In 1976, China's 'education revolution' was being hailed by foreign observers as an inspiration for all low-income countries. By 1980, the Chinese themselves had disavowed the experience, declaring it devoid of even a single redeeming virtue. This is the first comprehensive book to cover the whole sweep of twentieth-century Chinese education, and to provide a detailed study of what occurred in the countryside under the radical Maoist education experiments during the Cultural Revolution. The study of both pre- and post-1949 China provided the crucial historical perspective to distinguish continuities from innovations. Rather than the epitome of good or evil, China's educational experiences of the 1970s instead emerged as the most tumultuous episode in a long and contentious struggle to adapt Western ways for use in a non-Western society.
Of all the sayings attributed to Deng Xiaoping, his commentary on the colour of cats is surely the most famous. Thanks to the radical campaign against him in 1976, all of China was reminded that Deng did not care whether a cat was black or white – so long as it could catch mice it was good enough for him. This was said to demonstrate his lack of commitment to political principle. As a consequence he was hailed outside China as a pragmatist and a moderate bent on seeking the shortest, quickest route towards his country's modernization, s of the political or ideological implications of the means adopted.
During the two decades preceding its 1997 reunification with China, imaginations in Hong Kong ran the gamut from fear to euphoria. Preparations for transfer from British to Chinese rule continued accordingly and Hong Kong's political development has been shaped by the conflicting imperatives responsible for those extremes. Most simply put, the imperatives grew from Hong Kong's fear of Chinese communism and China's fear of an anti-communist Hong Kong. Anxieties were greatest in the colony during 1982 and 1983, when Chinese leaders made known their determination to resume full sovereignty after the 1997 expiration of Britain's leasehold on 90 per cent of Hong Kong's territory. Apprehensions peaked again in 1989, following the military suppression of Beijing's student protest movement in Tiananmen Square. Yet fear also alternated with expressions of great bravado, when the dangers of latterday Chinese communism seemed to pale before the prospect of China's inevitable “Hong Kong-ization.” Between these two extremes, confidence levels waxed and waned as Chinese and British leaders responded, first by negotiating safeguards and then by writing them into law.
In recent years historians of China have focused increased attention on the critical decades of National rule on the mainland. This recent scholarship has substantially modified our understanding of the political events of this momentous period, shedding light on the character of Nationalist rule and on the sources of the Communist victory in 1949. Yet no existing textbook on modern China presents the events of the period according to these new findings. The five essays in this volume were written by leading authorities on the period, and they synthesize the new research. Drawn from Volume 13 of The Cambridge History of China, they represent the most complete and stimulating political history of the period available in the literature. The essays selected deal with Nationalist rule during the Nanking decade, the Communist movement from 1927 to 1937, Nationalist rule during the Sino-Japanese War, the Communist movement during the Sino-Japanese war, and the Kuomintang-Communist struggle from 1945 to 1949.
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