MAO AND CHINA: From Revolution to Revolution

by Stanley Karnow ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 7, 1972

Neither an ode to Mao nor an anti-Communist condemnation, this sober analysis of recent Chinese history is based on the political and economic policies debated and implemented by the leadership. The Chinese dilemma is located in terms of development alternatives. Nebulous slogans, obscure squabbles, and intraparty confrontations with all the surface markings of Talmudic schisms are examined within the prism of the industrialization debate. Karnow shows how the strains of the first five-year program brought about an immediate economic crisis thereafter ""for the simple reason that Chinese industrialization depended upon agriculture [and] By the spring of 1955 it was plain that the. . . peasantry was not accomplishing this superhuman task."" As was the case in the USSR during the '20's, the alternatives were viewed as either ""socialism at a snail's pace"" entailing concessions to capitalist agriculture or industrialization through collectivization en masse. Mao, of course, chose the latter and this documentation of the Great Leap Forward and other experiments suggests that the venerable leader may be a brilliant faction fighter but remains a poor economist. Karnow traces Mao's temporary decline in political influence after 1958, the swerve in economic policy, and the entrenchment of the party bureaucracy under Liu Shao-chi. The Cultural Revolution with its interplay of students, workers, peasants, bureaucrats, officials and the military is extensively described and interpreted as a maneuver aimed at reinstating Mao's original economic and social policies. Karnow can be criticized for his failure to make an evaluation of the divergent policies and the lack of speculation re ""whither China?""; also, comparisons with Soviet industrialization and references to the purged Soviet economist Preobrazhensky and his debate with Bukharin would have broadened and intensified the treatment of China's unsolved dilemma of balanced development. Even so, its scholarship, scope and interpretive strength make this one of the most important books on China in recent years.

Pub Date: Aug. 7, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1972

Categories: NONFICTION