China against the tides

Marc Blecher's widely acclaimed critical survey of modern China, China: Politics, Economics and Society - Iconoclasm and Innovation in a Revolutionary Socialist Country, was published in 1986. Since that time there have been enormously wide and deep changes in China. Rather than just revising and updating his existing book, Professor Blecher has written a new work. Like its predecessor, it offers an interpretive survey of China's revolution, its sustained experiment with radical state socialism, and its efforts at equally radical structural reform. The approach remains interdisciplinary, weaving together history, politics, society, economics and culture. Though written for readers with no particular background in Chinese affairs, it goes beyond being just an introduction, offering arguments and analyses informed by social science theory and by a comparative perspective. It is a work that both informs and challenges.