solidarity Party led Poland to a peaceful transition to democracy following the Tiananmen debacle, increasing paranoia in the CCP that communism was failing on all fronts. With its eminent scholars and world-renowned library and archives, the Hoover Institution seeks to improve the human condition by advancing ideas that promote economic opportunity and prosperity while securing and safeguarding peace for America and all mankind. I think all systems have their own problems, and the Chinese one has a large share of problems indeed. Planned economies during the Great Leap Forward and political chaos in the Cultural Revolution drew China to the brink of another revolution.