History, in the foreseeable future, will to a large extent be the history of China's active initiatives. In this regard, raw information from all sources—travelers, refugees, U-2's, satellites, official Chinese publications—is pertinent and valuable. But beyond this, it is vital that this information be sifted and evaluated by experienced observes and impartial scholars. These studies—which originally appeared in the respected British journal The China Quarterly—fill just this need. They represent a synthesis of available sources, and although written from various points of view, they are united by a common method of critical objectivity.
Containing twenty-four contributions from some of the best-known and most-knowledgeable of today's Sinologists, this reader covers all aspects of Chinese life. The studies center about such diverse topics as the changing internal structure, foreign policy, military affairs, the economy and industrialization, agriculture and the communes, education, art and science, and family life.
Moreover, the selections cover the full time-span of China's experience under the Mao dynasty. The major focus of attention is on the years since 1960, when The China Quarterly began publication. In retrospect, the years 1960-1966 seem to have been a transition period between the consolidation of Communist power and the reversionist politics of 1966, marked by the beginning of the Third Five-year Plan and a new crackdown on intellectual and military dissidents. Still, much background material is provided for the traumatic formative years of China's life under communism: the completion of collectivization and the “hundred flowers” campaign of 1956; the purges of the “bourgeois rightists” in 1957; the “great leap forward” and the establishment of the communes in 1958, with their radical economic dislocations; the “three-bitter years” of natural calamities, 1959-1961; the withdrawal of Soviet technologists and the widening of the rift in 1960; and the resultant return to economic realism, 1959-1960. The insights presented here into these events provide a basis for understanding the present period, when once again, and more than ever, the Party's main drive is to maintain ideological orthodoxy and the canonical purity of “the thought of Chairman Mao,” when politics once again takes full command.
