This projected ten-volume edition of Mao Zedong's writings provides abundant documentation in his own words regarding his life and thought. It has been compiled from all available Chinese sources, including the many new texts that appeared in 1993, Mao's centenary.

This book provides a comprehensive history of the emergence and the formation of the concept of sovereignty in China from the year 1840 to the present. It contributes to broadening the history of modern China by looking at the way the notion of sovereignty was gradually articulated by key Chinese intellectuals, diplomats and political figures in the unfolding of the history of international law in China, rehabilitates Chinese agency, and shows how China challenged Western Eurocentric assumptions about the progress of international law. It puts the history of international law in a global perspective, interrogating the widely-held belief of international law as universal order and exploring the ways in which its history is closely anchored to a European experience that fails to take into account how the encounter with other non-European realities has influenced its formation.

Revolution in its Leninist guise has been a dominant force in the world for most of the 20th century, and the Chinese revolution has been, with the Russian revolution, one of its two most important manifestations. Mao Zedong, the architect of victory in China in 1949, stands out as one of the dominant figures of the century. Guerilla leader, strategist, conqueror, ruler, poet and philosopher, he placed his imprint on China, and on the world. Even though today communism is widely seen as bankrupt, Mao Zedong's achievements as an innovative disciple of Lenin and Stalin in the most populous nation on earth guarantees his place in history. Whatever the ultimate fate of communism in China, the fact of Mao's influence on events during more than five decades, and its resonance after his death, will remain. This edition of Mao Zedong's writings provides abundant documentation in his own words regarding his life and thought. It has been compiled from all available Chinese sources, including not only the 20-volume edition published in Tokyo years ago, but many new materials issued in China since 1978, both openly and for internal circulation. The editors have pursued a threefold goal: firstly, to translate every text by Mao which could be obtained, so as to make this English version as complete as possible; secondly, to annotate the materials in sufficient detail to make them accessible to the non-specialist reader; and thirdly, to combine accuracy with a level of literary quality which is intended to make the volumes agreeable as well as instructive to read. Volume 1 includes translations of the entire contents of the authoritative "Mao Zedong Zaoqi Wengao 1912.6-1920.11" ("Draft writings from Mao Zedong's early period, June 1912-November 1920"), published in Beijing in 1990, plus some 15 additional texts for the same period which have been attributed to Mao. Among the items thus made available in English are his first surviving work, a middle school essay of 1912 in praise of Shang Yang; his very extensive "Classroom Notes" of late 1913 on the lectures of his most influential teachers, Yang Changji and "Yuan the Big Beard"; a dozen letters to his then close friend Xiao Zisheng (Siao-yu), who described a shared odyssey in "Mao-Tse-tung and I were Beggars"; his marginal annotations of 1918 to the German philosopher Friedrich Paulsen's work on ethics, in which Mao proclaimed himself a believer in "individualism" and an admirer of Nietzsche; and many important letters, articles, and other writings documenting his evolution from liberalism to anarchism and finally to Marxism in 1919-1920.

The second volume of The Cambridge History of Communism explores the rise of Communist states and movements after World War II. Leading experts analyze archival sources from formerly Communist states to re-examine the limits to Moscow's control of its satellites; the de-Stalinization of 1956; Communist reform movements; the rise and fall of the Sino-Soviet alliance; the growth of Communism in Asia, Africa and Latin America; and the effects of the Sino-Soviet split on world Communism. Chapters explore the cultures of Communism in the United States, Western Europe and China, and the conflicts engendered by nationalism and the continued need for support from Moscow. With the danger of a new Cold War developing between former and current Communist states and the West, this account of the roots, development and dissolution of the socialist bloc is essential reading.

Contains two detailed case studies. In “The Fu-t’ien Incident, December 1930,” Ronald Suleski describes the pivotal incident in the power struggle between Mao Zedong and the Communist Central Committee. Daniel Bays’s study of “Agrarian Reform in Kwangtung, 1950–1953” focuses upon the measures taken by the Chinese Communist Party to control and eventually collectivize rural elites in Kwangtung province.

The study provides a major reassessment of the scale and scope of China’s resurgence over the past half century, employing quantitative measurement techniques which are standard practice in OECD countries, but which have not hitherto been available for China.

The rise of China is no doubt one of the most important events in world economic history since the Industrial Revolution. Mainstream economics, especially the institutional theory of economic development based on a dichotomy of extractive vs. inclusive political institutions, is highly inadequate in explaining China's rise. This book argues that only a radical reinterpretation of the history of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the West (as incorrectly portrayed by the institutional theory) can fully explain China's growth miracle and why the determined rise of China is unstoppable despite its current 'backward' financial system and political institutions. Conversely, China's spectacular and rapid transformation from an impoverished agrarian society to a formidable industrial superpower sheds considerable light on the fundamental shortcomings of the institutional theory and mainstream 'blackboard' economic models, and provides more-accurate reevaluations of historical episodes such as Africa's enduring poverty trap despite radical political and economic reforms, Latin America's lost decades and frequent debt crises, 19th century Europe's great escape from the Malthusian trap, and the Industrial Revolution itself.