From the Christian Science Monitor:
Many trends in today’s China have their roots in the late 1970s – the period after the nation had its slate wiped clean by the Cultural Revolution. Those cataclysmic years (1966-1976) offer insight into what pushed China’s pendulum toward capitalism and why democracy hasn’t followed.
Or as the preface to a new history of that period, Mao’s Last Revolution by China scholars Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals states: “To understand the ‘why’ of modern-day China, one must understand the ‘what’ of the Cultural Revolution.”
The 462-page narrative (with nearly 200 pages of supplemental material) excels at detailing the how of the Cultural Revolution – how Chinese leader Mao Zedong purged opponents, upended the lives of millions, and established a cult of personality (while yet remaining vague about what it all meant). [Full text]
Read also a review of the book from the Boston Globe.
