China after Mao

Renowned historian Frank Dikötter tells the compelling story of China’s modern history and its economic rise following the disaster of the Cultural Revolution. Thanks to unique access to hundreds of previously unpublished documents from Communist Party archives, he offers a behind-the-scenes look at Chinese politics from the death of the Great Helmsman, Mao, to Xi Jinping. He charts the country's unprecedented forty-year transformation that propelled it from 126th place to the world’s second-largest economy. In doing so, the author challenges our perceptions and myths about a society that marches steadfastly forward to the beat of the Party's drum. Instead, he reveals a turbulent development full of conflict, palace intrigues, civil disobedience, anti-corruption purges, shadow banking, and a dual-price system. He examines how China navigated the 2008 financial crisis, how its hostility towards the West is growing, and why the country is developing into a rigid dictatorship with an extensive security apparatus and the most sophisticated citizen surveillance system in the world. From this magnificent book, it is more than apparent that the Communist Party’s goal was never to join the democratic world, but to defy it—and ultimately, to defeat it.
Published in cooperation with the Argo publishing house.