Governing China : From Revolution Through Reform - Softcover

Kenneth Lieberthal

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393969878 ISBN 13: 9780393969870

Publisher: R.S. Means Company, 1997

Synopsis

In this highly readable account by a renowned expert on Chinese politics, we enter China's real channels of power, known to all participants but invisible to most observers. In this shadow world behind the formal organizational charts, power runs vertically through gateways, or mouths (kous), that connect Beijing to the smallest local neighborhoods in this far-flung land. The mouths of power are guarded by the most powerful men in the nation. It is a world of organizations but no institutions, of constantly changing rules. With a focus on the period of Communist Party rule since 1949, Lieberthal shows how the ways and forms of power were precipitated out of the rush of historical events in twentieth-century China. He presents compelling accounts of major events from the Long March through the Cultural Revolution, to China's post-Tiananmen economic surge, and incisive analyses of their political meaning. Lieberthal also explores the key issues challenging China now - succession at the top, a destabilizing level of economic growth, a degraded environment, human rights, the impending takeover of Hong Kong, and relations with Taiwan.

About this title

About the Author

Kenneth Lieberthal is Distinguished Fellow and Director for China at the William Davidson Institute, University of Michigan. He has extensive experience in China and has been a senior advisor on China affairs on the National Security Council. Professor Lieberthal is the author of many books on Chinese politics and a long-time teacher of the Chinese politics course at Michigan.

From Publishers Weekly

University of Michigan political science professor Lieberthal here presents a devastating critique of Mao's rule and its disastrous legacy. In the Maoist movement's peasant-based, military path to power, he perceives the roots of many characteristics of post-1949 China--for example, the close interlocking of party and army, repeated attacks on intellectuals, and mass political campaigns. Lieberthal credits Deng Xiaoping of the late 1970s and early '80s as an innovative reformer, an improvisational genius who effected a conscious reduction in the government's control of social and economic activity. This engrossing text also provides an amazingly detailed blueprint of modern China's power elite, their propaganda and coercive systems. Lieberthal, an adviser to the State Department and the World Bank, details the clash of China's new generation of technocrats and its stagnant gerontocracy as he discusses such issues as political succession, managing the economy and limiting environmental damage. China, which now has the world's largest armed forces, will remain authoritarian in the foreseeable future, he believes, even as it makes enormous economic advances.

Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: R.S. Means Company
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393969878
• ISBN 13: 9780393969870
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 526