Governing China: From Revolution to Reform / Edition 2

by Kenneth Lieberthal

Overview

Governing China: From Revolution to Reform, the leading text for courses on Chinese politics has been thoroughly revised and updated.

The new Second Edition includes discussions of: The consumer revolution that has brought China’s major urban areas to the forefront of the developed world and created a new middle class An expanding private sector that has become the major generator of new employment in the overall economy as the state sector has shed jobs The increase in foreign direct investment which has set China on track to becoming the manufacturing center of the world. An enormous population migration from rural to urban areas and from the interior to the coast that is becoming one of the most massive movements of people in human history, and its significant impact on the environment The unprecedented integration into the international economic system as China has joined virtually every major multilateral regime The reactions of the top and the bottom of the political system to these recent developments and the continuing struggles between the government’s large bureaucratic structures and sporadic popular political movements.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393924923
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	12/15/2003
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	528
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Kenneth Lieberthal is Distinguished Fellow and Director for China at the William Davidson Institute, University of Michigan. He has extensive experience in China and has been a senior advisor on China affairs on the National Security Council. Professor Lieberthal is the author of many books on Chinese politics and a long-time teacher of the Chinese politics course at Michigan.

Editorial Reviews

University of Michigan political science professor Lieberthal here presents a devastating critique of Mao's rule and its disastrous legacy. In the Maoist movement's peasant-based, military path to power, he perceives the roots of many characteristics of post-1949 China-for example, the close interlocking of party and army, repeated attacks on intellectuals, and mass political campaigns. Lieberthal credits Deng Xiaoping of the late 1970s and early '80s as an innovative reformer, an improvisational genius who effected a conscious reduction in the government's control of social and economic activity. This engrossing text also provides an amazingly detailed blueprint of modern China's power elite, their propaganda and coercive systems. Lieberthal, an adviser to the State Department and the World Bank, details the clash of China's new generation of technocrats and its stagnant gerontocracy as he discusses such issues as political succession, managing the economy and limiting environmental damage. China, which now has the world's largest armed forces, will remain authoritarian in the foreseeable future, he believes, even as it makes enormous economic advances. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In the past decade, China's dramatic economic growth has captured the world's attention. But there is still lingering uncertainty about its future, emerging from the inconsistencies of China's current political situation. The long history of periodic political turmoil has revealed some fundamental and inherent weaknesses of the Chinese political system. Lieberthal, an experienced China scholar, provides a systematic approach toward an understanding of the complex governing organizations of China from its imperial past, through the 20th-century revolutions, both Nationalist and Communist, until the current regime. Unlike many other China experts, Lieberthal doesn't make any predictions. Through a close look at the largest bureaucratic structures, the actual allocations of power in front and behind the organizational faade, he illuminates the difficult issues and challenges facing contemporary China. Highly recommended.-Mark Meng, St. John's Univ. Lib., New York

Library Journal