China After Mao
- Author Frank Dikötter
- Narrator Daniel York Loh
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date 6 July 2023
- Run Time 14 hours and 18 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Asian history, Revolutions, uprisings, rebellions.
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What to expect
Bloomsbury presents China After Mao by Frank Dikötter, read by Daniel York Loh.
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A SPECTATOR AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR
‘A revolutionary book’ Sunday Times
‘A pulsating account that makes clear how important it is to look beneath the surface when it comes to any period or region in history – but above all to China’ Peter Frankopan, TLS
'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' New Statesman Books of the Year
Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2023
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From the Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author of Mao's Great Famine, a timely and compelling account of China in the wake of Chairman Mao
In China After Mao, award-winning historian Frank Dikötter explores how the People’s Republic of China was transformed from a backwater economy in the 1970s into the world superpower of today. His account is the first to be based on hundreds of previously unseen archival documents, from the secret minutes of top party meetings to confidential bank reports. Unfolding with great narrative sweep, this riveting, richly detailed chronicle recasts our understanding of an era that both the regime and foreign admirers celebrate as an economic miracle.
In charting four decades of so-called ‘Reform and Opening Up’ and China’s emergence as a world power, Dikötter tells a fascinating tale of contradictions and illusions, of shadow banking, anti-corruption drives and extreme state wealth standing alongside everyday poverty. He examines China’s approach to the 2008 financial crash, the country’s increasing hostility towards perceived Western interference and its development into a thoroughly entrenched dictatorship – one equipped with a sprawling security apparatus and the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world. Ultimately, the book concludes, the communist party’s goal was never to join the democratic sphere, but to resist it – and then defeat it.
Praise for Frank Dikötter and the People's Trilogy:
‘Harrowing and brilliant' Ben Macintyre
'The historian of China' Spectator
‘One of the few books that anyone who wants to understand the twentieth century simply must read’ New Statesman
‘The seminal English language work on the subject’ Sunday Times
'Gripping and masterful' – Simon Sebag Montefiore
_______________
A SPECTATOR AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR
‘A revolutionary book’ Sunday Times
‘A pulsating account that makes clear how important it is to look beneath the surface when it comes to any period or region in history – but above all to China’ Peter Frankopan, TLS
'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' New Statesman Books of the Year
Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2023
_______________
From the Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author of Mao's Great Famine, a timely and compelling account of China in the wake of Chairman Mao
In China After Mao, award-winning historian Frank Dikötter explores how the People’s Republic of China was transformed from a backwater economy in the 1970s into the world superpower of today. His account is the first to be based on hundreds of previously unseen archival documents, from the secret minutes of top party meetings to confidential bank reports. Unfolding with great narrative sweep, this riveting, richly detailed chronicle recasts our understanding of an era that both the regime and foreign admirers celebrate as an economic miracle.
In charting four decades of so-called ‘Reform and Opening Up’ and China’s emergence as a world power, Dikötter tells a fascinating tale of contradictions and illusions, of shadow banking, anti-corruption drives and extreme state wealth standing alongside everyday poverty. He examines China’s approach to the 2008 financial crash, the country’s increasing hostility towards perceived Western interference and its development into a thoroughly entrenched dictatorship – one equipped with a sprawling security apparatus and the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world. Ultimately, the book concludes, the communist party’s goal was never to join the democratic sphere, but to resist it – and then defeat it.
Praise for Frank Dikötter and the People's Trilogy:
‘Harrowing and brilliant' Ben Macintyre
'The historian of China' Spectator
‘One of the few books that anyone who wants to understand the twentieth century simply must read’ New Statesman
‘The seminal English language work on the subject’ Sunday Times
'Gripping and masterful' – Simon Sebag Montefiore
Critics Review
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
A clear-eyed and detailed account ... Dikötter has been mining Chinese primary sources for decades
A pulsating account that makes clear how important it is to look beneath the surface when it comes to any period or region in history – but above all to China
Presents a very different take on the Chinese economic miracle than the conventional wisdom ... Convincingly shows how foreign capital pouring into China ... became a key ingredient of economic growth at a time of intensifying repression following the Tiananmen Square massacre. It also shatters the myth of competent technocratic policymaking under leaders such as Deng Xiaoping ... Most radically, the book makes the case that, rather than being a sharp break with the recent past, President Xi Jinping’s more nakedly authoritarian rule is in many ways a continuation of trends that started long ago
Dikötter's highly-readable primer provides a valuable corrective ... Helps puncture the image of China's inexorable economic rise
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
With China After Mao, Dikötter has told the story of the years after Mao’s death in 1976 until the arrival of President Xi . . . Dikötter, who writes with considerable verve, blasts several holes in the notion that a Marxist-Leninist system can ever bring real reform. The new dictator’s reign will not end well, any more than that of his hero. Poor China – a great civilisation suffering under Communist rule
[Dikötter] draws on official records that have not been widely available to look afresh at the history of the reform and opening period … Dikötter sees a party fixated on only one [goal]: keeping itself in power and market forces in check – a goal which, as he sets out in a wealth of detail, has remained consistent ever since
Offers a blow-by-blow account of the uneven, reactive and sometimes chaotic course of economic policies . . . China After Mao provides an important corrective to the conventional view of China’s rise through reform
I am a great fan of Frank Dikötter, and his wonderful China After Mao did not disappoint in its forensic coverage of the past five decades
Dikötter’s account is based on inside knowledge of the system both at its core and on the periphery … A compact account of the momentous changes in China since Mao. As in the ‘People’s Trilogy,’ he carefully amasses inside information and then passes decisive, and usually damning, judgment
It is 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
This is a historian’s view of ‘Reform and Opening Up’ and of the shadow that Mao continues to cast over Chine. China After Mao is comprehensive. Readers will find pre-echoes of the issues that dominate coverage of China . . . Dikötter masterfully blends the micro-level examples from archives with patient explanations of the economic policies and circumstances behind them and bigger picture narratives of the Chinese state. His wry observations and controlled anger contribute to rendering a complex subject very readable
PRAISE FOR THE PEOPLE'S TRILOGY: 'A brilliant and powerful account ...This excellent book is horrific but essential reading for all who want to understand the darkness that lies at the heart of one of the world's most important revolutions
Powerful ... Bold and startling ... Dikötter must be admired for the manner in which he puts a human scale on the enormous barbarities of the communist takeover of China. We cannot begin to understand modern China without being aware of the blood-drenched tale Dikötter so ably relates
A mesmerizing account of the communist revolution in China, and the subsequent transformation of hundreds of millions of lives through violence, coercion and broken promises. The Chinese themselves suppress this history, but for anyone who wants to understand the current Beijing regime, this is essential background reading
Dikötter performs here a tremendous service by making legible the hugely controversial origins of the present Chinese political order
A remarkable work of archival research. Dikötter rarely, if ever, allows the story of central government to dominate by merely reporting a top-down directive. Instead, he tracks down the grassroots impact of Communist policies ... In so doing, he uncovers astonishing stories of party-led inhumanity and also popular resistance ... Dikötter sustains a strong human dimension to the story by skillfully weaving individual voices through the length of the book
This groundbreaking book examines the bloodstained reality behind the word and reveals how it brought tragedy to millions ... Dikötter's achievement in this book is remarkable. He has mastered a mass of original source material, and has done so by mining local archives in China, which have yielded up a host of treasures.
Startling ... Dikötter's work has aimed to demolish almost every claim to truth or virtue the Chinese Communist party ever made. He combines a vivid eye for detail with a historian's diligence in the archives. Powerful ... Dikötter is unsparing in his account of the effects of the communist rule
Harrowing and brilliant ... This is the book that changes your life
Magnificent ... This brilliant book leaves no doubt that Mao almost ruined China and left a legacy of paranoia that still grips its modern dictatorship under the latest autocrat, Xi Jinping
Together, these three books, which Dikötter calls the 'People's Trilogy', constitute a major contribution to scholarship on modern China, one that is unequalled, certainly in the English language ... His patience and endurance must be considerable and his Chinese-language skills formidable … Revealing and rewarding reading – for specialists and non-specialists alike
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