product gallery

The Great Transformation

China's Road from Revolution to Reform

by Odd Arne Westad & Chen Jian

The first thorough account of a formative and little understood chapter in Chinese history

 

"A superb history of China's transition into and out of the Cultural Revolution. . . . Chen and Westad--two of the best archival historians of Communist China writing today--coolly but vividly recount the extraordinary drama of this metamorphosis."--Julia Lovell, Financial Times

 

Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian chronicle how an impoverished and terrorized China experienced radical political changes in the long 1970s and how ordinary people broke free from the beliefs that had shaped their lives during Mao's Cultural Revolution. These changes, and the unprecedented and sustained economic growth that followed, transformed China and the world.

 

In this rigorous account, Westad and Chen construct a panorama of catastrophe and progress in China. They chronicle China's gradual opening to the world--the interplay of power in an era of aged and ailing leadership, the people's rebellion against the earlier government system, and the roles of unlikely characters: overseas Chinese capitalists, American engineers, Japanese professors, and German designers. This is a story of revolutionary change that neither foreigners nor the Chinese themselves could have predicted.
READ MORE
NON FICTION
ASIAN HISTORY
HISTORY

pre-order available

Please note: Pre-order and on order items will ship as soon as they arrive in store.

Pages:

424

Published:

Nov 2025

Format

Paperback

Publisher

Yale University Press

ISBN:

9780300285604

The first thorough account of a formative and little understood chapter in Chinese history

 

"A superb history of China's transition into and out of the Cultural Revolution. . . . Chen and Westad--two of the best archival historians of Communist China writing today--coolly but vividly recount the extraordinary drama of this metamorphosis."--Julia Lovell, Financial Times

 

Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian chronicle how an impoverished and terrorized China experienced radical political changes in the long 1970s and how ordinary people broke free from the beliefs that had shaped their lives during Mao's Cultural Revolution. These changes, and the unprecedented and sustained economic growth that followed, transformed China and the world.

 

In this rigorous account, Westad and Chen construct a panorama of catastrophe and progress in China. They chronicle China's gradual opening to the world--the interplay of power in an era of aged and ailing leadership, the people's rebellion against the earlier government system, and the roles of unlikely characters: overseas Chinese capitalists, American engineers, Japanese professors, and German designers. This is a story of revolutionary change that neither foreigners nor the Chinese themselves could have predicted.
$36.00