Mao's China

Originally published in 1957, most of the material collected in this study was extracted from official Chinese Communist publications and whilst the material will inevitably reflect its source, it does represent a valuable body of historical material which allows the author to analyse the historical role of the Maoist bureaucracy in its effort to modernize China and turn it into a great industrial and military power. Various facets of Mao’s regime are brought to bear on the central theme: land reform, forced collectivization, the subordination of consumption to accumulation, bureaucratic management of industry, the increasing limitations of workers’ legal rights, forced labour, and the erection of a totalitarian police dictatorship. The book also examines the centrifugal and centripetal forces affecting the Moscow-Beijing bloc during the post-war period.