Roderick MacFarquhar

The second volume in a trilogy which examines the politics, economics, culture, and international relations of China from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, this volume tells the story of the Great Leap Forward—Mao's utopian attempt to propel China economically and socially into the twenty-first century by mobilising his nation's greatest asset: its disciplined manpower. The effort produced economic disaster and...

The Cultural Revolution was a watershed event in the history of the People's Republic of China, the defining decade of half a century of communist rule. Before 1966, China was a typical communist state, with a command economy and a powerful party able to keep the population under control. But during the Cultural Revolution, in a move unprecedented in any...