CONTENTS
Notes
Preface to this edition. Acknowledgements. Spellings and names.
Introduction
China as a Mass Society. The decline of Chairman Mao. Attitudes to foreigners.
Chapter 1 -- Revolutionary Successors
Coming out of the Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping's search for successors. Sun Chaoyang, from a bourgeois background, builds a copy-book communist career. China's education system. The importance of ideology. Job assignments. The Youth League. Heroes and Model Workers. Competition for careers. Alvin Toffler in Beijing.
Chapter 2 -- The Universal Cadre
The cadre system. Party membership. Li Tongming rises from the village. Realities of medical welfare. Transfers and separations. Political study sessions. Adjusting to political winds. The rise and fall of the Gang of Four. Redefining Mao Zedong Thought. Jiang Qing on trial. Graft among cadres. Revamping the bureaucracy. Revising the role of the Party.
Chapter 3 -- The Unit's Proletarian
The work unit. How industry is organised. Ambitions of the 'fifties to realities of the 'eighties. State, collective and private workers. Old Kong finds a place in the system, and worries about his children. Youth unemployment - Shanghai protest march. Women workers and child care. Incentive schemes - Deng shakes up the wages system. Housing problems and commuting. Old Kong visits the bird market. Bicycles and other key purchases. Inflation arrives in China.
Chapter 4 -- The Fruits of Toil
The peasants in history. Chairman Mao's demands on the peasants. `Learn from Dazhai - no, don't!'. Beggars in a restaurant. The rural government structure. Access to urban markets. The Hong Qiao free market. Private versus collective endeavour in the villages. The Guangxi Lancers. Mechanisation and agribusiness. Xiao Sung's life in the hills. Peasant prosperity and spending power. Tax evasion and other problems of the new system. Rural cadre resistance to change. Mao Zedong's home village. Problems with education. Population control policies. Female infanticide.
Chapter 5 -- Comrades in Love
Expectations of marriage. The Chong Wen Marriage Bureau. A marriage boom. Tan and Lin look for husbands. Women's emancipation. Romantic love rehabilitated. Love in the arts. Courtship procedures and social pressure. Sex education. Permission to marry. Female initiative. Arranged marriage. Bride Price in the villages. A village wedding. Wedding formalities. Mass weddings. Honeymoons. Selection criteria: the Seventy-two Legs etc.. Divorce.
Chapter 6 -- Tails of Capitalism
Private enterprise in China. Small Business re-opens. Business law. State-backed entrepreneurs. Zhao Meiling survives to carry forward the family business. Patriotic Capitalists restored, millionaires reimbursed. Foreign joint ventures. Privatisation of housing. Everbright Corporation moves into Hong Kong. Silver service in the Jin Jiang Club of Shanghai. The Ying family hope for justice. Christianity and the Communist Party.
Chapter 7 -- Those with Knowledge
`Emancipate the Mind'. Mao and the intellectuals. Abuse of intellectual resources. Fang Guiying is ostracized for her family. Problems for brain-workers. Two decades of stagnation in the universities. Qu the Artist at home. The intellectual class rehabilitated. Intellectual freedom - up to a point. Art and propaganda. Westernization. `Burns Night' in Beijing. Ying Ruocheng dominates the stage. Party resistance to `bourgeois corruption'. State artists. The `Stars' artists break ranks.
Chapter 8 -- Democracy Wall
The battle for the orthodoxy, 1978. Wei Qi and politics. Mao's infallibility questioned. The coup against the Gang of Four. Wallposters as democracy. The Enlightenment Society in Tien An Men Square. The Democracy Wall is born. A night rally with foreigners breaches taboos. Youth dare to speak. The Party moves in.
Chapter 9 -- Golden Voice
Democracy - the 5th Modernization - Golden Voice challenges the Party. A night rendezvous. Wei Jingsheng's dissident view. Rumours of crackdown. War with Vietnam. The `Four Principles' of Party obedience revived. Wei Jingsheng arrested. A dissident poetry reading. Democracy Wall under attack. Wei Jingsheng on trial. China sets up a `KGB'.
Chapter 10 -- The Back Door
Social ethics. Yang tries to beat the system. The black market and foreign exchange. Wu Qing the fixer. The web of favours. Smuggling. Swindlers and imposters. Sexual morality and pornography. Two bank robbers stand trial. The justice system. Reform through Labour. Tuan He Labour Education camp.
Chapter 11 -- The New Long March
The middle-class rush to emigrate. Foreign friends as facilitators. Foreign `study' and inspection tours. The lure of Hong Kong. Visa tricks. Marrying foreigners. Xu Yanping braves the cadres to marry Stephen. Xiao San fails to hook a foreigner.
Chapter 12 -- Loyal Hearts Across the Seas
The status of Overseas Chinese. Host country suspicions. China woos money and expertise. Returnees bring foreign know-how. Trade and espionage. Lin Zhihua rejects overtures. Taiwan, Hong Kong and the `United Front'. Hometown remittances. Tan Kah-kee builds a university. Zhongshan County plays the foreign connection. Special Economic Zones. Guo Li questions his identity. Architect I.M.Pei hits a brick wall.
Chapter 13 -- The Fragrant Concubines
China as a multi-national state. The minority nationalities. Imperial ideology. The resistance of the Fragrant Concubine. Meriem grows up as a Uighur. Soviet interests in the border regions. Competition over Xinjiang (Turkestan). Inland treatment of minority nationalities. The Gobi Desert and Turfan. Munever's assimilation. Salim entertains a foreign visitor. Policy changes on culture and religion. Kashgar, four thousand kilometres from Beijing. Al It'qa mosque. Mullah Kasim draws the line on Communism.
Chapter 14 -- Opening the Wilds
Han settlers in Xinjiang. Zhou Songying adopts Kashgar as home. Uighur response to acculturation. Limits of mutual trust. Colonial disparities in Urumchi. Wang Guorong works for National Unity. A concert in Kashgar. Military settlements. Farm 148, Shihezi. Educated Youth in the wilderness. A colonel meets a foreigner.
Chapter 15 -- The World's Roof
China's view of Tibet. Encounters in Lhasa. Old and new policies on absorbing Tibet. A briefing in the Potala Palace. The Tibetan Rebellion of 1959. Contemporary racial tensions. Destruction of monasteries. Versions of history. China woos the Dalai Lama. Withdrawal of Chinese officials. Exiles returning. Modern pilgrimages. Folk culture recovers. Official culture homogenizes. Local faith in the Dalai Lama. Thubten, the emigre Lama. The absorption of Inner Mongolia. Genghis Khan has a change of status.
Chapter 16 -- Tides and Eddies
An overview. Trends for the future.