Mao
Maoist China in microcosm: Old Kiln, by Jia Pingwa, reviewed
Smouldering resentment flares to self-destructive violence in a remote village as the Cultural Revolution serves as a pretext for vengeance and exploitation
An insider’s account of the CCP’s stranglehold on China
A high-ranking intelligence officer leaves a cache of letters revealing his increasing disenchantment with the party after being purged numerous times
One for all
China’s brutal one-child policy was not only inhuman; it will profoundly damage the rest of the world, says Hilary Spurling
What does it really mean to have a tyrannical father?
What was it like, asks Jay Nordlinger, to have Mao as your father, or Pol Pot, or Papa Doc? The…
Short and surreal
‘I just wanted the damn story to ask the right questions,’ sighs a disaffected journalist in Jack Livings’s debut collection…
The real theatre of war
The history of ‘great events’, Voltaire wrote, is ‘hardly more than the history of crimes’. Physically, the war in Asia…
Mao’s violent disciple
Much has been written about Deng Xiao-ping (1904–1997), most recently by Ezra Vogel in Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of…
The leader who followed
The historian of China Frank Dikötter has taken a sledgehammer to demolish perhaps the last remaining shibboleth of modern Chinese…
