China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower

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Xi Jinping inspects a guard of honour in Moscow, June 2019. Photograph: Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images 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 On the surface, this makes the claim that Xi is the most powerful man in the world quite compelling. But for an understanding of the getting, exercising and holding of power in the People’s Republic of China, historian Frank Dikötter has few rivals. His latest volume, China After Mao: the Rise of a Superpower is a clear-eyed and detailed account of the period between Mao’s death in 1976 and 2012, the year of Xi’s arrival in the top job. 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.

China After Mao by Frank Dikötter — the grand deception

China’s pivot to exports and its accession to the World Trade Organisation in 2001 were the catalyst for the economic boom but, in Dikötter’s telling, the development has often been illusory, fuelled largely by investment, with China’s growth targets being dutifully met, often thanks to creative accounting. Frank Dikotter, long time Chair of Humanities at Hong Kong University, has continued to hold on to his faculty position despite his books being banned in the People’s Republic. He sees this as fortunate since he is unknown on the mainland and still has access to the archives. In the preface to this late 2022 work he notes that regional archives for the Mao years (1949-1976) were opened in 1996 under Jiang Zemin and then closed in 2012 under Xi Jinping, but post Mao era files (1977-2002) became available. By the period of ‘Reform and Opening Up’ begun by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 the Party had become a system where industry, large enterprises, land, natural and financial resources were all controlled by the state. Systemic corruption and inefficiency had made the fiscal deficits and their mounting debts unsustainable. The first quarter of the book is basically the road to Tienanmen massacre. If you ever wanted to fully understand why would any country send hundreds of tanks against its own people, this is the book to read - the context here is deep, well researched and shows how the massacre shaped modern China.

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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. I don't know I found it too dry, certainly harder to read than his People's Trilogy which was absolutely fantastic.

China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower - The Hindu China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower - The Hindu

The reviewer, Prof G Venkat Raman, has a PhD from Peking University, and is Professor, Humanities and Social Sciences, IIM Indore) MyHome.ie (Opens in new window) • Top 1000 • The Gloss (Opens in new window) • Recruit Ireland (Opens in new window) • Irish Times Training (Opens in new window) 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? 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 did enjoy the chapter on Deng Xiaoping though, that was very well done and dare I say the party intringue chapter was rather entertaining.

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The epilogue has some of the best writing in the whole book, following are some direct quotations from it:

It will be increasingly difficult for Western China specialists to write with authority based only on previous Western publications or on Chinese public statements. We remain in Frank Dikötter's debt' LITERARY REVIEW Rund 1/3 des Bandes nimmt der Anhang ein, mit Quellen, Register, Fotos, Verzeichnis der Archive eine wahre Fundgrube. The recently concluded twentieth party Congress has evinced an unprecedented interest in China. The emergence of China in the post-WTO accession era and its complex political and economic structure in the name of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ has been an enigma to even those who have a keen interest in current political developments.

CHINA AFTER MAO | Kirkus Reviews CHINA AFTER MAO | Kirkus Reviews

A leading historian of modern China. He is a rare scholar, adept in both Russian and Chinese . . . Combined with this linguistic skill, Dikötter has a writer's gift' EVENING STANDARD

As a summary of events in China since 1976, it probably does the job, although I can’t definitively say so since I’m a layperson. I will note that it reads more as summary-with-an-opinion than cutting analysis, although that’s not necessarily bad. Presumably the access to long-restricted archives gives it an edge over other, similar texts?