Presenting a thorough record of Canada's diplomatic ties with China, Canada and China recounts ten stories regarding China policy decisions made by the Canadian government. These decisions describe key bilateral moves, beginning with Pierre Trudeau's recognition of China in 1970 and ending fifty years later with his son Justin's attempt to reset a struggling relationship with China. Rooted in archival research, extensive interviews, and the author's experience as a policy observer, the book contributes to our understanding of how the Canada-China relationship has developed over time and how best to position Canada in future relations with China. While present-day relations with China are complicated, the book deliberately seeks to provide a balanced perspective by showing both the positive and the more challenging aspects of relations with China. Ultimately, Canada and China recommends ways to manage future relations with China, while also honouring the ties it developed over fifty years.

The concept of "civil society" was borrowed from eighteenth-century Europe to provide a framework for understanding the transition to post-authoritarian regimes in Latin America and postcommunist regimes elsewhere. In China, the Democracy Movement forced the concept onto the intellectual agenda during the struggle to come to terms with the growth of dissent and the failure of student activism to find a secure foothold. The question that drives this book is whether this concept is useful for analyzing China, and if so, in what ways and within what limits.

The concept of "civil society" was borrowed from eighteenth-century Europe to provide a framework for understanding the transition to post-authoritarian regimes in Latin America and postcommunist regimes elsewhere. In China, the Democracy Movement forced the concept onto the intellectual agenda during the struggle to come to terms with the growth of dissent and the failure of student activism to find a secure foothold. The question that drives this book is whether this concept is useful for analyzing China, and if so, in what ways and within what limits.

"How do we apply Chairman Mao's Thought to get fat pigs?" Squad Leader Ho (who knew the most about pigs) replied that, according to Chairman Mao, one must investigate the problem fully from all sides, and then integrate practice and theory. Ho concluded that the reason for our skinny pigs had to be found in one of three areas: the relationship between the pigs and their natural environment (excluding man); the relationship between the cadres and the pigs; and the relationship among the pigs themselves. And so the city slickers, sent down to the countryside for political reeducation, set out to find the Thousand-Dollar Pig, much to the bemusement of the local peasants. The sixteen stories collected in this remarkable book give firsthand accounts of daily life in contemporary China. From 250 interviews conducted in Hong Kong between 1972 and 1976, Mr. Frolic has created charming vignettes that show how individuals from all parts of China led their lives in the midst of rapid social change and political unrest. We hear about oil prospectors, rubber growers, and factory workers, Widow Wang and her sit-in to get a larger apartment, the thoroughly corrupt Man Who Loved Dog Meat, the young people who flew kites to protest antidemocratic tendencies. As fresh and original as the individual accounts are, common and timeless themes emerge: the sluggishness of an agrarian society in responding to modernization; the painful lack of resources in a poor and gigantic country; the constraints imposed on common people by the bureaucracy; the way in which individuals outwardly support the system and inwardly resist it; the limitations of heavy and conflicting doses of ideology in motivating individuals. But there are also recurrent motifs of economic and social progress: production rises, illiteracy declines, and socialist values have impact. A new China has emerged, though change is occurring far more slowly than its leaders had intended. Mao's People contains much new information on China both for the general reader and for specialists in the field. Above all, it is a completely engrossing and vivid glimpse into the ways of a nation we are only beginning to discover.