In recent years historians and political observers have vilified Mao Tse-tung and placed him in a class with tyrants like Hitler and Stalin. But, as Lee Feigon points out in his startling revision of Mao, the Chinese leader has been tainted by the actions and policies of the same Soviet-style Communist bureaucrats he came to hate and attempted to eliminate. Mr. Feigon argues that the movements for which Mao is almost universally condemned today—the Great Leap Forward and especially the Cultural Revolution—were in many ways beneficial for the Chinese people. They forced China to break with its Stalinist past and paved the way for its great economic and political strides in recent years. While not glossing over Mao’s mistakes, some of which had heinous consequences, Mr. Feigon contends that Mao should be largely praised for many of his later efforts—such as the attacks he began to level in the late 1950s on those bureaucrats responsible for many of the problems that continue to plague China today. In reevaluating Mao’s contributions, this interpretive study reverses the recent curve of criticism, seeing Mao’s late-in-life contributions to the Chinese revolution more favorably while taking a more critical view of his earlier efforts. Whereas most studies praise the Mao of the 1930s and 1940s as an original and independent thinker, Mr. Feigon contends that during this period his ideas and actions were fairly ordinary—but that he depended much more on Stalin’s help than has been acknowledged. Mao: A Reinterpretation seeks a more informed perspective on one of the most important political leaders of the twentieth century.

This volume illuminates the relationship of China's radical past to its reformist present as China makes a way forward through very differently conceived and contested visions of the future. In the context of early twenty-first century problems and the failures of global capitalism, is China's history of revolutionary socialism an aberration that is soon to be forgotten, or can it serve as a resource for creating a more fully human and radically democratic China with implications for all of us? Ranging from the early years of China's revolutionary twentieth-century to the present, the essays collected here look at the past and present of China with a view toward better understanding the ideas, ideals, and people who have dared to imagine radical transformation of their worlds and to assess the conceptual, political, and social limitations of these visions and their implementations. The volume's chapters focus on these issues from a range of vantage points, representing a spectrum of current scholarship. The first half of the book brings new insights to understanding how early-twentieth century intellectuals interpreted ideas that allowed them to break with China's past and to envision new paths to a modern future. It treats of Chen Duxiu, a founder of the Communist party, Mao Zedong, and Mao in relation to the non-Communist Liang Shuming and with the Dalai Lama. With continuing threads of nation and nationalities, of peasants, utopias and dystopias linking the chapters, the book's second half looks broadly at the consequences of the implementations of radical ideas, at the same time critiquing our accepted frameworks of analysis. Moving up to the present, the book investigates the effects of the reforms since the 1980s on long-term environmental degradation and on the emergence of a capitalist rural economy. It gives an unsparing view into contemporary rural China through independent films. The book concludes with an analysis of the unshakable persistence of the shibboleth, "the rise of China," in popul

AN erudite assessment of the the student uprising at Tiananmen Square in 1989, including the origins of the protest movement, the similarities to the American protests of the 1960s, Eastern European influences, and the implications for the future of China.

This book is the first complete study of Chen Duxiu, the controversial founder and first secretary-general of the Chinese Communist party. Disputing many conventional views of the New Culture movement and the early history of the party, Lee Feigon examines the social and political context of Chen's ideas and actions, particularly his relationship with the early Chinese youth movement. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book is the first complete study of Chen Duxiu, the controversial founder and first secretary-general of the Chinese Communist party. Disputing many conventional views of the New Culture movement and the early history of the party, Lee Feigon examines the social and political context of Chen's ideas and actions, particularly his relationship with the early Chinese youth movement.

Originally published in 1983.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This authoritative view of the history and culture of Tibet comes at a time when this ancient land is in danger of losing its identity and culture under Chinese rule. In a compact narrative account, Lee Feigon describes Tibet's long and independent history, which belies Chinese claims to hegemony over the Tibetan people. Beginning in the seventh century with the origins of the Tibetan state, Tibetans have borrowed cultural and political forms from their neighbors, including China and India, but have always developed them in their own distinct manner. Tibet has in fact at times ruled vast portions of China, India, Nepal, Central Asia, and even the Middle East. As Tibetans assimilated Buddhist ideals, they gradually cultivated the powerful and magical religious aura that has given birth to legends of Shangri-la. Tracing this history through Mongol and Manchu rule in China, the advent of nineteenth-century Western imperialism, and the radical and sometimes racist policies of Communist China, which have aimed to transform Tibet, Feigon shows how Tibet's grand history has produced its present-day culture, and how the future of that culture now lies largely in China's hands.