The Chinese Communist Party and China’s Capitalist Revolution examines issues of political change and development in China. In the last 30 years China has experienced a profound political transformation and a degree of political progress but these are largely mired in the assumption that the free market is inherently incompatible with communism, and the perceived lack of political reforms in China. Indeed, there has not been much in the sense of democratization, multi-party competition, freedom of speech and association, but as this book demonstrates, political development is not limited to these factors. Based on extensive empirical investigations of the impact of the market on the communist party, with a particular focus on its grassroots organisations, this book finds that the Chinese communist party is undergoing profound changes in a host of important areas. By analyzing the impact of China’s socioeconomic transformation on the CCP and the adaptations of the Party to the new environment the book takes stock of the nature and dynamics of political change underway in China. The author concludes that the Chinese communist party we knew no longer exists—it is evolving into something quite different, which must have political implications for both China and the rest of the world. Professor Lance L. P. Gore is a political scientist specializing in contemporary Chinese politics at The East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore.

What forces shaped the twentieth-century world? Capitalism and communism are usually seen as engaged in a fight-to-the-death during the Cold War. With the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party aimed to end capitalism. Karl Gerth argues that despite the socialist rhetoric of class warfare and egalitarianism, Communist Party policies actually developed a variety of capitalism and expanded consumerism. This negated the goals of the Communist Revolution across the Mao era (1949–1976) down to the present. Through topics related to state attempts to manage what people began to desire - wristwatches and bicycles, films and fashion, leisure travel and Mao badges - Gerth challenges fundamental assumptions about capitalism, communism, and countries conventionally labeled as socialist. In so doing, his provocative history of China suggests how larger forces related to the desire for mass-produced consumer goods reshaped the twentieth-century world and remade people's lives.

China and the Legacy of Deng Xiaoping documents a turning point in the Chinese communist revolution that elevates Deng to a role equal to that of Mao. Dr. Marti explores post-Tiananmen domestic political wrangling and offers the first documentation of DengOCOs efforts to link all the major elements of societyOCothe PLA, the Party, the revolutionary elders, and the regional governorsOCointo a coalition whose survival depends on the success of his economic policies.Understanding this sense of commitment to ChinaOCOs long-term goals has significant implications for predicting the outcome of the current struggle between the hardliners and reformers. By providing a new interpretation of Chinese behavior, China and the Legacy of Deng Xiaoping adds to the current debate among policy makers and academicians over the future direction of Chinese policy."

Representing a lifetime of research and writing by noted historian Arif Dirlik, the essays collected here explore developments in Chinese socialism and the issues that have occupied historians of the Chinese revolution for the past three decades. Dirlik engages Chinese socialism critically but with sympathy for the aspirations of revolutionaries who found the hope of social, political, and cultural liberation in Communist alternatives to capitalism and the intellectual inspiration to realize their hopes in Marxist theory. The book's historical approach to Marxist theory emphasizes its global relevance while avoiding dogmatic and Eurocentric limitations. These incisive essays range from the origins of socialism in the early twentieth century, through the victory of the Communists in mid-century, to the virtual abandonment by century's end of any pretense to a socialist revolutionary project by the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. All that remains of the revolution in historical hindsight are memories of its failures and misdeeds, but Dirlik retains a critical perspective not just toward the past but also toward the ideological hegemonies of the present. Taken together, his writings reaffirm the centrality of the revolution to modern Chinese history. They also illuminate the fundamental importance of Marxism to grasping the flaws of capitalist modernity, despite the fact that in the end the socialist response was unable to transcend the social and ideological horizons of capitalism.

How China Became Capitalist details the extraordinary, and often unanticipated, journey that China has taken over the past thirty five years in transforming itself from a closed agrarian socialist economy to an indomitable economic force in the international arena. The authors revitalise the debate around the rise of the Chinese economy through the use of primary sources, persuasively arguing that the reforms implemented by the Chinese leaders did not represent a concerted attempt to create a capitalist economy, and that it was 'marginal revolutions' that introduced the market and entrepreneurship back to China. Lessons from the West were guided by the traditional Chinese principle of 'seeking truth from facts'. By turning to capitalism, China re-embraced her own cultural roots. How China Became Capitalist challenges received wisdom about the future of the Chinese economy, warning that while China has enormous potential for further growth, the future is clouded by the government's monopoly of ideas and power. Coase and Wang argue that the development of a market for ideas which has a long and revered tradition in China would be integral in bringing about the Chinese dream of social harmony.

How can capitalists' motivations during a Communist revolution be reliably documented and fully understood? Up to now, the answer to this question has generally eluded scholars who, for lack of nonofficial sources, have fallen back on Communist governments' official explanations. But the essays in this volume confirm that, at least in the case of the Communist revolution in China, it is finally possible to make new and fresh interpretations. By focusing closely on individuals and probing deeply into their thinking and experience, the authors of these essays have discovered a wide range of reasons for why Chinese capitalists did or did not choose to live and work under communism. The contributors to this volume have all concentrated on the dilemma for capitalists in China's Communist revolution. But their approach to their subject through archival research and rigorous analysis may also serve as a guide for future thinking about a variety of other historical figures. This approach is well worth adopting to explain how any members of society (not only capitalists) have resolved comparable dilemmas in all revolutions--the ones in China, Russia, Vietnam, Cuba, or anywhere else.

The Communist Road to Capitalism explores how a dynamic of social struggles from below followed by countermeasures of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime has pushed the historical evolution of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 1949. Under socialism until the mid-1970s, during the ensuing transition until the mid-1990s, and in the capitalist period since, the CCP regime responded to the struggles of workers, peasants, migrants, and women* with a mix of repression, concession, cooptation, and reform. Ralf Ruckus shows that this dynamic took the country into a new phase each time—and eventually all the way from socialism to capitalism: in the 1950s, labor struggles and the Hundred Flowers Movement were followed by the regime’s Great Leap Forward; in the 1960s, the Cultural Revolution led to the CCP’s failed attempt to revitalize socialism; in the 1970s, social unrest and movements for a democratic socialism made room for the regime’s Reform and Opening policies; in the late 1980s, the Tian’anmen Square uprising triggered more radical reforms; in the 1990s, peasant and state worker unrest could not stop the capitalist restructuring; and in the 2000s, migrant worker struggles led to concessions, tightened repression, and the regime’s global capitalist expansion strategy in the 2010s. The Communist Road to Capitalism breaks with established orthodoxies about the PRC’s socialist “successes” and myths on its later rise as an economic power. It combines a historiography of workers’, peasants’, migrants’, and women*’s struggles with a searing critique of exploitation, authoritarian state power and gender discrimination under socialism and capitalism. Drawing lessons from PRC history, Ralf Ruckus finally outlines political aims and methods for the left that avoid past mistakes and allow to fight on for a society free of all forms of exploitation and oppression.