CHINA: 100 Years of Revolution

by Harrison E. Salisbury ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 21, 1983

In former New York Times man Salisbury's telling, the history of Chinese revolution is a chronicle of the emergence of luan--""a Chinese term for madness, mass madness, mindless violence, the chaos that sweeps people who have been agonized beyond human control."" Luan is the spirit of the Taiping Rebellion of the 1850s, led by Hung Hsiu-chuan who thought himself the son of God; of the Boxers, used by the Empress Dowager to attack foreigners at the turn of the century (they believed themselves to be impervious to bullets); and of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. Salisbury imples that there is a touch of luan in some of the other extraordinary events that are by now familiar parts of the Chinese revolutionary saga--like the 1927 massacre of Communists by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists (at that point, their allies), the selfsacrifice and endurance displayed in the Long March, and the turmoil of post-Liberation collectivization. Salisbury writes with a flair that suits great events and great personalities, and his sketches of the protagonists--Sun Yat-sen, the Soong sisters, the Russians Borodin and Blyukher, Chiang, Mae, Chou En-lai--are deft, if not original. That and the interspersed photo-sections spice up an otherwise conventional narrative that runs up to the arrest of the Gang of Four. Salisbury adopts a newspaperman's detached skepticism with sufficient consistency that there are no real heroes here, including Sun Yatsen (whose reputation seems to be dwindling). A good summary, in an imposingly designed volume (by Jean-Claude Suares)--but little more.

Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Holt, Rinehart & Winston

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION