In the decade since the death of Mao Zedong, the People's Republic of China has been swept by dramatic political, social, and economic changes. Now, Maurice Meisner has perceptively updated his widely-acclaimed book, Mao's China-considered the classic study of the Chinese Revolution since its original publication in 1977. Based on a wealth of previously unavailable data, Meisner presents a completely revised account of the now-repudiated Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966-1969, in which he examines the social consequences of this violent upheaval and traces its political legacy from the fall of Lin Biao to the demise of the Gang of Four. And, in a completely new section, Meisner examines the post-Mao era up to 1984, including the ascendancy of Deng Xiaoping and the institutionalization of his new order, the rise and fall of the Democracy Movement, and the Chinese Communist Party's reassessment of Mao and Maoism. In addition, Mao's China and After contains a critical interpretation of post-Maoist economic reforms and the continuing challenges China and its new leaders face in reconciling socialism and modernization.

Maurice Meisner, one of the US' foremost Sinologists, did an excellent job writing a popular history of the People's Republic in "Mao's China and After". Starting with the fall of the Empire and the May Fourth movement as well as New Culture, Meisner then skips to the point where the Chinese Communists have won the Civil War. He discusses the Maoist, Liuist, Dengist etc. periods in Chinese history in depth, taking a very large-scale view concentrating in particular on economic and social history, with some commentary on the position of intellectuals thrown in (in particular with the Hundred Flowers movement and the Cultural Revolution).

Meisner gives a solid left-wing perspective on all the relevant issues, focusing in particular on the successes and failures both of Mao's view of socialism, which, as Meisner points out, was itself on the left wing of the Communist Party of China. As some reviewers have noted, at times this does a disservice to his eagle's view of things, as a lot of social history in which Mao plays only a tangential role is ignored: there is no part on the position of women and changes in this, no description of the Civil War itself at all, practically nothing on the war against Japan, and even the Great Leap Forward gets only a summary description. On the other hand, this allows him to focus very strongly on the relation between economic policy and economic structures on the one hand, and the roles and views of the leaders of the Party on the other hand, surely an essential but often missing element of any serious political history.

The book is eminently readable and requires absolutely zero prior knowledge of modern China, and at the same time, after finishing it, a reader will have at least a moderate level of knowledge on modern Chinese political history. This is quite an accomplishment, made possible by Meisner's talent to make complicated political entanglements seem straightforward and obvious, and his constant eye on the economic side of things. There are a lot of things that one could criticize this book on, but since it is meant as a popular introduction, it should be judged on those criteria, and there it succeeds quite well.

We have to understand communist China in order to understand its failure. If Meisner's understanding is sympathetic (as he allows in his preface), he sees the miscarriages and betrayals of communism all the more clearly & honestly.