Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization

By Anita Chan, Richard Madsen, Jonathan Unger

Book Overview

The first two editions of Chen Village presented an enthralling account of a Chinese village in the throes of Maoist revolution followed by dramatic changes in village life and local politics during the Deng Xiaoping period. Now, more than a decade and a half later, the authors have returned to Chen Village, and in three new chapters they explore astonishing developments. The once-backwater village is today a center of China's export industry, where more than 50,000 workers labor in modern factories, ruled by the village government. This new edition of Chen Village illuminates, in microcosm, the recent history of rural China up to the present time.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520259319
• ISBN13: 9780520259317
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.11 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Excellent

Everything was well. The book got here in a week and 1/2, just in time. It was in good conditions. so all good.

China in a nutshell

It's remarkable that this book is not better known. So often, even good scholarship on Chinese social, political, and economic policy is described on a grand, macro scale.Chen Village shows how CCP policies since 1949 transformed the lives of one village's inhabitants, making those policies infinitely more understandable. It's one thing to study the Cultural Revolution, for example, but to see how it shaped and even destroyed the social and community fabric of one group of people is more revealing than any other approach I have seen. Chen village does it with clear writing and expert scholarship, and I can't recommend it enough to specialist or generalist alike.

The goods

Rather amazed to find this book unreviewed. There are many grand overviews of Chinese history, but this is one of the few books that takes you to the grassroots where the massive changes in Chinese society have been occurring. It also one of the few books written by China experts that avoids forcing the authors' views down the reader's throat. A unique piece of scholarship.