China After Mao : The Rise of a Superpower by Frank Dikotter

A revolutionary book' Sunday Times'A pulsating account' Peter Frankopan*A SPECTATOR AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR*How did the People's Republic of China transform from a backwater economy in the 1970s into the world superpower of today? Drawing on hundreds of previously unseen archival documents, award-winning historian Frank Dik?tter recasts our understanding of an era that both the regime and foreign admirers alike celebrate as an economic miracle. In a fascinating tale spanning five decades, he examines the country's economic transformation alongside the regime's determined suppression of dissent, its increasing hostility towards the West and its development into a thoroughly entrenched dictatorship led by Xi Jinping - one equipped with a sprawling security apparatus and the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world. `Essential reading for anyone who wants to know what has shaped today's China and what the Chinese Communist Party's choices mean for the rest of the world' New Statesman`A blow-by-blow account of the uneven, reactive and sometimes chaotic course of economic policies . . . An important corrective' Financial Times`Dik?tter has been mining Chinese primary sources for decades . . . A clear-eyed and detailed account' Observer
Binding: Paperback / softback