The Paradox of China's Post-Mao Reforms

Merle Goldman, Roderick MacFarquhar

Harvard University Press, 1999 - History - 454 pages

China's bold program of reforms launched in the late 1970s--the move to a market economy and the opening to the outside world--ended the political chaos and economic stagnation of the Cultural Revolution and sparked China's unprecedented economic boom. Yet, while the reforms made possible a rising standard of living for the majority of China's population, they came at the cost of a weakening central government, increasing inequalities, and fragmenting society.

The essays of Barry Naughton, Joseph Fewsmith, Paul H. B. Godwin, Murray Scot Tanner, Lianjiang Li and Kevin J. O'Brien, Tianjian Shi, Martin King Whyte, Thomas P. Bernstein, Dorothy J. Solinger, David S. G. Goodman, Kristen Parris, Merle Goldman, Elizabeth J. Perry, and Richard Baum and Alexei Shevchenko analyze the contradictory impact of China's economic reforms on its political system and social structure. They explore the changing patterns of the relationship between state and society that may have more profound significance for China than all the revolutionary movements that have convulsed it through most of the twentieth century.

Contents

• Chinas Transition in Economic Perspective: 30
• Elite Politics: 47
• PartyMilitary Relations: 76
• The National Peoples Congress: 100
• The Struggle over Village Elections: 129
• Mass Political Behavior in Beijing: 145
• The Changing Role of Workers: 173
• Chinas Floating Population: 220
• The New Middle Class: 241
• The Rise of Private Business Interests: 262
• The Emergence of Politically Independent: 283
• Crime Corruption and Contention: 308
• The State of the State: 333
• Notes: 363
• Contributors: 449

About the author

Roderick Lemonde MacFarquhar was born in Lahore, India on December 2, 1930. He graduated with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Keble College, Oxford University, in 1953. He briefly worked at The Telegraph of London before receiving a master's degree in East Asian studies from Harvard University. In 1960, he founded The China Quarterly, an academic journal on Chinese politics and economics published by the University of Cambridge. He was elected to Parliament in Britain as a Labour candidate in 1974 and served for five years. He went on to teach history and political science at Harvard. He was the director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard from 1986 to 1992, and again from 2005 to 2006. He wrote several books including The Origins of the Cultural Revolution. He died from heart failure on February 10, 2019 at the age of 88.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Paradox of China's Post-Mao Reforms; Volume 12 of Harvard contemporary China series, ISSN 1051-0311; The Paradox of China's Post-Mao Reforms, Roderick MacFarquhar
• Editors: Merle Goldman, Roderick MacFarquhar
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1999
• ISBN: 0674654536, 9780674654532
• Length: 454 pages
• Subjects: History / Asia / China; History / Modern / 20th Century / General; Political Science / Political Ideologies / Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism; Political Science / Public Policy / Economic Policy; Political Science / World / Asian