A powerful work of grassroots history, tracing China's rural-urban divide back to the policies of Mao Zedong, which pitted city dwellers against villagers.

"A powerful work of grassroots history showing how China's rural-urban divide can be traced back to the policies of Mao Zedong, which pitted city dwellers against villagers"--

This history of China's sent-down youth movement uses archival research to revise popular notions about power dynamics during the Cultural Revolution.

First published in 1980. This book analyzes Chinese society and evaluates the achievements and failures of the Maoist ideology. The central theme is the urban and rural balance in China's development from the Revolution to the late twentieth century. The Fading of the Maoist Vision shows how the original Revolutionary blueprint was altered and the ways in which China has steered a different course from that charted by Mao as the ideological vision encountered an increasingly pressing set of economic realities. The book: · Is particularly valuable in setting China's achievements in the larger context of global ideas about the problems of national development and by comparing them to the experience of India in its pursuit of the Gandhian ideal.

An inside analysis of modern cultural and political upheavals in China by a fluent Beijing correspondent describes the power struggles currently taking place between the party elite and supporters of democracy, the outcome of which the author predicts will significantly affect China's rise to a world super-power. 125,000 first printing.

The Book Is One Of The Few Full-Length Studies Of The Members Of A Legislative Assembly. It Deals With The Members Of The Iv Legislative Assembly In Rajasthan, One Of The 22 States Of The Indian Union, Which, Though With A Feudal Background, Has Been Struggling Its Way To A Modern Democratic Order. The Data For The Study Was Collected During 1970-71 And Covers 130 Of The 184 Members Of The Legislative Assembly. The Study Aims At Finding Out The Role Of The Legislative Elite In The Democratizing Process. The Specific Foci Of Enquiry Are The Socio-Economic And Political Background Of The Legislators, Their Political Values And Orientation And Their Role Images. What Distinguishes This Study From Other Studies Of The Legislative Elite Is An Effort To Investigate Intothe Pattern Of Constituency Linkage Which The Legislative Elite Develop In Their Own Enlightened Self-Interest. The Key Finding Of The Study Is That The Constituents Look Upon Their Representatives Primarily As Agents Of Local Development Which In Turn Becomes The Basis Of Their Legitimacy And Re-Election. The Author Has Also Tried To Probe Into The Patterns Of Socialisation That Have Gone Into The Making Of The Political Mind Of The Legislators In The State. The Study Brings Out That Till The Iv Assembly At Least National Movement Had Been One Of The Most Important Socialising Agents, Though Some Departures From This Trend Have Also Been Noticeable, Which Have A Portent For The Future. Altogether The Prsent Study, Which Is A Revised Version Of Authbor'S Ph.D. Thesis, Provides Meaningful Insights Into The Structure Of The Political Elite And The Political Process In The State. It Should Serve As A Useful Basis For Future Studies Particularly For Comparative Purposes.

Denounced as parasitical under Chairman Mao and devalued by the norms of traditional Chinese ethics, the city now functions as a site of individual and collective identity in China. Cities envelop the countryside, not only geographically and demographically but also in terms of cultural impact. Robin Visser illuminates the cultural dynamics of three decades of radical urban development in China. Interpreting fiction, cinema, visual art, architecture, and urban design, she analyzes how the aesthetics of the urban environment have shaped the emotions and behavior of people and cultures, and how individual and collective images of and practices in the city have produced urban aesthetics. By relating the built environment to culture, Visser situates postsocialist Chinese urban aesthetics within local and global economic and intellectual trends. In the 1980s, writers, filmmakers, and artists began to probe the contradictions in China’s urbanization policies and rhetoric. Powerful neorealist fiction, cinema, documentaries, paintings, photographs, performances, and installations contrasted forms of glittering urban renewal with the government’s inattention to a livable urban infrastructure. Narratives and images depicting the melancholy urban subject came to illustrate ethical quandaries raised by urban life. Visser relates her analysis of this art to major transformations in urban planning under global neoliberalism, to the development of cultural studies in the Chinese academy, and to ways that specific cities, particularly Beijing and Shanghai, figure in the cultural imagination. Despite the environmental and cultural destruction caused by China’s neoliberal policies, Visser argues for the emergence of a new urban self-awareness, one that offers creative resolutions for the dilemmas of urbanism through new forms of intellectual engagement in society and nascent forms of civic governance.

Thaxton argues that the memory of the great famine under Mao shaped villagers' resistance to the socialist state.

"A collection of essays that analyzes China's foremost social cleavage: the rural-urban gap. It examines the historical background of rural-urban relations; the size and trend in the income gap between rural and urban residents; aspects of inequality apart from income; and, experiences of discrimination, particularly among urban migrants." -- BOOK PUBLISHER WEBSITE.