The Deng Xiaoping Era: An Inquiry into the Fate of Chinese Socialism, 1978-1994

Rating:
Summary: Balanced and informed
Review: This is the detailed story about how China during the Deng Xiaoping era was transformed from a socialist or quasi-socialist dictatorship to a capitalist dictatorship, but without giving up the socialist slogans. In the words of the author (pp. 492-3): "China today is experiencing, on a massive scale and in extreme forms, all the social evils of Western capitalism that modern Chinese intellectuals and political leaders sought for over a century to avoid. [...] That century-long quest now appears to have been all but abandoned. In the 1980s, China's leaders gradually reconciled themselves to enduring the vicissitudes of a capitalist regime-that "social anarchy which turns every economic progress into a social calamity," as Marx so acutely and forebodingly described the workings of capitalism." In my view, the book is very well written and well argued. Above all, it is free from the irritating Western bias that mar many books on China. Thus, the author more than once takes pains to explode myths about modern China, e.g. the popular impression that the Mao era was a period of economic stagnation (p. 188). But Meisner's story is in no sense the story about China's transformation from a socialist paradise to a capitalist hell. On the contrary, the book seems to me to be very balanced and credible. Recommended!