China After Mao

'A leading historian of modern China. He is a rare scholar, adept in both Russian and Chinese . . . Combined with this linguistic skill, Dikötter has a writer's gift' Evening Standard

From the Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author of Mao's Great Famine, a timely and compelling account of China in the wake of Chairman Mao

In China After Mao, award-winning historian Frank Dikötter explores how the People's Republic of China was transformed from a backwater economy in the 1970s into the world superpower of today. His account is the first to be based on hundreds of previously unseen archival documents, from the secret minutes of top party meetings to confidential bank reports. Unfolding with great narrative sweep, this riveting, richly detailed chronicle recasts our understanding of an era that both the regime and foreign admirers celebrate as an economic miracle.

In charting four decades of so-called 'Reform and Opening Up' and China's emergence as a world power, Dikötter tells a fascinating tale of contradictions and illusions, of shadow banking, anti-corruption drives and extreme state wealth standing alongside everyday poverty. He examines China's approach to the 2008 financial crash, the country's increasing hostility towards perceived Western interference and its development into a thoroughly entrenched dictatorship – one equipped with a sprawling security apparatus and the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world. Ultimately, the book concludes, the communist party's goal was never to join the democratic sphere, but to resist it – and then defeat it.

Praise for Frank Dikötter:

'It will be increasingly difficult for Western China specialists to write with authority based only on previous Western publications or on Chinese public statements. We remain in Frank Dikötter's debt' Literary Review

'The historian of China' Spectator

'He combines a vivid eye for detail with a historian's diligence in the archives' Observer

About the Author

Frank Dikötter is Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. His books have changed the way historians view China, from the classic The Discourse of Race in Modern China to his award-winning People's Trilogy documenting the lives of ordinary people under Mao. He is married and lives in Hong Kong.