Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #981875 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Synopsis
John Gittings has been reporting on China for 30 years, writing about its remarkable transformation from Maoist communism to a market-led economy. In this journalstic anthology he conveys both the magnitude of this change and its incompleteness - as evidenced by the 1989 Beijing Massacre.

From the Author
Reports from China over 30 years of change -- there and here
It may seem presumptuous to excerpt my journalistic reports. But I decided they had some value in showing (a) how much China has changed in the time I have known it -- three-fifths of its five decades under communist rule, and (b) how far the perspective of a regular Western observer has also shifted. I was impressed -- I admit it -- by the Cultural Revolution (see the photograph of me wearing a Mao-cap at Dazhai Model Brigade in 1971). Our view of China is entirely different today but may also be unbalanced. In my introduction, I try to analyse some of these shifts in perception, and to explain why our vision remains partial. There is still a sliding door between us and China and it remains difficult to get through. In the end, though, studying and visiting China is about the Chinese people in all their diversity -- and there are 1.2 billion of them to understand.