China without Mao: The Search for a New Order

Now available in a new, updated edition, this groundbreaking book on post-Mao China, written by the distinguished Asian scholar Immanuel C.Y. Hsu, explores the astonishing transformation that has occurred there. Since Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, China’s leaders have launched an ambitious modernization program aimed at making their nation a relatively prosperous socialist state by the year 2000.

Along with the first edition’s examination of the smashing of the Gang of Four, the evolution of a new order under Deng Xiaoping, the manner and costs of modernization, the normalization of relations with the United States, and the prospects for reunification with Taiwan, the second edition offers an insider’s view into China’s policies of accelerated economic development and opening to the outside world, adopted at a December 1978 party conference. Focusing on the cultural impact of these policies, Hsu candidly reveals both the improved standard of living and the serious fundamental problems–including high inflation, widespread corruption, crises in leadership, loss of faith in communism, and especially the recent student protests–resulting from these recent developments. The new edition also includes a postscript which takes into account the causes and consequences of the Tian An Men Square massacre in June of 1989.