Table of Contents

1: Introduction: The new 'New China'
2: Search for Socialism: from Liberation to Utopia
3: Mao Zedong versus the Party: from cult to Cultural Revolution
4: The Rebel Alternative: from 1919 to the Red Guards
5: Second Cultural Revolution: the abortive Great Debate
6: Economics in Command: the modernization of China
7: Peasant China Transformed: the rise of rural enterprise
8: The Growth of Dissent: poets and democracy
9: The Party under Pressure: reform and reaction
10: The Scholars Speak Out: humanism or bourgeios liberalism?
11: The Door Opens Wide: foreign trade and the world economy
12: Tiananmen Square, 1989: turning-point for China
13: Into the New Millennium: China transformed
14: China and the World: from Mao to market
Chronology
China's Political Leaders
Select Bibliography
Index of Names
General Index

About the Author

John Gittings was the Guardian's China specialist and East Asia editor (1983-2003) and opened the newspaper's first staff bureau on the mainland in Shanghai. He began to visit China during the Cultural Revolution and witnessed the major events of the past thirty years, including the Tiananmen Square protests and the Hong Kong handover. He has also taught at the Polytechnic of Central London and was an acting editor of the China Quarterly.
Throughout his working life, he has sought to project a balanced view of China and its role in the world and to avoid uncritical praise or blame in what has always been a controversial field. His books include works on Chinese foreign policy, military affairs, politics, and domestic society. He has also written on
international and nuclear politics and was for many years the Guardian's foreign leader-writer.

Reviews

The Changing Face of China By John Gittings is the most comprehensive of the four books. Socialist Review. The book contains a wealth of information and is certainly a good counterweight to recent books which emphasise Mao's personality as the key to China's history in the 20th Century. Guardian the history of modern China is an epic one, told superbly by Gittings Guardian