This book observes the growing importance of individual well-being for collective health in socialist China and the limitations this brought on the authorities. Engaging with contemporary popular media discourse—including handbooks and magazine articles on health and health practices—to demonstrate how biomedical knowledge was ingrained in the readership, this book uncovers the detailed path to health propagated by state media for the Chinese population. This authority-sanctioned discussion opened up a space for talking about a body entwined with production and the personal experience of daily life. Nutrition, exercise, and rest were the main fields in which the party– state encouraged and accommodated healthy behavior to foster a strong population in the wake of the building of the "New China." These three case studies highlight the network of social groups, institutions, and experts involved in the production and implementation of health knowledge as well as the continuity of health discourse itself. Through a thorough exploration of these three pillars of health and the emerging debate on civilization diseases, this book unearths the often-ignored limits of state control over human bodies.

This new social history of Maoist China provides an accessible view of the complex and tumultuous period when China came under Communist rule.

In this accessible new study, Toby Lincoln offers the first history of Chinese cities from their origins to the present. Despite being an agricultural society for thousands of years, China had an imperial urban civilization. Over the last century, this urban civilization has been transformed into the world's largest modern urban society. Throughout their long history, Chinese cities have been shaped by interactions with those around the world, and the story of urban China is a crucial part of the history of how the world has become an urban society. Exploring the global connections of Chinese cities, the urban system, urban governance, and daily life alongside introductions to major historical debates and extracts from primary sources, this is essential reading for all those interested in China and in urban history.

This volume includes 14 articles translated from the leading academic history journal in China, Historical Studies of Contemporary China (Dangdai Zhongguo shi yanjiu). It offers a rare window for the English speaking world to learn how scholars in China have understood and interpreted central issues pertaining to women and family from the founding of the PRC to the reform era. Chapters cover a wide range of topics, from women’s liberation, women’s movement and women’s education, to the impact of marriage laws and marriage reform, and changing practices of conjugal love, sexuality, family life and family planning. The volume invites further comparative inquiries into the gendered nature of the socialist state and the meanings of socialist feminism in the global context.

"Originally published in a different version in 2007 in Russian by Molodaia Gvardiia as Mao Tzedun"--Title page verso.

Afterlives of Chinese Communism comprises essays from over fifty world- renowned scholars in the China field, from various disciplines and continents. It provides an indispensable guide for understanding how the Mao era continues to shape Chinese politics today. Each chapter discusses a concept or practice from the Mao period, what it attempted to do, and what has become of it since. The authors respond to the legacy of Maoism from numerous perspectives to consider what lessons Chinese communism can offer today, and whether there is a future for the egalitarian politics that it once promised.

How China Became Capitalist details the extraordinary, and often unanticipated, journey that China has taken over the past thirty five years in transforming itself from a closed agrarian socialist economy to an indomitable economic force in the international arena. The authors revitalise the debate around the rise of the Chinese economy through the use of primary sources, persuasively arguing that the reforms implemented by the Chinese leaders did not represent a concerted attempt to create a capitalist economy, and that it was 'marginal revolutions' that introduced the market and entrepreneurship back to China. Lessons from the West were guided by the traditional Chinese principle of 'seeking truth from facts'. By turning to capitalism, China re-embraced her own cultural roots. How China Became Capitalist challenges received wisdom about the future of the Chinese economy, warning that while China has enormous potential for further growth, the future is clouded by the government's monopoly of ideas and power. Coase and Wang argue that the development of a market for ideas which has a long and revered tradition in China would be integral in bringing about the Chinese dream of social harmony.

China’s Communist Party seized power in 1949 after a long period of guerrilla insurgency followed by full-scale war, but the Chinese revolution was just beginning. China Under Mao narrates the rise and fall of the Maoist revolutionary state from 1949 to 1976—an epoch of startling accomplishments and disastrous failures, steered by many forces but dominated above all by Mao Zedong. “Walder convincingly shows that the effect of Maoist inequalities still distorts China today...[It] will be a mind-opening book for many (and is a depressing reminder for others).” —Jonathan Mirsky, The Spectator “Andrew Walder’s account of Mao’s time in power is detailed, sophisticated and powerful...Walder takes on many pieces of conventional wisdom about Mao’s China and pulls them apart...What was it that led so much of China’s population to follow Mao’s orders, in effect to launch a civil war against his own party? There is still much more to understand about the bond between Mao and the wider population. As we try to understand that bond, there will be few better guides than Andrew Walder’s book. Sober, measured, meticulous in every deadly detail, it is an essential assessment of one of the world’s most important revolutions.” —Rana Mitter, Times Literary Supplement

This collection of essays concerns both urban and rural Chinese communities, ranging from professional to working-class families. The contributors attempt to determine whether and to what extent the policy shifts that followed Mao Zedong's death affected Chinese families.