The Great Transformation: China's Road from Revolution to Reform

“Chen Jian and Arnie Westad are both historians of China who are also very interested in the Cold War and the international situation. They remind us that there was eclectic borrowing going on during the first decades of PRC history that we sometimes forget when we think in terms of East-West polarities, or communist-capitalist dichotomies. Their book looks at what happened after the exhaustion with Mao’s particular utopian interpretation of Marxism-Leninism. What, they ask, came out of the rubble of the early Cultural Revolution? The heroes of their story, in a way, are a combination of ordinary people trying to rebuild their lives, and leaders who were trying to come up with new, mix-and-match ideas to move China forward.” Read more...

The Best China Books of 2024

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Historian