The Great Transformation

The first thorough account of a formative and little understood chapter in Chinese history Almost every page contains an eye-opening detail. . . . The Great Transformation evokes the multiple paths, ideas and possibilities that have shaped, and continue to shape, Chinas present.Julia Lovell, Financial Times Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian chronicle how an impoverished and terrorized China experienced radical political changes in the long 1970s and how ordinary people broke free from the beliefs that had shaped their lives during Maos Cultural Revolution. These changes, and the unprecedented and sustained economic growth that followed, transformed China and the world. In this rigorous account, Westad and Chen construct a panorama of catastrophe and progress in China. They chronicle Chinas gradual opening to the worldthe interplay of power in an era of aged and ailing leadership, the peoples rebellion against the earlier government system, and the roles of unlikely characters: overseas Chinese capitalists, American engineers, Japanese professors, and German designers. This is a story of revolutionary change that neither foreigners nor the Chinese themselves could have predicted.