China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed

by Andrew G. Walder

Overview

China’s Communist Party seized power in 1949 after a long period of guerrilla insurgency followed by full-scale war, but the Chinese revolution was just beginning. China Under Mao narrates the rise and fall of the Maoist revolutionary state from 1949 to 1976—an epoch of startling accomplishments and disastrous failures, steered by many forces but dominated above all by Mao Zedong.

“Walder convincingly shows that the effect of Maoist inequalities still distorts China today…[It] will be a mind-opening book for many (and is a depressing reminder for others).”
—Jonathan Mirsky, The Spectator

“Andrew Walder’s account of Mao’s time in power is detailed, sophisticated and powerful…Walder takes on many pieces of conventional wisdom about Mao’s China and pulls them apart…What was it that led so much of China’s population to follow Mao’s orders, in effect to launch a civil war against his own party? There is still much more to understand about the bond between Mao and the wider population. As we try to understand that bond, there will be few better guides than Andrew Walder’s book. Sober, measured, meticulous in every deadly detail, it is an essential assessment of one of the world’s most important revolutions.”
—Rana Mitter, Times Literary Supplement

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674975491
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/20/2017
Pages:	440
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Andrew G. Walder is Denise O’Leary and Kent Thiry Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. His previous books include Fractured Rebellion, which won the Barrington Moore Book Award, and China Under Mao (both from Harvard). A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Guggenheim fellow, Walder has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Science, and the Ford Foundation.

Table of Contents

Illustrations ix

Preface xi

1 Funeral 1

2 From Movement to Regime 15

3 Rural Revolution 40

4 Urban Revolution 61

5 The Socialist Economy 82

6 The Evolving Party System 100

7 Thaw and Backlash 123

8 Great Leap 152

9 Toward the Cultural Revolution 180

10 Fractured Rebellion 200

11 Collapse and Division 231

12 Military Rule 263

13 Discord and Dissent 287

14 The Mao Era in Retrospect 315

Notes 347

References 377

Index 399

Editorial Reviews

This is a masterful synthesis of the literature on Mao Zedong’s China and of Walder’s own extensive sociological research. He combines Mao-centered political history with close attention to the organizational characteristics of the Communist Party, which explain its responsiveness to Mao Zedong’s often disastrous initiatives. In the author’s view, Mao was a ‘rigidly dogmatic leader with extremely narrow and outdated ideas.’ The book is replete with similarly incisive judgments. These will no doubt provoke controversy, but in the end, they are likely to be accepted.

Thomas P. Bernstein

Perspicacious scholarship by the preeminent American historical sociologist working on the People’s Republic of China. A balanced, critical account of events of baffling complexity, and a sophisticated analysis of uniquely solid empirical data. If reading is indeed the basics for all learning, then this is the book to read in order to learn why Mao in the end accomplished so little of what he had hoped to achieve after 1949 and why his legacy remains so controversial.

Michael Schoenhals

Walder’s argument is forthright and his assessment of Mao’s legacy is unrelenting, and yet the abundance of detailed, well-researched descriptions of political campaigns, crackdowns, infighting, economic and demographic data, and everyday life of the Chinese people—combined with his masterful storytelling talent comparable to that of Jonathan Spence, another prominent Yale historian of China—makes the work a highly readable and excellent textbook of Mao’s China with refreshing insights and a great deal of provocative ideas.

China Review International - Liu Kang

Walder convincingly shows that the effect of Maoist inequalities still distorts China today…In what will be a mind-opening book for many (and is a depressing reminder for others) Andrew Walder shows that in the decades after Mao, ‘China began the long process of recovering from the damage of his misrule.’

The Spectator - Jonathan Mirsky

Andrew Walder’s account of Mao’s time in power is detailed, sophisticated and powerful…Walder takes on many pieces of conventional wisdom about Mao’s China and pulls them apart…What was it that led so much of China’s population to follow Mao’s orders, in effect to launch a civil war against his own party? There is still much more to understand about the bond between Mao and the wider population. As we try to understand that bond, there will be few better guides than Andrew Walder’s book. Sober, measured, meticulous in every deadly detail, it is an essential assessment of one of the world’s most important revolutions.

Times Literary Supplement - Rana Mitter