China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower

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While many of China’s western supporters believed that growing prosperity would bring growing demands for political freedom and participation, Xi believes that the separation of powers, judicial autonomy and freedom of speech represent a mortal threat to the party, and that once China’s people are materially better off, they will agree with the party’s claim that China’s socialism is superior to western capitalism. As the early reformer Zhao Ziyang – later disgraced for his opposition to the Tiananmen massacre – put it: “We are setting up special economic zones, not political zones. We must uphold socialism and resist capitalism.” I don't know I found it too dry, certainly harder to read than his People's Trilogy which was absolutely fantastic. In Dikötters umfassendem Werk finde ich die Darstellung der 80er-Jahre besonders gelungen, weil sich das Wissen über China im Westen damals meist auf wenige persönliche Kontakte und die Berichte von Auslandskorrespondenten beschränkte. In dem man im Wortsinn aus der Geschichte lernt, lassen sich Gehörtes und Erlebtes einordnen, wenn man als Leser verfolgt, wie sich Werte und Einstellungen chinesischer Bürger seit den 80ern eher gefestigt als verändert haben. Die generationenalte Weisheit z. B., dass „Chinesen Banken nicht trauen“, wird durch Dikötters Analyse begreifbar – und ihre Gültigkeit bis heute.

China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower: Frank Dikötter

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 China na Mao is rijk geïllustreerd, aan de hand van foto’s worden de leiders van China in beeld gebracht. Doch enkele grafieken die de effectieve groei van de Chinese economie visueel in beeld zouden brengen, hadden een meerwaarde geweest. De verschillende mijlpalen binnen de geschiedenis worden opgedeeld in hoofdstukken. Zo is er een hoofdstuk over de grote hervormingen tussen 1982 en 1984, en is er een ander hoofdstuk volledig gewijd aan het bloedbad uit 1989 (en we weten allemaal wat er toen gebeurde). Zhao Ziyang seen supporting Tiananmen protests, supporting thesis that popular discontent only poses a real threat if used for intra-elite conflict 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. A special economic zone in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, was blessed by Deng during a 1984 visit, becoming a center of foreign investment and technology. Cheap labor imported from the hinterland fled to the bright lights and higher pay across the bay. To counter the exodus free trade areas were established where local authorities made the decisions on foreign trade and provided better working conditions. While industry didn’t take hold import/export business did and opportunities in coming computer technology were taken. Sixteen new free zones were created with the provision they wouldn’t be run or funded by Beijing. Cases proliferated of stolen chemical and pharmaceutical formulas and led to the counterfeiting of household appliances, office equipment, industrial and agricultural machinery in a wild east of trade.

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. A fourth great book on China from Dikötter. The modern period is probably less interesting to me than the Cultural Revolution, Great Famine, and Civil War, mainly because I am already more familiar with the events especially post-Tiananmen from at least the Western observer side and watching the news/doing business with Chinese companies/etc., but it was still interesting to learn how local vs. national government works, incentive structures, etc. I wish the book continued through to Covid and beyond, but it pretty much ends around 2018; hopefully there will be a fifth book coming in a few years.

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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.In 2010, Chongqing had 500,000 cameras, Beijing and Shanghai had over 1 million, and London had 7,000 The question remains whether Xi and his minions can manage the complexities of a modern economy while continuing to command the means of production, financing and resources that make it run. Reading this book makes me think the answer is a strong no. That begs the question, what happens to China's economy when the bills come due, and what ripples does that cause for the larger world economy? It was thought that economic reform and integration into the world marketplace would help to democratize and liberalize China. Nothing of the sort happened. The Chinese Communist Party did not want anything to do with democracy. It wants to maintain its one-party state (the dictatorship of the proletariat).

China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower: Frank Dikötter China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower: Frank Dikötter

Der Autor begann 1985 in Tianjin sein Sinologiestudium, als es im gesamten Land weniger als 20 000 Privatfahrzeuge gab. 10 Jahre später nutzt er die Phase der erstmaligen Öffnung von Archiven zur Recherche. Seine Archivstudien in gut einem Dutzend Archiven, sowie Presseartikel und unveröffentlichte Erinnerungen von Zeitzeugen vermitteln ein kenntnisreiches China-Bild mit Focus auf die Wirtschaft des autoritär von der Kommunistischen Partei regierten Staates. A revolutionary book . . . Breaking with the bland orthodoxy peddled in some of our finest universities, Dikötter says that China today is a Leviathan where a party, fascist in all but name, controls society … Dikötter marshals a daunting array of statistics and documents . . . Historians such as Dikötter are there to warn Just bear in mind that if you don't have a serious depth of interest in Chinese economics and society in the 70s and 80s and want a rather general introduction to history and politics of the period you should rather look somewhere else. From internationally renowned historian Frank Dikötter, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, a myth­shattering history of China from the death of Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping. Tuesday, November 15, 2022 1 min read An informative, detailed history that to some extent boils down to a repetitive cycle of reform and repression, expansion and mismanagement (which isn't the book's fault, it can't help that its subject is repetitive). I lost count of the times the author repeated the point that local governments or state industries could go into heedless debt confident in the fact that the state would be obliged to bail them out no matter what, for instance. Reading things like this I find interesting compared to the prevailing narrative that China's out to eat everyone's lunch and is going to take the United States' place as the preeminent world power -- every time I read anything that actually describes the inner workings of the Chinese economy in detail the degree to which it comes across as a house of cards is striking.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? 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. 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. Economically, the author paints a bleak picture. The 36 years of the “open and reform” era is a succession of economic crises and countermeasures, which lead to new crises. China’s economic boom, according to the author, is chronically inefficient and fueled by over-investment, over-leveraging, and over-capacity. Official statistics are not trustable, and economic calamity is never far away. This defies the conventional belief that China has a long-term strategy for economic development, including education, significant spending on research and development, and large-scale infrastructure building.

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You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. 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. 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.Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? 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.